Rockbites: Scientists, Electronic Frontier Foundation sue RIAA

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June 2001 • Rockbites Alternative Daily

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Scientists, Electronic Frontier Foundation sue RIAA
7 June 2001

The San Francisco based Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a non-profit organization dedicated to privacy and freedom of expression, filed a lawsuit yesterday in a New Jersey US District court against the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI), Verance Corporation, and others. The EFF is representing a team of scientists that last fall cracked an SDMI music copy protection scheme designed by Verance.
    The lawsuit also represents the Delaware based USENIX Association, which has invited the scientific team to present their findings at their annual conference in August.
    The team, led by Princeton university associate professor Edward Felten, had taken on a public challenge issued by SDMI in September to crack their so-called watermarking scheme that attaches inaudible identification to music files, allowing illegal copies to be blocked in the future by SDMI-compliant players. That challenge read, in part, “So here’s the invitation: Attack the proposed technologies. Crack them.”
    SDMI offered two options: adopt a confidentiality agreement through which you promise to not disclose your results, making you eligible for a US$10,000 prize; or don’t agree to the terms, forfeit any prize money, and be free to publish your findings. Felten and his associates from Rice University and the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (Xerox PARC) chose the latter option. In October they announced they had cracked the code.
    The team wrote a paper on their work which, following peer review, was accepted for presentation at the Fourth International Information Hiding Workshop, held in April in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
    But the RIAA and SDMI, in an extraordinarily bold move that at once revealed its initial challenge as a farce, undermines the scientific process, and threw its stated motives into question, instructed its lawyers to threaten Felten, the conference organizers, Princeton University, Rice University, and Xerox PARC with lawsuits. The research team backed down.
    Now the EFF has turned the tables and is suing for violation of rights ensured by the US Constitution’s First Ammendment for freedom of speech, and for exoneration from charges that the team violated the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DCMA) or the SDMI’s terms for the watermarking cracking challenge.
    Yesterday’s lawsuit states “Without full and open access to research in areas potentially covered by the DMCA, scientists and programmers working in those areas cannot exchange ideas and fully develop their own research. As a consequence, the DMCA will harm science.” Team leader Felten said yesterday “The recording industry’s interpretation of the DMCA would make scientific progress on this important topic illegal.”
    In April, following the decision to buckle under legal pressure from the RIAA and SDMI, Felton defended his team saying “We are not encouraging theft. We are interested in understanding how this technology works. These [SDMI’s watermarking plans] are costly measures, and there is no reason to deploy them if they don’t work.” | EFF resource page | | SDMI challenge info from Princeton (includes FAQ list) | | SDMI | | RIAA statement | | Verance | | top of page |

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