EMI responds to EFF
p2p news / p2pnet: In an open letter to Britain’s EMI, a member of the Big Four record label cartel, the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) asked the company to publicly promise, "not to pursue any legal action against computer security researchers who examine the copy-protection technologies used on some EMI CDs".
Now, "A spokesman for EMI told ZDNet UK that the company had received the letter and was reviewing the matter," says CNET News.
"The spokesman would not comment about how long the review process would take."
Several record labels owned by EMI, including Virgin Records, Capitol Records, and Liberty Records, "use similar copy-protection technologies supplied by Macrovision," says the EFF.
"On those CDs, an end user license agreement (EULA) forbids reverse engineering for any reason, including security testing. In addition, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) has chilled the efforts of computer security researchers interested in examining copy-protected CDs."
Music fans, "deserve to know whether EMI’s copy-protected CDs are exposing their computers to security risks," says Fred von Lohmann, senior EFF staff attorney.
"When it comes to computer security, it pays to have as many independent experts kick the tires as possible, and that can only happen if EMI assures those experts that they won’t be sued for their trouble."
The EMI spokesman told ZDNet UK EMI Group CDs clearly say they’re content-protected and that EMI had "no rootkit issues," says CNET.
"The spokesman added that the software on the CDs ‘never loads DRM onto a user’s hard drive without the user’s permission’."
Also See:
open letter – Don’t sue our DRM researchers!’, January 5, 2006
CNET News – EMI considers opening its DRM to inspection, January 20, 2006
January 23rd, 2006 at 7:00 pm
Dunno I think any EULA cannot be enforced, you can’t agree to them untill after you have opened a cd, and you can’t return an opened cd…..
January 23rd, 2006 at 7:05 pm
The only way a EULA could really be enforce would be if they made it in paper around the outside of the box. But I can’t see companies messing up their pretty packages with their legalize crap.
January 23rd, 2006 at 7:06 pm
“The EMI spokesman told ZDNet UK EMI Group CDs clearly say they’re content-protected and that EMI had “no rootkit issues,” says CNET.”
No rootkits, but what about security issues??
January 23rd, 2006 at 8:17 pm
ummm, yeah, so we say it’s safe so you don’t need to check….yeah that’s our story.
January 23rd, 2006 at 8:38 pm
EULA’s can and have been enforced (at least in the US), the guys who developed bnetd were sued back to the stone age by blizzard for EULA violation.
I would like to see some laws passed to limit the scope of EULAs and require them to be displayed in an area accessible to the customer before purchase as you said. Right now they can pretty much bind you into slavery as bill gates towel boy if they wanted, and that isn’t right.
January 23rd, 2006 at 10:53 pm
There are no EULAs on CDs at present. The EULAs are on the software – the DRM trojan that will try to install if you’re foolish enough to leave the “auto-run” anti-feature enabled.
If you install the software, well, you presumably can’t do so without clicking “yes” to the EULA. However, if you just copy the executable off the disc, you can do whatever you want with it without ever being confronted with a EULA.
Then if you reverse-engineer it or whatever, there may be DMCA violation, but there can’t be a contract issue if you never invoked or agreed to the EULA.
– jen_eric999
January 24th, 2006 at 5:13 am
It’s usually near impossible to do any serious reverse engineering without actually running the target software through a debugger (with disassembly abilities).
With that in mind, it becomes nesessary to run the software in question to perform the reversing. So actually you do have to adhere to the EULA, technically atleast.
January 24th, 2006 at 10:49 pm
Most common installers are just wrappers from which the “real” executables can be extracted.
Still, the interaction necessary in reversing might be enough for a court to find consent to the EULA – in this respect you have a point.
Another possibility would be examining the computer of someone who did agree to the EULA, but the reverser did not. With favorable facts the analyst could be in a good legal position – e.g., customer brings in computer for service (”it won’t let me do what I want anymore!”).
Third possiblity, reports from respectable sources (Russinovich I think, in the Sony debacle) said the software would install even if the user said no to the EULA. In such case the owner is certainly entitled to disregard any supposed terms and conditions.
EULAs would be disallowed in a just legal system, but that’s another issue.