“The plaintiffs in the case, the largest movie studios in
America, charge that the proliferation over the Internet of the
DeCSS utility is a violation of their copyright as granted by the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). DeCSS allows users to
unscramble the Content Scrambling System (CSS) — the encryption
that protects movies in DVD format.”
“Robin Gross of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which
is helping to organize defense efforts in this case and in another
DeCSS-related case in California, said that this is the first time
that the DMCA, which was signed into law by President Clinton in
December 1998, has been challenged in court.”
“But it probably won’t be the last. Even before the New York
ruling, Gross had told LinuxWorld that the EFF was expecting both
DeCSS-related legal actions to be lengthy. “We are looking forward
to a long and protracted battle,” Gross said.“