snakeoil [LWN.net]

snakeoil

Posted Oct 10, 2003 8:17 UTC (Fri) by hingo (subscriber, #14792)
In reply to: A closer look at Sunncomm's lawsuit threat by skybunny
Parent article: Student faces suit over key to CD locks (News.com)

The reason the stock price fell is that Sunncomm's security software obviously isn't living up to expectations. If software can be as easily avoided as Halderman shows, obviously something was wrong with the tests performed in late August that show that the security software meets the 'highest standards',

All these 'copy-protection schemes' that we have seen lately, remind me of stories from Lucky Luke and other westerns, where someone gets tarred and feathered for selling snakeoil. That is, some bogus liquid that is marketed as a cure for everything from baldness to clavus.

I think it would benefit us to more openly label these technologies as snakeoil. (I think Bruce Schneier uses the term for bogus cryptography products.)

Not that I care if record labels are getting screwed buying hoaxes like these, but the problem is that then we get our legislators that believe they need to come up with some new legislation (DMCA, EUCD) to prevent this 'copy-protection' from getting 'cracked'.

The message that needs to get through therefore is: There is nothing here that deserves to be called 'copy-protection', it's just snakeoil. No need for legislative intervention. Nothing to see here, move along...

henrik

PS. How do you spell DMCA without pressing the shift key?

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snakeoil

Posted Oct 10, 2003 12:12 UTC (Fri) by KaiRo (subscriber, #1987) [Link]

Well, what they call "copy-protection" is actually just meant to protect their money but not the rights of consumers.
We have a saying here that states "Der Kunde ist König" ("The consumer is the king"), and it's actually the most important rule for every salesman here. As long as the consumer get satisfied and is happy with you, he'll come around buying your products the next time as well.
Those "protections" are doing it the other way round though. They're telling the consumer "Yes, you bought this music/video, but you are not allowed to use it the way you want, not even for yourself only, you only are allowed to use it the way WE want". And recent laws are even supporting that style of doing things. I don't wonder if people stop buying CDs or DVDs because they're feeling pissed off. The markets should be orientated at the things the consumer needs and wants, and not at the needs and wants of the industry.

Hell, if I'm buying music of my favourite group, I want to play it the way I want. And I simply want to play it from a Ogg Vorbis file with XMMS. It's OK if I'm not allowed to share that file or resell it. But it's not OK if I can't even create this file and play it for myself. I don't want to change CDs for every other song I want to listen to. I just want to run them from my favourite playlist, in my favourite player. As long as they don't allow me to do that, I won't buy any music of them and I'll try to get it somehow without the need to buy something I can't really use the way I want.
If they're able to provide the music to me in a way I can use, I'm very willing to buy it though.

The real problem of the music and video industry is that they're taking away the consumer's freedom. If they were acting as our friends, we'd also act like friends and buy more CDS and DVDs. I'm quite sure of that.

snakeoil

Posted Oct 10, 2003 14:09 UTC (Fri) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link]

"The customer is king." Yeah, we have that too. And sure, all the sales-people *tell* you that that's the number 1 rule. And maybe it is for some low-level people, but for the higher-ups, it's just a cynical ploy.