Shift Key Use Illegal, claims SunnComm

SunnComm is threatening to sue a Princeton student for releasing details of a flaw in their CD copyright protection software. SummComm alleges, "Halderman and Princeton University have significantly damaged SunnComm's reputation and caused the market value of SunnComm to drop by more than $10 million." The flaw? Pressing the Shift key when inserting the CD. Doing so bypasses the autorun feature - upon which SunnComm's so-called "copy-management technology" relies. Disabling of autorun is a fairly common and prudent practice. Indeed, common sense security dictates that CDs not automatically launch - otherwise systems could be easily infected by viruses that might be contained on those CDs. Such was the case in November 2001, when both the Powerpuff Girls "Meet The Beat Alls" DVD was found to be infected with the Funlove virus and the SEGA Dreamcast game, Atelier Marie, featured a PC screensaver infected with the highly destructive Kriz virus.