September 20, 2000

11:20 AM

Apparently, the conventional wisdom is not quite right. The SDMI's Executive Director says they have "thousands of entries" in their contest to hack the various proposed digital music security schemes. As I pointed out recently in a similar context, the "Linux community" and the population of computer literate, financially motived, non-OS-sectarian hackers are far from being one and the same...
posted by m.polo (6 comments total)

Yes, except that they're counting as "entries" every time someone downloads their code.

It's like saying the Indy 500 has hundreds of racers, because gosh, just look at all the cars in the parking lot!
posted by aramaic at 12:28 PM on September 20, 2000

And even among those who actually are making an attempt, are they the "quality hackers" (you should pardon the expression) or the dilettantes? Not all hackers are created equal.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 2:46 PM on September 20, 2000

We're running up against the distinction between "hackers" and "crackers" here, aren't we? While haXor d00dZ such as Phrozen Crew often use Linux tools (decompilers et al), they're more concerned with building keygens for Photoshop than projects like DeCSS.
posted by holgate at 3:05 PM on September 20, 2000

I'm not sure they're even counting how many people have downloaded the code.

"Chiariglione couldn't say whether those visiting the site were merely curious or actually planned to compete for the prize money."

The wording is unclear, but it sounds like they're just counting hits to hacksdmi.org.
posted by jjg at 4:22 PM on September 20, 2000

I do not belive that any hacker with the talent to crack SDMI's code is going to tell SDMI about it afterwards.
posted by Zool at 5:12 PM on September 20, 2000

probably at least with the puny prize. If they upped it to a million dollars, then I'm sure *someone* will be greedy enough to do it.
posted by gyc at 9:42 AM on September 21, 2000