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Topic: DeCSS

	DeCSS
		This page is about distributing DeCSS, the famous CSS descrambler which the MPAA tries to stop being distributed but which is also the only program available out there which lets you play DVDs under various operating systems such as Linux or FreeBSD.
		DeCSS t-shirts for October 6th, 2000 (one year after the first DeCSS release).
		DeCSS is the only way I have to play DVDs, because most of them are encrypted, and the DVD CCA would like me to use software licensed by them to decrypt and read them.
	decss.zoy.org (3465 words)

	Jon Lech Johansen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		He is most famous for his involvement in the release of the DeCSS software, which decodes the content-scrambling system used for DVD licensing enforcement.
		After Johansen released DeCSS, he was prosecuted in Norway for computer hacking in 2002.
		Johansen's second DeCSS trial began in Oslo on December 2, 2003, and resulted in an acquittal on December 22, 2003.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Jon_Johansen (1121 words)

	California Supremes Hear DeCSS Case
		Andrew Bunner, now 26, was one of hundreds of people who mirrored a copy of the open-source DeCSS program on the Web in 1999, after learning about the controversy surrounding the program on the "news for nerds" community site Slashdot.
		DeCSS was written by Norwegian teenager Jon Johansen, in part based on information Johansen reverse-engineered from a commercial DVD-playing program that included a click-wrap license agreement that barred reverse engineering.
		In contrast, the California injunction was explicitly aimed at protecting alleged trade secrets that had been incorporated into DeCSS; by definition, it targets the information conveyed by the program's code, irrespective of what the program is used for, said Greene.
	www.securityfocus.com /news/5239 (662 words)

	[No title]
		This is not a case of system crackers and bitlegging content pirates as the MPAA tries to portray it, but a case that strikes to the heart of and threatens to redefine property rights, the roles of content providers and consumers, and the definition of copyright itself.
		The first DeCSS was computer code to read CSS-encoded movies that was anonymously published to a mailing list for software engineers trying to add DVD functionality to the Linux computer operating system, essentially placing it in the public domain as no one has come forth to claim ownership of it.
		Even without DeCSS, an image of the entire contents of the DVD disc could be copied to the hard drive with the standard data duplication computer command, dd, and then sent across the internet to be decoded later.
	hamburgsteak.sandwich.net /writ/dr2.html (1223 words)

	Infothought: DeCSS history / Jon Johansen, MoRE
		DeCSS was then the first application which decrypted ALL dvd titles, since DoD had not released a new version to the public.
		Meanwhile when DeCSS came out, it caused DoD to delay any Windows release until a GUI version of their Speed Ripper was done.
		Before DeCSS was developed and released, MoRE had already sent the source for the decryption to their contact in the Linux DVD community, Derek Fawcus .
	www.sethf.com /infothought/blog/archives/000492.html (927 words)

	DeCSS Central - CSS and DeCSS (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-19)
		In fact, the late DeCSS releases by MoRE ("Masters of Reverse Engineering") contain a text file that says quite the contrary: An anonymous german hacker was responsible for the CSS crack, and MoRE only claims credit for writing DeCSS, the software.
		DeCSS, the proof-of-concept software that includes the CSS decryption code, was released in later october, 1999.
		DeCSS is a very simple windows tool that allows decryption of a CSS encrypted movie DVD and the copying of all or selected files from it to the harddisk.
	www.lemuria.org /DeCSS/decss.html (1323 words)

	BBC - h2g2 - DeCSS - A642999
		DeCSS is a fairly simple computer program which allows a user to access the contents of DVDs encrypted using the movie industry standard 'Content Scrambling System'.
		DeCSS is already widespread 'in the wild', and one of the judges ruling against it has already accepted that the industry is trying to close the stable door once the horse has long fled.
		There is a large gallery of DeCSS renditions maintained by Dr David S Touretzky as a scholarly publication of the Computer Science Department of Carnegie Mellon University.
	www.bbc.co.uk /dna/h2g2/alabaster/A642999 (2224 words)

	2600 NEWS: DECSS AUTHOR JON JOHANSEN FOUND INNOCENT IN NORWEGIAN COURT
		The case was brought against the young programmer at the behest of the Motion Picture Association of America, which tried to use encryption to prevent direct access to DVD content.
		DeCSS removes this encryption, allowing for fair use of the content, including the ability to view DVD movies on non-mainstream operating systems.
		DeCSS remains illegal under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which prohibits any software that could possibly be used to circumvent digital copy protections for any reason.
	www.2600.com /news/view/article/1485 (275 words)

	InformationWeek \| DeCSS Encryption \| DeCSS Case Could Change Your IT Shop \| July 16, 2001
		Furthermore, the Linux community has argued that even if they were using DeCSS for copying disks, that activity should be covered by the consumer right of Fair Use, as set down in the Berne Convention on Copyright.
		Realizing that some media are harder to censor than others, people printed DeCSS on T-shirts, wrote songs with the code as the lyrics, turned the code into haiku, and even, rumor has it, had it tattooed on their bodies.
		Meanwhile, the movie industry is continuing to fight against the distribution of DeCSS in other venues, with the DVD CCA's case in California and the MPAA's suit in Connecticut still pending.
	www.informationweek.com /story/IWK20010711S0010 (3373 words)

