SDMI request for hack secrecy thwarted
When the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) offered cash prizes for breaking the watermark copy-protection schemes it was testing, a team led by Princeton University Professor Edward Felten declined to participate. The reason was that the rules of the challenge required that participants agree not to reveal anything learned from their efforts, violating the team's academic values.
Recently, the team was prepared to publish its findings but, according to The Register, it received veiled threats of criminal prosecution under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) from the SDMI Foundation and began to negotiate about removing some information from the paper. It was at that time, however, that a version of the paper, titled Reading Between the Lines: Lessons from the SDMI Challenge, appeared on the Web.
For more information, read theregister.co.uk, newsBytes.com and zdnn.com.
