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RISKS-LIST: Risks-Forum Digest Thursday 19 July 2007 Volume 24 : Issue 74
ACM FORUM ON RISKS TO THE PUBLIC IN COMPUTERS AND RELATED SYSTEMS (comp.risks)
Peter G. Neumann, moderator, chmn ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
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This issue is archived at <http://www.risks.org> as
<http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/24.74.html>
The current issue can be found at
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Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 14:32:42 -0400
From: Fred Reinke <reinkefj@reinke.cc>
Subject: “Microsoft Copy Protection Cracked Again” and who’s surprised?
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Jessica Mintz, AP, 17 Jul 2007
Microsoft Copy Protection Cracked Again
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=2007-07-17_D8QEFI3O1
<http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=2007-07-17_D8QEFI3O1&show_article=1&cat=breaking> &show_article=1&cat=breaking
Microsoft Corp. is once again on the defensive against hackers after the
launch of a new program that gives average PC users tools to unlock
copy-protected digital music and movies.
The latest version of the FairUse4M program, which can crack Microsoft’s
digital rights management system for Windows Media audio and video files,
was published online late Friday. In the past year, Microsoft plugged
holes exploited by two earlier versions of the program and filed a federal
lawsuit against its anonymous authors. Microsoft dropped the lawsuit after
failing to identify them.
The third version of FairUse4M has a simple drag-and-drop interface. PC
users can turn the protected music files they bought online-either a la
carte or as part of a subscription service like Napster-and turn them into
DRM-free tunes that can be copied and shared at will, or turned into MP3
files that can play on any type of digital music player.
{End Quoting an AP story}
Like an arms race, the DRM folks are spending a lot of cycles on a failing
paradigm.
Like putting lipstick on the proverbial pig, it annoys their paying
customers and is pretty ugly! Some of my biggest irritations, in my
computing career, have been at the hands of “copy protection”. Couple that
with bad, or non-existent, support and you have the seeds of a revolt.
I now don’t buy content online — music or other kinds — if it has copy
protection. I have a lot of expensive 8 tracks, cassettes, and cds of
“content” that are unusable. Add to that “software”, which has stopped
working, stopped being supported, or otherwise orphaned.
My most recent experience was with MusicMatch JukeBox being acquired by
Yahoo and forced to “upgrade”. This was one of my last purchases, excuse me
“licensing” — what “barbara streisand”!! — before my new policy of “no
more”.
“No more” locked content. “No more” buying software, excuse me licensing it,
from vendors who are one step below used car salesmen. “No more” operating
systems that require “activation” and have “self-help” provisions.
I look to the open source software makers and happily “donate” to their
projects.
I’m calling out the content makers, “software” licensors, and the entire
Microsoft empire as the hucksters they are. At least the snake oil sales men
of yesteryear didn’t try and make you “license” the bottle! A plague on all
their houses.
Imagine how I’ll be when I get old and crotchety!
Ferdinand J. Reinke, Kendall Park, NJ 08824 http://www.reinke.cc/
blog http://www.reinkefaceslife.com/ http://www.reinkefaceslife.com/
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Twice in one year! Maybe I’m getting older and wiser. :-) Either that or PGN is getting lax?
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Reinke Faces Life 
There may, on occasion, be a problem with the contract of adhesion that comes with “copy protected” content. I am of the view that, while the court got the facts wrong in _Zeidenberg_ in that he did not have a real option to return the CD, the rule is almost tolerable so long as we acknowledge that we sometimes have times where we cannot return the material.
Pay first, then terms, is something we accept. Tickets for transportation often come this way, and it prevails even when obnoxious. See, e.g., _Carnival v. Shute_, 499 U.S. 585.
Having said that, I cannot fault people who buy something, then get terms that greatly diminish the value of their purchase but which cannot be properly negotiated, and who follow that with self-help. Self-help may consist of switching to linux; most free software was the result of someone engaging in self-help of a type we permit and encourage. It may consist of peeling off the unacceptable DRM wrapper, in order to obtain the fair use of the content inside.
I agree also that purchasing something that is “copy protected”
is usually folly.
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