	FindLaw for Legal Professionals - Case Law, Federal and State Resources, Forms, and Code
		DeCSS is designed to circumvent "CSS," the encryption technology that motion picture studios place on DVDs to prevent the unauthorized viewing and copying of motion pictures.
		As a content-neutral regulation with an incidental effect on a speech component, the regulation must serve a substantial governmental interest, the interest must be unrelated to the suppression of free expression, and the incidental restriction on speech must not burden substantially more speech than is necessary to further that interest.
		As he had ruled with respect to DeCSS code, he ruled that application of the DMCA to the Defendants' linking to web sites containing DeCSS is content-neutral because it is justified without regard to the speech component of the hyperlink.
	caselaw.lp.findlaw.com /scripts/getcase.pl?navby=case&court=2nd&no=00-9185 (12690 words)

	Geek.com Geek News - California court blocks DeCSS case
		The California Supreme Court has ruled that a Texas resident who posted code for the popular DeCSS DVD decryption program on the Internet cannot be sued in California.
		The DeCSS DVD decrypting software may be one of the most infamous pieces of software ever to come into creation based upon the reaction it has elicited from the media industry.
		So their hatred of DeCSS very well could be because it allows people to copy the encrypted DVDs when they otherwise wouldn't be able to.
	www.geek.com /news/geeknews/2002Nov/gee20021126017502.htm (2709 words)

	DeCSS Creator Indicted in Norway
		But Johansen has maintained that DeCSS was intended not to make copies, but rather to create DVD playback software for computers running the Linux operating system.
		On November 1, 2001, the California Court of Appeals reversed the court's preliminary injunction and confirmed that the publication of DeCSS is protected by the First Amendment.
		But it found that when DeCSS is published on the Internet, the fact that it could be misused justified a complete ban on the program.
	www.securityfocus.com /news/306 (985 words)

	Passionate reactions to the DeCSS decision online
		Such users contend that DeCSS is being used by those who want something for nothing and that free speech does not allow free copying of others' work.
		Despite being used for piracy, some claim DeCSS should be protected under the fair use doctrine of U.S. copyright law that allows some copyrighted materials to be disseminated under certain circumstances without permission of the author.
		Copyright owners, such as movie and music companies, have not sued the makers of CD-R (CD-recordable) drives or computers, not only because it would be a "political nightmare," but also because the definition of a circumvention technology under the DMCA is narrow enough so as not to allow that, she said.
	www.networkworld.com /news/2000/0818decss.html (923 words)

	This Land Is My Land, And So Is This Movie: The DeCSS Case
		DeCSS is a computer program that circumvents the protection and creates an unprotected copy of the movie on a computer hard drive.
		The defendant in this case printed the code for DeCSS on his website and, when told to cease by the trial court, posted links to other websites where the program could be found.
		DeCSS, which takes a mere seven lines of code, is rife on the Internet.
	www.cei.org /gencon/016,02238.cfm (596 words)

	Openlaw: Open DVD
		DeCSS describes the operation of CSS so as to facilitate the creation of software DVD viewers for Linux and to expand the possible uses of DVDs.
		Holding that DeCSS code is "pure speech" that must not be subjected to prior restraint, the California appeals court lifted the preliminary injunction on Andrew Bunner's publication of DeCSS.
		The eight movie studios argue, in a brief that paints over the constitutional questions, that an injunction against 2600's posting of DeCSS is necessary to preserve their intellectual property from piracy.
	cyber.law.harvard.edu /openlaw/DVD (3870 words)

	DeCSS Software Distribution Center
		DeCSS is a utility for stripping Cascading Style Sheet tags from an HTML page.
		The DeCSS Distribution Contest has great suggestions for how to distribute "dangerous" software in creative ways.
		Slashdot.org has an interesting article about DeCSS, with lots of lively discussion (as usual).
	www.pigdog.org /decss/source/decss_mirror.html (290 words)

	PCWorld.com - Norway Indicts Teen Creator of DeCSS (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-19)
		Johansen created the DeCSS (De Contents Scramble System) program in 1999 when he was 15 so that he could view his DVDs on a Linux machine.
		DeCSS defeats the copyright protection system known as Contents Scramble System (CSS), which the entertainment industry uses to protect films distributed on DVDs.
		A California appeals court ruled last November that DeCSS could not be barred from publication, however.
	www.pcworld.com /news/article/0,aid,79285,00.asp (669 words)

	A brief history of DeCSS and the DMCA
		Naturally, DeCSS had to circumvent the CSS access controls on these discs in order to play their content.
		Several months after the DeCSS code first appeared on Jon's father's web site, the Norwegian police paid an unexpected visit to the Johansen household: Jon's computers were seized as evidence, and both he and his father were charged with intellectual property offenses.
		The MPAA has already won the first round of at least one lawsuit as of this writing, but appeals are pending.
	www.lodestone.org /people/hoss/politics/DeCSS-history.html (879 words)

