#DeCSS Now
You may or may not have heard of DeCSS and the brou-ha-ha it's caused. DeCSS is a program that allows you play DVD movies on your computer, much like a number of other bits of software. The difference is that DeCSS isn't "official" and works because the authors found out how to break the laughably trivial encryption on DVDs. The Motion Picture Association of America has worked itself into a frightful state over this, and in an attempt to put the genie back in the bottle has been throwing its not inconsiderable legal weight around.

Last week, a certain Judge Kaplan found in their favour, and in his ruling he deemed that simply linking to the DeCSS program was illegal. The MPAA legal machine rumbles on.

The basis of the MPAA argument was "this software could be use to pirate disks, therefore it must be illegal under copyright law". Actually the same can be said of any computer equipped with a DVD drive, special software or no. The implications of that ruling are huge in themselves. The finding that linking to something is also illegal is even more staggering.

You might be tempted to say so what? this is all happening in America and think no more about it. Don't. Copyright law is the subject of frequent, ongoing international cooperation. If the USA takes a stand on a particular intellectual property issue, you can be fairly sure it'll start to affect the rest of the world sooner or later too. You only have to look at the shifting position of the European Patent office to see that.

There are two things we can do here. One is do nothing. The other is to make the ruling unenforceable.

Here's a copy of DeCSS. Link to it.

If you are of an especially nervous disposition, read about the DeCSS decoy.
[Add a comment]