Back in September of 1999, the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) held a $10,000 contest challenging computer pros to hack into copyright protection technologies. Now those computer aces, who foiled four different copyright protection technologies, are being asked by the record companies to suppress their findings.

Professor Edward Felten and his academic hacking group from Princeton University were the ones who answered SDMI's challenge and now they have been threatened with legal action if they go through with plans to reveal how they cracked the anti-piracy codes. The group had planned to reveal the results of their efforts later this week at the Fourth International Information-Hiding Workshop in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania but now those plans are on hold.

Earlier this month, Felten received a letter from SDMI and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) urging him to refrain from discussing his findings or face potential legal action. "Any disclosure of information gained from participating in the Public Challenge would be outside the scope of activities permitted by the Agreement and could subject you and your research team to actions under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ..." stated the letter.

SDMI had hoped their challenge was a way to foolproof their anti-piracy efforts before adopting it as an industry wide standard.