Shanghai Yummy

I'd like to nominate SunnComm for Most Idiotic Company honors.

Their product apparently relies on the Windows autorun feature to prevent the music on a disc to be copied on the computer. Note that I didn't say "compact disc" because their product is in violation of the compact disc standard, and thus any disc utilizing their product cannot be called a "compact disc." Alright, first of all, how the hell did these guys manage to convince record labels that this would somehow stop music on one of these discs from getting ripped and copied? I've never had autorun turned on, and most of my friends don't either. Yeah, sure, we're all geeks and we aren't the typical user. But guess what? All it takes is one or two people who don't have it turned on to rip the music and put it on the P2P network. I mean, clearly, these people think that everyone out there is just as dumb as they are.

Now as if that didn't demonstrate their idiocy, some kid this week published a paper about how their product could be further circumvented by holding the shift key down while inserting the disc, thus disabling the autorun feature temporarily. Apparently, the courts are the last refuge of the idiots in this country, because SunnComm is now suing the kid.

Look, I don't give a god damn what the letter of the law says in this case, because the fact that these morons even think they have a case means that the law is written poorly. This is just wrong. Everyone who knows even the most miniscule iota about security knows that security through obscurity is not security at all. They have a poor product. Period. The court needs to throw this case out immediately. Companies should not be able to use the court to hide from their own inferiority and incompetence.

Let's punish these people. I know that by suing this kid they're trying to send some kind of message to other people... to intimidate them. But let's not let that happen. In fact, let's turn the tables and intimidate them. Don't buy their products, don't buy music from labels that use their product. Stop letting these companies have their way with you in the courts and in our government. Wake up people, and realize that you are the most powerful person in our economy: you are a consumer.

PGP Signed Entry