How Not To Do PR

Posted on October 16, 2003

This is too funny…

The Register is running an item with the classic headline “SunnComm CEO demands to be called a ‘laughingstock’ “.

SunnComm is a company that makes software to keep people from copying CDs. It turned out to be absurdly easy to break, though — it relied on Windows’ AutoPlay feature to load, so if you just held down the Shift key when you put the CD in your computer’s drive (which turns off AutoPlay for that CD), the “protection” would be completely bypassed. This was discovered and made public by a student at Princeton, who was then threatened by SunnComm with a lawsuit for having broken their protection scheme! Never mind that the people who broke it were the ones who designed it in the first place. (They eventually backed off the threat after the entire world laughed themselves hoarse at the idea.)

So anyway, there was suspicion abroad in the land that these SunnComm people weren’t the brightest bulbs in the box to begin with. The Reg ran a story to that effect, and got a letter from SunnComm’s CEO, Peter Jacobs, that pretty much removes all doubt. Read the thing, it’s a hoot.