A prize of $10,000 has been offered to any hacker who can break through the security put in place by the Secure Music Digital Initiative (SDMI), a coagulation of 175 companies from the IT, electronics and music industries.

The idea behind the contest is along the lines of the Hack the Flag competition. Not only do the hackers get to show off their skills in the public arena, but the companies get a very cheap test of the software they hope will protect the copyrights of recording artists.

SDMI was set up in 1999 to work out a secure way of distributing music digitally. Companies like Sony, Phillips and Samsung have all joined up along with author's rights groups and the big five music companies.

SDMI's head honcho Leonardo Chiariglione issued a challenge to hackers to remove the watermarking and other protection systems from each song. The challenge is posted in "An Open Letter to the Digital Community" on the SDMI site

He said: "Attack the proposed technologies. Crack them. By successfully breaking the SDMI protected content you will play a role in determining what technology SDMI will adopt."

Info goes up online at www.hacksdmi.org on Friday. ®

Related Links

The open letter
Hack SDMI site (check it out tomorrow onwards)