SunnComm shifts stance, backs away from lawsuit  In an interview with The Daily Princetonian, SunnComm president and CEO Peter Jacobs is surprisingly somber while explaining why the company will forego litigation.  [Ars Technica]

Not that surprising that it doesn't seem like such a good idea after all.

5:23:35 PM    comment []  

Anonymous donor provides public service scholarships at Emory Law. The Emory Wheel reports that an anonymous donor has granted $600,000 to Emory University School of Law, which will be used to help pay back loans for graduates who enter public service in Georgia. In other law school news, AP reports that Florida State Un [JURIST's Paper Chase]

Sad part here is that the Law School itself has nothing about this on their website.  Gifts like this need to be trumped loud and clear.  The Emory Law School website sees tens of thousands of visitors every single day and there is no better forum for getting this sort of news out than that.  They do need to realize that the problem there is not the design of the site, but those 'responsible' for adding content.

4:39:33 PM    comment []  

My (brief) career as an ISP. Why is the FBI convinced CNET News.com's Declan McCullagh is an Internet service provider? [CNET News.com - Front Door]

More importantly this is an example of the increased use of way-too-much power by the FBI.  In this case the FBI is going after the press with threats of the USA Patriot Act. McCullagh writes:"FBI Supervisory Special Agent Howard Leadbetter II used the two-page letter to inform me that under Section 2703(f) of the Electronic Communication Transactional Records Act, I must "preserve these items for a period of 90 days" in anticipation of a subpoena. So far I haven't received such a subpoena, which would invoke a lesser-known section of the USA Patriot Act...The third problem with the FBI's letter is that it requests that I not "disclose this request or its contents to anyone." " 

Presumably the reference is to section 215 of the Patriot Act which gives the FBI broad subpeona power and the ability to gag recipients of such subpeonas indefinitely.  Of course the intent here is to go after terrorists, not chill the press.  Last I read, the Lamo case was interesting, but hardly a matter of national securlty and certainly not terror related.

11:31:39 AM    comment []  

SunnComm Says Pointing to Shift Key 'Possible Felony'

SunnComm Says Pointing to Shift Key 'Possible Felony'

Posted by CowboyNeal on Thursday October 09, @06:56PM
from the same-shift-not-different-dmca dept.
The Importance of writes "A couple of weeks ago BMG released an audio CD with a new type of DRM. Earlier this week, a computer science graduate student at Princeton wrote a report showing the DRM was ineffective - it could easily be defeated by use of the 'shift' key. The stock of the DRM company (SunnComm) has since fallen by 20%. Now, SunnComm plans to sue the student under the DMCA and claim that SunnComm's reputation has been falsely damaged. According to SunnComm's CEO, 'No matter what their credentials or rationale, it is wrong to use one's knowledge and the cover of academia to facilitate piracy and theft of digital property.'"

[Slashdot]

The referenced press release announcing SunnComm's intention to sue the author of the report includes this tidbit:     "SunnComm Technologies Inc. became the first company to commercially release a content-protected audio CD utilizing an early version of the Windows Media Data Session Toolkit... SunnComm's MediaMax CD-3 Suite of Digital Content Enhancement technologies are built using Microsoft Windows Media 9 Series".  So there was the first mistake. Because WM9DRM is so tightly linked to the OS, it can easily be gotten around just using the standard tricks associated with Windows.  If DRM (which, BTW, is not necessarily a Bad Thing) is going to be useful, it needs to be based on something that is not tied to a specific company's OS (though Media 9 DRM does function in the Mac world).

10:58:11 AM    comment []