RIAA/SDMI Legal Threat Letter (April 9, 2001)
To professor, Navy conference organizer & official, & Princeton Officials
[on RIAA letterhead]
Matthew J. Oppenheim, Esq.
Senior Vice President
Business and Legal Affairs
Recording Industry Association of America
April 9, 2001
Professor Edward Felton [sic]
Department of Computer Science
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 08544
Dear Professor Felton [sic]:
We understand that in conjunction with the 4th International Information Hiding
Workshop to be held April 25-29 [sic], 2001, you and your colleagues who
participated in last year's Secure Digital Music Initiative ("SDMI") Public
Challenge are planning to publicly release information concerning the
technologies that were included in that challenge and certain methods you and
your colleagues developed as part of your participation in the challenge. On
behalf of the SDMI Foundation, I urge you to reconsider your intentions and to
refrain from any public disclosure of confidential information derived from the
Challenge and instead engage SDMI in a constructive dialogue on how the academic
aspects of your research can be shared without jeopardizing the commercial
interests of the owners of the various technologies.
As you are aware, at least one of the technologies that was the subject of the
Public Challenge, the Verance Watermark, is already in commercial use and the
disclosure of any information that might assist others to remove this watermark
would seriously jeopardize the technology and the content it protects.
{Footnote: The Verance Watermark is currently used for DVD-Audio and SDMI Phase
I products and certain portions of that technology are trade secrets.} Other
technologies that were part of the Challenge are either likewise in commercial
use or could be utilized in this capacity in the near future. Therefore, any
disclosure of information that would allow the defeat of these technologies
would violate both the spirit and terms of tthe Click-Through Agreement (the
"Agreement"). In addition, any disclosure of information gained form
participating in the Public Challenge would be outside of the scope of the
activities permitted by the Agreement and could subject you and you research
team to actions under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA").
We appreciate your position, as articulated in the Frequently Asked Questions
document, that the purpose of releasing your research is not designed to "help
anyone impose or steal anything." Furthermore, your participation in the
Challenge and your contemplated disclosure appears to be motivated by a desire
to engage in scientific research that will ensure that SDMI does not deploy a
flawed system. Unfortunately, the disclosure that you are contemplating could
result in significantly broader consequences and could directly lead to the
illegal distribution of copyrighted material. Such disclosure is not authorized
by the Agreement, would constitute a violation of the Agreement and would
subject your research team to enforcement actions under the DMCA and possibly
other federal laws.
As you are aware, the Agreement governing the Public Challenge narrowly
authorizes participants to attack the limited number of music samples and files
that were provided by SDMI. The specific purpose of providing these encoded
files and for setting up the Challenge was to assist SDMI in determining which
of the proposed technologies are best suited to protect content in Phase II
products. The limited waiver of rights (including possible DMCA claims) that was
contained in the Agreement was clearly and expressly limited to the duration and
purposes of the Challenge. The Agreement specifically prohibits participants
from attacking content protected by SDMI technologies outside the Public
Challenge. If your research is released to the public this is exactly what could
occur. In short, you would be facilitating and encouraging the attack of
copyrighted content outside the limited boundaries of the Public Challenge and
thus [sic] places you and your researchers in direct violation of the Agreement.
In addition, because the public disclosure of your research would be outisde the
limited authorization of the Agreement, you could be subject to enforcement
actions under federal law, including the DMCA. The Agreement specifically
preserves any rights that proponents of the technology being attacked may have
"under any applicable law including, without limitation, the U.S. Digital
Millennium Copyright Act, for any acts not expressly authorized by this
Agreement." The Agreement simply does not "expressly authorize" participants to
disclose information and research developed through participating in the Public
Challenge and thus such disclosure could be the subject of a DMCA action.
We recognize and appreciate your position, made clear throughout this process,
that it is not your intention to engage in any illegal behavior or to otherwise
jeopardize the legitimate commercial interests of others. We are concerned that
your actions are outside the peer review process established by the Public
Challenge and setup by engineers and other experts to ensure the academic
integrity of this project. With these facts in mind, we invite you to work with
the SDMI Foundation to find a way for you to share the acadmic components of
your research while remaining true to your intention not to violate the law or
the Agreement. In the meantime, we urge your to withdraw the paper submitted for
the upcoming International Information Hiding Workshop, assure that it is
removed from the Workshop distribution materials and destroyed, and avoid a
public discussion of confidential information.
Sincerely,
Matthew Oppenheim, Secretary
The SDMI Foundation
cc: Dr. Ira S. Moskowitz, Program Chair, Information Hiding Workshop, Naval Research Laboratory
Cpt. Douglas H. Rau, USN, Commanding Officer, Naval Research Laboratory
Mr. Howard Ende, General Counsel of Princeton
Mr. David Dobkin, Computer Science Department Head of Princeton
Credits
-- UnKnown --
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