	Is DeCSS Technology Digital Piracy?
		The DeCSS program was clearly designed to elude technological encryption measures intended to maintain the security of DVD contents.
		DeCSS ensures that movies will be widely reproduced and distributed illegally.
		DeCSS is protected under the First Amendment's "fair use" principle, since it allows the general public to gain access to the free exchange of ideas.
	speakout.com /activism/issue_briefs/1238b-1.html (738 words)

	DMCA revealed (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-19)
		DeCSS is a tool that circumvents a copy-protection scheme to enable users to exercise their fair use rights as defined in the Copyright Act.
		Application of the DMCA to prohibit posting of DeCSS appears constitutional also because that posting is part of a course of conduct the clear purpose of which is the violation of law.
		The dissemination of DeCSS therefore is the critical component of a course of conduct, the principal object of which is copyright infringement.
	www.doom9.org /dmca_revealed.htm (6527 words)

	Appeals court rules DeCSS is no longer a trade secret (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-19)
		In handing down their decision (.pdf), the court ruled that the DeCSS program had been so widely circulated on the Internet that it did not qualify as a trade secret anymore.
		But in that ruling, it sent the ruling down to a lower court to determine if DeCSS was still a trade secret at the time Bunner posted it on his website.
		Fearful the lower court would find DeCSS was not a trade secret anymore, the DVD CCA dropped their case against Bunner and moved for the court to dismiss the appeal.
	arstechnica.com /news/posts/1078007042.html (667 words)

	Salon.com Technology \| Code on trial
		And the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the law that appears to make illegal DeCSS technology simply because it circumvents copyright control, is, he says, nothing less than a colossal mistake.
		This aspect of the DMCA, called the "anti-circumvention clause," is the crux of the DeCSS case.
		Whereas the recording industry is suing the popular music-swapping service, Napster, in part under the older copyright theory of contributory infringement -- meaning that the company allegedly helps people steal copyrighted music -- the movie studios' DeCSS suit focuses solely on the act of circumventing the studios' control.
	www.salon.com /tech/feature/2000/07/19/decss_trial (907 words)

	MPAA v. 2600 - Deposition of Robert W. Schumann, May 15, 2000 (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-19)
		GOLD: If your knowledge 15 resulted from any conversation with an 16 attorney or any conversation with the 17 plaintiffs after this suit was commenced, 18 I wouldn't answer the question.
		Garbus' question 15 earlier that the DeCSS served only one function, 16 which was to decrypt CSS protected cipher text and 17 copy and store the encrypted audio-visual data in 18 one or more computer files.
		There is a mechanism called region 20 control or region codes, which is part of the DVD 21 specification, and there is the CSS system itself.
	cryptome.org /mpaa-v-2600-rsd.htm (13387 words)

	Napster's Cousin: The DeCSS Trial
		The studios are trying to block DeCSS, a DVD decryption program; Corley published a link to the offending code on his Web site, 2600.com.
		Appeals are inevitable, no matter which way Judge Lewis A. Kaplan decides, but here's a picture of the arguments, the possible outcomes and their implications.
		The studios argue that DeCSS threatens irreparable harm to their copyrighted material, and is nothing more than a utility for piracy.
	www.thestandard.com /article/0,1902,17256,00.html (563 words)

	Salon Technology Log \| DeCSS decoy
		The real DeCSS code unlocks the copyright protection mechanism on a DVD -- and is the only way to play a DVD on a computer running Linux-based operating systems.
		The idea of distributing DeCSS appealed to him; a lot of hackers have asserted that if thousands of people were distributing the code, the studios and DVD makers wouldn't go after all of them.
		In fact, the cascading style sheet stripper called DeCSS will probably divert attention from more serious arguments about the original DeCSS -- such as whether or not software code can be protected by the same laws that guarantee free speech, says Scott Ananian, a graduate student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology Laboratory for Computer Science.
	archive.salon.com /tech/log/2000/02/22/decss/print.html (827 words)

	Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Reimerdes, et al -- Memorandum Opinion (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-19)
		Second, even if DeCSS wereintended and usable solely to permit the playing, and not the copying, of DVDs on Linux machines, the playing without a licensed CSS "player key'' would "circumvent a technological measure'' that effectively controls access to a copyrighted work and violate the statute in any case.
		Defendants contend that the DeCSS computer program is protected speech and that the DMCA, at least insofar as it purports to prohibit the dissemination of DeCSS to the public, violates the First Amendment.
		The fundamental purpose of DeCSS is to circumvent the technological means, CSS, that ensures that the exclusive rights of the holders of copyright in DVD movies---including importantly the exclusive right to make copies---are protected against infringement.
	cryptome.org /dvd-mpaa-3-mo.htm (6799 words)

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