DeCSS

A detailed Summary of DeCSS

Around October of 1999, several programs utilizing the DeCSS decryption algorithm found their way onto the Internet. DeCSS and its various clones that soon popped up on mainstream software sites such as CNet's Download.com (a company partially owned by the Microsoft Corporation). It quickly became one of the more popular downloads available. The programs based on DeCSS claimed to be able to break the CSS encryption used on most commercial DVDs (digital video/versatile disc) and then copy the roughly 5 gigabytes of information to a computers hard drive in just a few hours. DeCSS's popularity grew and soon it caught the attention of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the group that currently licenses virtually all commercially available DVDs, and whose member companies include giants like Warner Brothers, Sony, MGM, and Disney. On January 25 15 year-old Norwegian teen Jon Johansen was arrested by American authorities at their Scandinavian home at the request of th!

e MPAA. The MPAA claimed that through his co-creation DeCSS, he had violated international copyright laws. Johansen and his father were released the following morning and since then have become ardent spokesmen for the political issues raised by this cas

One of the key points in Johansen's and 2600's legal defenses is that at the time of DeCSS's release, there was no licensed software DVD player for computer operating systems (OS's) aside from Microsoft's Windows or Apple's MacOS. Popularity for free and quasi-free OS's such as Linux, BeOS, and BSD variants has caused an increased demand for the ability to play DVDs on systems that have yet to receive MPAA licenses to do so. The MPAA has responded by essentially saying that they would be more that willing to license any OS that wishes to pay their fee. The problem arises in that a specific company does not control most of the free OS's. Thus, there is no legal entity that can be licensed by the MPAA.

Shortly after the arrest of Johansen 2600.com, a website devoted to the impacts of the information age on the world, began making the several hundred lines of DeCSS source code available to the public. A cease and desist order was shortly sent by the MPAA's legal team ordering that 2600 no longer make this code available. 2600 complied, but then asked that its audience provide mirrors of the code on their own servers and websites. I still proudly have my own mirrors up which still occupy the 99th and 100th links on 2600's controversial site. 2600 has since received a court injunction baring them from providing hyperlinks to these mirrors, but a text-based archive of the addresses is still only one link off of the main site, minus actual hyperlinks to the various sites.

these require software to decrypt CSS, which isn't built into the hardware. In theory, this allows for the broades

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1081
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Miscellaneous