HACKERS WANT TO BOYCOTT
SDMI INITIATIVE

Angered by the music industry's bid to close down Napster and MP3.com, a group of computer hackers are organizing a boycott of a competition to win $10,000 hacking new copyright-protection software being developed by major record labels.

"I won't do your dirty work for you," Don Marti, technology editor for Linux Journal, wrote in an open letter posted on the magazine, Reuters reports.

Marti's comments echo the sentiments of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an online civil liberties group, and other so-called open-source software advocates, who have called for a boycott of the industry's hacking contest offer, posted last week by the Secure Digital Music Initiative (hitsdailydouble, 9/8).

The record labels seek to woo hackers to help them in building a program to defend copyrights against other hackers. In the contest, which runs through Oct. 7, SDMI has placed six sample files on its site available for downloading and hacking. The files are programs which SDMI hopes will screen for pirated copies of music.