What was SDMIs “Public Challenge”?
On September 6, 2000, SDMI initiated a contest inviting people to analyze and decipher a selection of security technologies intended for controlling the kinds of copies that could be made of various sound recordings. Professor Felten and his team accomplished this, only to be met with legal threats from the RIAA/SDMI who insisted that Felten not publish the results of their research. They sent him a letter and engaged in a series of emails and telephone calls in which they insisted that Felten not publish the results of his findings and warned he would violate the DMCA if he published his research.
