Hollywood wins against publisher of code that cracks DVD security

The case was brought by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), a body that represents the major movie studios in the US. MPAA president Jack Valenti said yesterday:

"Today's landmark decision nailed down an indispensable Constitutional and Congressional truth: It's wrong to help others steal creative works. The court’s ruling is a victory for consumers and for legitimate technology."

The New York court’s decision supported its earlier preliminary injunction against Eric Corley, publisher of 2600, a hackers’ magazine. The MPAA is also suing a 15 Norwegian, Jon Johansen, who wrote the code. The code has also been printed on the back of T-shirts being sold by the group Copyleft, which itself is being sued by the MPAA.

2600 said: “It wasn't completely unexpected… In the end, all of our concerns about the First Amendment and freedom of speech went right out the window.” The code in question is known as DeCSS and it bypasses the security of DVDs, known as CSS. The case was brought under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. 2600 said:

“Because DeCSS exists to bypass CSS, its very existence violates the Digitial Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). It doesn't matter that DeCSS wasn't created as a pirating tool whose purpose is to copy DVDs. It doesn't matter that DeCSS was created so that people could view their own DVDs on their own computer systems including those (such as Linux) for which no "legal" player had been developed. The DMCA says that anything that bypasses access control is in violation, regardless of how unfair that access control may be… As we expected, this means we must now fight the constitutionality of the DMCA.”

2600 announced its intention to appeal yesterday’s decision.