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Wow. Let me pick this apart; it's too easy.
1. All technology can be "hacked" by people wishing to make illegal and unauthorized use of the content ownersī property. [What about legal and authorised uses that DRM technologies like MediaMax restrict?] Prior to MediaMax, there was no alternative to the illegal copying and re-copying of music by users.[Fair Use in the US? Private Copying in Canada?] Now with MediaMax on the CD, honest people have a way of honoring the artistīs wishes regarding how and where the music property can be copied and shared. [That's some think morality. Honest people don't need to respect the artist's wishes if (a) the artist doesn't own the copyright, which is true in most cases of music, or (b) the artist or copyright holder's wishes aren't fair. The copyright holder may not want the owner of a CD to do a lot of things with music that said "honest" owner may be fully justified in doing.]
[This is not to say people won't do illegal things with music. But the opinion expressed here is that the copyright holder should have absolute control of the physical property and copyrightable material even once a person owns a copy of it. That's not appropriate, nor is it respectful of the copyright regime.]
2. MediaMax was designed to put a structure on the CD, itself, that empowers consumers to make licensed, legal and yes, limited copies of the music. The world has never seen anything like it before.[I can make an unlimited number of legal copies of my music right now. I see that everyday, when I make a CD. This technology is not sliced bread, as he makes it out to be.]
3. Thieves attempting to circumvent the technology for the purpose of re-distributing the music are breaking the law. ["Theives" steal. Until the law in Canada or the US refers to "theft" or "stealing" in its copyright provisions, he should stop confusing the two concepts.] Nothing will ever stop these thieves. Theyīve rationalized the theft and they will always be looking for ways to cheat the system. [Technology circumventers are not necessarily theives or music redistributors. There's certainly no evidence that our friend at Princeton was motivated by theft, but rather by curiousity, altruism, and academic interest.]
4. The goal of MediaMax was not to invent the "holy grail" (since one does not exist). The idea was to provide users with a way to legally use the CD, whether that be for copying or sharing the music. [MediaMax allows music to be shared? What?] The difference between using our implanted technology or ripping the music for re-distribution is the difference between withdrawing money from your bank or robbing it.[Wow. That's an impressive analogy. I'm not going to debunk it until he first explains how it makes sense.]
5. If you owned technology that allowed you to transport the money from your local bank to your living room, doesnīt give you the right to do it. [Is he suggesting that we, the people, actually own the copyrights to the music, and the industry (the "bank") is just holding it for us? And if we did have the technology to transfer money from the bank to our home... why would that be illegal? This analogy, too, lacks sense.] Music is much the same. As a consumer, you purchase the "listening rights" to the music on the CD, not the duplication rights.[There are no listening rights. No copyright exists governing the ability to listen to music. Anyone who has ears is entitled to listen to music. Anyone who owns a copy of a musical work is entitled to play it. People own CDs, not the right to listen. Nobody has or can take away a right to listen. This is so patently wrong at the basic level of copyright law that it demonstrates that this guy has no understanding of the law.]
6. No matter how much stealing (called "sharing" to make thieves feel better about themselves)goes on, itīs still taking the copyrighted property of others and converting it to oneīs own use. ["Stealing" is, again, a totally inaccurate description. And "sharing" is only infringement when copyrighted materials are shared. It seems to me that these record industry CEOs seem to forget that infromation exists in the public domain, and also that some copyright holders allow people to redistribute their works. He should refrain from blanket statement that decry all file-sharers as copyright infringers. And make no mistake, they are infringers, not thieves.]
7. The current version of MediaMax is like any software technology in Version 1. The next version will make it tougher and tougher to circumvent. We have to start somewhere and progressive record companies like BMG and others understand this.
8. Meanwhile, honest people, may, for the first time, enjoy the pleasurable experience of legal and licensed copying and sharing of their music - thatīs about 95% of us. Thatīs who we designed MediaMax for. [We can legally copy the music we own already. I don't know how many times I need to say this. We don't need a license to copy. And again, I don't see how MediaMax allows me to share my music on the net. And once again, I despise his tactic of implying that everyone who doesn't like or use MediaMax's technology in respect of their music is dishonest.]
9. So-called "experts" who grandstand by publishing MediaMax hacks donīt "get it." They seem to born out of some Messiah complex hell-bent on saving the world from any technological attempt to protect artists and their property. [Wow. Honestly, do ad hominem attacks on relatively anonymous individuals really serve any useful prupose?] Itīs as though they think that music is different from other real property. [IT IS. Music is not real property. Music is not personal property. It's not even tangible. It's simply copyrighted; it has some quasi-property legal aspects, created purely by statute. Real property exists, regardless of the law - copyright does not. Again, industry business types need to learn this fundamental distinction.] It isnīt, and the people who subvert the protection that is afforded by MediaMax, no matter how trivial they deem that protection to be, are conspiring to commit theft [He means "copyright infringement"] against the wishes of the artists who created the musical property. [The artists really don't own the copyrights.] [I think it's plausible that people who hold down the shift key, or tell others to, are conspiring to exercise their legal options, rather than to commit infringement. I don't see how holding the shift key has anything to do with theft/]
10. With MediaMax, we have a technology that plays on virtually every device and allows both copying and sharing, yet some think our technology is worthless based on how easy or hard it is to steal and convert the music property. [It's worthless because it doesn't stop anyone from doing pretty much anything. Therefore, it doesn't accomplish anything. Therefore, it is, ipso facto, worthless. God forbid people criticize a product. I guess it's easier to sue people into silence than deal with your crappy production values.] Itīs as though they think that honest people will always steal if thereīs a way to get away with it.[Honest people, by definition, are willing to pay a fair value for a product, even music.]
Hackers think circumventing protection technologies is a game. Itīs not. Itīs a crime. [Well... it's only a crime in the USA.] Iīm going to predict theyīve all got a wake-up call coming. [Yeah, so does he.]
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GrepLaw
