Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Did Sony's drm infringe copyrights?

Ed Felten is also asking if Sony's disastrous drm infringed copyright.

"The Sony copy protection debacle has so many angles that the mainstream press is having trouble keeping track of them all. The rootkit. The spyware. The other spyware. The big security hole. The other big security hole. It’s not surprising, then, that at least one important angle has gone nearly undiscussed in the mainstream press: the likelihood that the Sony/First4Internet XCP copy protection software itself infringes several copyrights. (Note to geeks: Slashdot doesn’t qualify as the mainstream press.)

Matti Nikki (a.k.a. Muzzy) and Sebastian Porst have done great work unearthing evidence pointing to infringement. They claim that the code file ECDPlayerControl.ocx, which ships as part of XCP, contains code from several copyrighted programs, including LAME, id3lib, mpglib, mpg123, FAAC, and most amusingly, DVD-Jon’s DRMS.

These are all open source programs. And of course open source is not the same as public domain. Open source programs are distributed with license agreements. If you copy and redistribute such a program, you’re a copyright infringer, unless you’re complying with the terms of the program’s license."

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