Nadat vorige week de geruchten gingen dat alle zes de SDMI beveiligingen waren gekraakt door hackers die meededen met de HackSDMI wedstrijd, hebben nu de RIAA en het SDMI zelf gereageerd hierop. Volgens hen gaat het om de definitie van succes. Hoewel de gehackte muziekbestanden inderdaad vrij zijn van het watermerk is de wedstrijd daarmee nog niet beslist. Eerst moeten 2 teams van 'golden ears' uitgebreid luisteren naar de gehackte bestanden om vast te stellen of de kwaliteit goed genoeg is, en ten tweede moet er worden bewezen dat de hack herhaald kan worden op elk willekeurig ander beveiligd bestand:
The issue of success is really an interesting one. In your original article, the source told you that all the technologies have been successfully hacked. Now they say it's all based on how you define success. It's clear to me that the reason that SDMI agreed on a process that includes listening and repeatability tests is that the entire process has to be gone through before you [declare success]. SDMI has defined what success is -- and success means that something has to go through all three stages of our testing. Because if something just goes through the [the first part of the testing, which checks if the watermarks have been removed] it could just be that the hacker has erased all the music too, or slowed it down to half its normal speed. And so you go through the listening test, too.