CITP Blog is hosted by Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy, a research center that studies digital technologies in public life. Here you’ll find comment and analysis from the digital frontier, written by the Center’s faculty, students, and friends.
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We’ve written plenty here about the adventures of SonyBMG, First4Internet, and SunnComm/MediaMax in CD copy protection. Today, I want to consider whether the companies violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse…
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Is DRM Good for You?
Randy Picker, a principled DRM (copy protection) advocate, had an interesting comment on one of my prior posts about the Sony incident. Here’s the core of it: Assume for now…
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G-Men Called on W-Hats for WMVD
[Despite our recent focus on the SonyBMG CD flap, our mandate here at Freedom to Tinker covers infotech and policy generally. So I hope any Sonymaniacs in the audience will…
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Make Your Own Copy-Protected CD with Passive Protection
Here’s a great gift idea just in time for the holidays: Make your friends and relatives their very own copy-protected CDs using the same industrial-grade passive protection technology built into…
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Inside the MediaMax Prospectus
Bruce Hayden writes that MediaMax, the company associated with the CD-borne spyware product that Sony has not yet recalled, recently filed a prospectus with the SEC in connection with an…
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CD Copy Protection: The Road to Spyware
Advocates of DRM (copy protection) have been keeping their heads down lately, while they try to figure out what went wrong in the SonyBMG DRM spyware fiasco. No doubt they’ll…
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Not Just Another Buggy Program
Was anybody surprised at Tuesday’s announcement that the MediaMax copy protection software on Sony CDs had a serious security flaw? I sure wasn’t. The folks at iSEC Partners were clever…
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MediaMax Bug Found; Patch Issued; Patch Suffers from Same Bug
iSEC, EFF, and SonyBMG issued a joint press release yesterday, announcing yet another serious security bug in the SunnComm MediaMax copy protection software that ships on many SonyBMG compact discs.…
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DRM, Incompatibility, and Market Power: A Visit to the Sausage Factory
Yesterday Alex wrote about how SonyBMG’s XCP CD copy protection software includes a feature – apparently built on illegally copied open-source code – to translate music files into the FairPlay…
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Hidden Feature in Sony DRM Uses Open Source Code to Add Apple DRM
For weeks, the blogosphere has been abuzz with tales of intrigue about Sony’s XCP copy protection system. Among the strangest revelations was that XCP itself infringes on the copyrights to…