SunnComm's Ups and Downs

The last few weeks have been a roller-coaster ride for CD copy-restriction developer SunnComm. The company was riding high in early September when it was announced that BMG and Arista had chosen its MediaMax CD-3 Technology to restrict how discs are used.

Then came the revelation last week that a simple trick could bypass the SunnComm process, and the company's stock, which trades on the Over-the-Counter Bulletin Board, quickly tanked, losing more than $10 million of its market value in days. What caused all the trouble was a Princeton University grad student's report issued last Monday that claimed that SunnComm's system could be defeated with the use of a computer's shift key.

John A. Halderman, who researches CD-restriction technologies and consumer reaction to them, posted a paper on his website detailing how SunnComm's MediaMax CD-3 could be bypassed on Windows computers with the use of the shift key and noting that computers running Linux and Mac OS9 are unable to run SunnComm restriction software and are therefore able to use the restricted discs as normal. Halderman's graduate adviser, it should be noted, is Ed Felton, who was threatened three years ago by the RIAA under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act after he announced a paper disclosing flaws in the industry's Secure Digital Music Initiative. Both the initiative and the threatened lawsuit were dropped.

Halderman wrote, "MediaMax, unlike earlier copy-prevention techniques, works entirely in software. This means a moderately skilled programmer could, in only a few minutes, write an application to watch for and unload the driver, neutralizing MediaMax's copy resistance while leaving all the disc's other features intact. SunnComm's claims of robust protection collapse when subjected to scrutiny, and their system's weaknesses are not only academic."

Adding insult to injury, Halderman maintained that SunnComm's claims that MediaMax is hard to bypass by consumers is "patently deceptive. In practice, many users who try to copy the disc will succeed without even noticing that it's protected, and all others can bypass the protections with as little as a single keystroke."

Sunncomm responded three days later saying it would sue Halderman. "SunnComm intends to refer this possible felony to authorities having jurisdiction over these matters because: 1) The author admits that he disabled the driver in order to make an unprotected copy of the disc's contents, and 2) SunnComm believes that the author's report was 'disseminated in a manner which facilitates infringement' in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) or other applicable law. This cat-and-mouse game that hackers and others like to play with owners of digital property is over. SunnComm is taking a stand here because we believe that those who own property, whether physical or digital, have the ultimate authority over how their property is used."

The company's claims that Halderman's paper ran afoul of the DMCA prompted the researcher to observe, "I'm still not very worried about litigation under the DMCA, I don't think there's any case. I don't think telling people to press the 'shift' key is a violation of the DMCA."

He might be right—or else SunnComm has decided it is not in its best interests to pursue legal action. Either way, the company has decided not to litigate. According to SunnComm's Peter Jacobs, "MediaMax performs exactly as 'advertised' to the companies who purchased it. The ultimate proof will be in the results we obtain from the marketplace and not in the courtroom. Because SunnComm is, itself, a company which relies on research and development for its survival, we feel that bringing legal action for damages against researchers in a higher learning environment may contribute to a chilling effect on the type of research that faculty, staff, and students elect to pursue. Therefore, we've decided to move along and not pursue legal remedies in deference to 'the bigger picture.'"

SunnComm's Bill Whitmore said, "A technology has not yet been invented that will keep all those individuals from appropriating unprotected music without limitations if they intend on taking it that way." Instead, Whitmore feels that SunnComm provides a "speed bump of security" that will improve with each subsequent release.