Linux users say SDMI contest a trick
By Lisa M. Bowman, ZDNet News
Some Linux lovers say the record industry is using them
as a free consulting service to improve SDMI encryption.
Some members of the Linux community are rejecting the
record industrys request to help it create a more secure technical lock on its
digital music.
The Linux Journal is sponsoring a boycott of the Secure Digital Music Initiative
hacking
challenge, which starts Friday and promises to pay $10,000 to any hacker who
strips out
the watermark from a digital song.
SDMI is a technology initiative launched by the record companies
to crack down on piracy. In the coming weeks, SDMI will try out a
variety of security measures, with plans to eventually adopt a
hacker-tested technology that will prevent people from playing
bootleg songs on SDMI-compatible hardware.
However, some Linux lovers say the record industry is only using
the hackers as a "free consulting" service to help it crack down
on
legal uses of music in the future, in an attempt to exert
unprecedented control over when and where people play songs.
The Linux Journal is urging readers to sign a letter saying they
wont
play along.
"Thanks, SDMI, but no thanks. I wont do your dirty work for you," the letter
states. "I
will not help test programs or devices that violate privacy or interfere with the
right of fair
use."
People who sign the letter will agree that they will never make a bootleg copy of
a
recording, but will only play one copy at a time in different devices, an action
thats legal
under the concept of fair use, but may be hard to follow in these days of rampant
digital
file swapping.
In a sense, the open sharing of information that has allowed the Linux community
to
mushroom is directly at odds with the motives of traditional entertainment
companies,
which want to lock down their content.
PR stunt
Ironically, the entertainment industry in the past has sued people whove tried to
reverse
engineer their encryption technology -- the same act SDMI is now asking them to
perform
during the hacking contest.
Linux Journal technical editor Don Marti, one of the boycotts organizers, said
the goal is
to thwart what he called "SDMIs PR stunt."
"Why are freedom-loving people supposed to do free consulting work for an
organization
that wants to take away our freedom?" he asked.
SDMI officials were not immediately available for comment.
