SunnComm Negates The Shift Key Attack

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the how-nice dept

A little over a year ago, SunnComm (a company that some have accused of being nothing more than a big stock scam) introduced some copy protection technology, that was easily defeated by holding down the shift key, since the software required the autoplay function to work and holding down the shift key prevents autoplay (you can also turn off autoplay on all CDs, effectively doing the same thing). Now, SunnComm claims they’ve updated their technology to get around the shift key issue, though, it’s not clear how the new technology works. They preemptively admit that the Alex Haldermans and Ed Feltens of the world will probably figure out a way around the new copy protection, but that they’re “not worried” about researchers, since the average dumb consumer won’t know what to do. They also claim that the new technology will work on “100%” of CD and DVD players — which is a pretty bold claim, since most copy protection seems to have problems with some players. Of course, this isn’t actually going to stop anyone from copying a CD they want. Not only will researchers figure out how to break the copy protection, but those who seed P2P networks will figure it out as well. In other words, the content will still be available online. The only thing this really will slow down will be when people want to do something that seems like fair use (making a backup copy?), but can’t. Oh yeah, it will also make CDs more expensive, since SunnComm has to get their fee.