full-disclosure - Is the record industry turning to Trojan horse programs to copy-protect CDs?

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Message-ID: <1065641255.30355.19.camel@tantor.nuclearelephant.com>
From: jonathan at nuclearelephant.com (Jonathan A. Zdziarski)
Subject: Is the record industry turning to Trojan
	horse  programs to copy-protect CDs?

> The LaunchCD.exe program also presents an end user license agreement (EULA).
> If the user ever clicks Accept to agree to the terms of the license, the
> MediaMax driver is set to remains active even after the computer is
> rebooted.

My 2 cents...

If permanent installation of this driver was included in the EULA, then
this is not a trojan horse.  Since I don't have a copy of the license
agreement handy, I couldn't say whether it's in there or not...but IMHO,
too many people ignore the fact that they are allowing themselves to be
legally bound to such agreements without even reading them, and many
newer EULAs even include an auditing clause giving the manufacturer to
visit your facility and audit your systems.  One of these days the RIAA
might try and install monitoring software under such an agreement, and
people who blindly agree to EULAs will be the ones nabbed by the RIAA.

Also, if the EULA states that the user agrees not to make multiple
copies of the media (which it probably does) then that user has agreed
not to make multiple copies of the media...and shouldn't be bothered by
the installation of such driver.

I guess my point is, if you want to rip CD's, don't agree [via EULA] not
to do it in the first place.  If you truly believe that ripping CDs and
putting them on a P2P network is ethical (as many do), then you violate
your own ethics by agreeing not to and then doing it...so just do it,
without agreeing to a contract.

This copy protection ought to last about a month before word gets out to
all the mp3 kiddiez to turn off autorun.