Dumb-shit company to sue smart student over stupid technology

Posted on October 9, 2003
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If you’re sensitive to strong language, skip this post.

When I wrote my previous post about John Halderman’s report on how to circumvent the MediaMax CD copy protection scheme, I was kidding when I said I worried that the DMCA would come into play. Two days later:

Princeton Ph.D. student John “Alex” Halderman published a paper on his Web site on Monday that gave detailed instructions on how to disarm the SunnComm technology, which aims to block unauthorized CD copying and MP3 ripping. The technology is included on an album by Anthony Hamilton that was recently distributed by BMG Music.

On Thursday, SunnComm CEO Peter Jacobs said the company plans legal action and is considering both criminal and civil suits. He said it may charge the student with maligning the company’s reputation and, possibly, with violating copyright law that bans the distribution of tools for breaking through digital piracy safeguards. - Student faces suit over key to CD locks

Dear SunnComm CEO Peter Jacobs: you’re one of the dumbest motherfuckers I’ve ever had the displeasure of coming across. Your company makes shit software that does a shit job of doing what you say it does well, and now that you’ve been outed by someone with some brains, instead of doing the honorable thing, the rational thing, the respectable thing, you’re going to sue him for telling the world that the emperor has no clothes?

John Halderman didn’t malign your company’s reputation, your marketing department did when it sold your product. Your developers did when they created it and didn’t notice that a single, standard-issue keyboard key can bypass it. And you, you personally, have maligned your company’s reputation by launching this lawsuit. Yesterday you were just another company that had developed some software with a flaw in it. Today you’re a total asshole, sitting at the head of the problem rather than working towards a solution.

You say: “I think the agenda is: ‘Digital property should belong to everyone on the Internet.’” Bullshit. The agenda in his report was: SunnComm is selling the promise of a protection technology that is fundamentally flawed to the point of worthlessness, and they haven’t told anyone. Reread the report bub, there’s nothing there advocating piracy, but lots advocating the avoidance of your product.

Isn’t that reallly what’s pissed you off Peter? That you’ve suddenly found yourself standing in the street buck naked while all the other kids are pointing and laughing at you. And you feel bad so you’re hell-bent on making someone else feel bad too?

Grow the fuck up Peter. You have a technological problem on your hands, find a technological solution.

Update: More details on SunnComm’s position over at Yahoo. It reads as a SunnComm press release.

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