By Carleton Atwater

Digital music piracy has been a hot topic across the country for many years now. Ever since the technology was first developed, the recording industry has been trying to find methods to stop or thwart the pirating of music. The first attempts were made by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to shut down music sharing networks, such as Napster and Kazaa. Recently, a company attempted to make their CDs impossible to copy and share online.

SunnComm Technologies introduced a new unauthorized copy-prevention technique known as “MediaMax CD3.” According to the company, the method offers “a verifiable and commendable level of security.”

Although the recording industry has continually made strides to block file sharing and the piracy of music, citing cost as an issue, some students say the large corporations are stealing an equal amount of royalties, if not more, than downloaders.

“File sharing is somewhat wrong, but the way the record industry rips off musicians anyways is wrong. Generally, musicians make money from touring and not too much from royalties and album sales,” said Henry Joyce, a sophomore marketing major. “In my mind we are stealing as much from the music industry as the industry steals from upcoming artists.”

Despite these promises of increased security, one student announced a few weeks ago that he overrode the protection by simply hitting the “shift” key on this computer as the CD loaded.

John A. Haldermen is a Princeton University Ph.D. candidate in computer science. On Oct. 6, Haldermen released a technical report of his study on the new technology both on his own personal Web site as well as Princeton’s computer science Web site. The report, which can be accessed at cs.princeton.edu/~jhalderm/cd3/ details his findings on the new software.

The average audio CD contains music files that are playable on a stereo. If someone wants to create MP3s of these songs they must employ a type of software known as a “ripper,” such as Windows Media Player or MusicMatch Jukebox. These programs copy the songs into MP3s. This “ripping” is exactly what MediaMax CD3 attempts to stop, according to Halermen’s technical report.

A CD with this new protection will install a small application known as a driver when first inserted into a computer. This driver will cause any of the songs ripped from th eCD to sound garbled. These new CDs also contain a version of the songs in WMA format in addition to the standard audio files. In order to get good sounding copies of the songs on to one’s computer, one must copy the WMA files already on the CD. These files sound the same as MP3s, but can only be played on the CD owner’s computer, Haldermen said.

Haldermen discovered that this protection is very simple to cirumvent. All one has to do is disable the driver, a process that can be accomplished by simply holding down the ‘shift’ key when first loading the CD onto one’s computer. Once the driver is disabled the CD can be “ripped” just like any other CD.

The ease of overcoming this pirating protection system is surprising considering it was embraced by major record label BMG. SunnComm even released a statement on Aug. 27 proclaiming that after rigorous tests were made to verify the protection offered by MediaMax CD3, it was concluded that their system offered “verifiable and commendable level of security.”

SunnComm initially announced that they were planning on pursuing legal action against Haldermen. They claimed he was in violation of Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which forbids the distribution of information of software that breaks or “circumvents” copy-protection technology.

“I think that’s silly that they considered suing him,” said John Mayers, a sophomore computer science major. “If Haldermen didn’t discover the flaw, someone else would have, and especially considering how easy it was to disable the system. Besides, they will never stop file-sharing, no matter how hard they try.”

The company dropped the charge when they learned Haldermen’s intent was of an academic nature. Research of this type is not considered a violation of the act.