Software Piracy: Should revealing simple secrets be a crime?

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http://www.msnbc.com/news/978433.asp?0cv=CB20

I feel I have to call BS on this one. While I submit that I believe music piracy (for profit) is wrong, I don't think this kid did anything really wrong. It's not like he spent hours and hours hacking the code, and distributing software to thousands of people. All he did was say "Hey everybody...they left the key to Fort Knox under the mat...ain't they stupid?" If SunnComm was irresponsible enough to distribute such poorly secured software, do they have the right to take action against a kid who brought to light a very very simple security breach that most people would've heard about or figured out anyway?

Weigh in: Is this a just action, or is SunnComm just looking for someone to blame for their very obvious oversight?

 

I agree with you 100% on this one. SunnComm messed up big time and there is no way that they should be able to sue someone for revealing their mistake to the public.

If Halderman had created a piece of software to crack the copy protection then maybe SunnComm would have a case but Halderman simply revealed a flaw in the program that requires no special software to exploit.

 

I nearly died laughing when I saw that article on the BBC. There's the pinnacle of security for you. Millions of dollars spent developing code that could be defeated by disabling the 'autorun' feature. The managers' meeting probably sounded like this.

"I know what you're thinking. Did we make one mistake or two? Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I've kinda lost track myself. But being as this is SunnComm, the most powerful anti-piracy software in the world, one that took millions to develop, you've got to ask yourself one question. Will you hit the shift key and feel lucky? Well, do ya Punk?

 

Sounds like bully-boy tactics to me. Trying to scare him into removing the article at a guess.

 

Greedy bastards. Not only mentally lazy dolts, but also greedy. Wouldn't cry if they hit a train.

 

Not to mention erring on the side of making their software utterly useless.

Sounds like they did it to themselves.

Typical – rather than acknowledging that they made a mistake, they look for a scapegoat. Let’s hope that the courts have enough sense to tell them to get lost.

 

Oh, yeah. I was reading about that this morning. That is totally hilarious. It'll go right out the door. You can always sue, but can you WIN?

But this is, of course, not the point. The point is the company is calling the vast majority of Americans, "Idiots". Which irks me more than the fact the college kid will have to pay a laywer and spend time in court defending himself. They might very well be right, but it's a whole other matter when you actually go out and say it.

This all goes back to my cane pole theory.

 

Yes well, I was thinking of getting a refund on my LoTR music cd's because of those stupid copy protections as well. For my only CD player is my PC, or my DVD video which of course can be found in the center of our livingroom. Not exactly the proper place for listening to music by yourself if you know what I mean.

And as typical, it was only so hard to find a software from the net that could take and make mp3's out of the wav's in the CD. Only their quality is only 98% since from time to time there is some extra white noise or somesuch. This is little enough to make sure that pirates don't care since they do get it for free. But enough to make sure that a previously paying customer like me will damn well make sure no more CD's are bought from the store for a while.

I have no statistics to prove my point here, but from what I've heard and seen and tried, I can't help but believe that those idiots really don't know the only ones suffering from copyprotections are the legal users. Anyone else, and I mean anyone, will find it a piece of cake to get a fairly well working piece of the same music/video/game whatever from the net.

So as to the topic 'secrets' such as this SHOULD be revealed to the public, since obviously law isn't going to be on the side of goodness in this matter. At least not for all parties involved.

 

LOL they were caught in the same trap they were preparing.

Well as long as this attitude exists in some companies i will always be glad that there is a guy (hacker), who can break their sophisticated protection from copies and create a free version of everything.
I am not for as far as it concerns piracy for profit but on the other hand i am pro of piracy just for the sake of it.

 

What idiots -- they should have thanked him for pointing out what their own beta testers should have found. They should hire him!

 

I think they will. At the end if some other company does not get him first

 

@Foradasthar
Is there a reason that your comp can't play CDs in .wav format like a regular CD player? Then you don't have to worry about that copy-protection.

This case is ridiculous. The company should thank the kid for catching that bug and fix it, not spend money suing him for their own stupidity.

And legally, this is no crime since the kid made no effort to break the code.