[ Thanks to Jason
Greenwood for this link. ]
“A little program called DeCSS caused a lot of commotion when it
surfaced on the Internet four years ago. DeCSS does only one task:
Remove the encryption on a DVD movie, allowing the video files on
the disc to be used at will–played back off the disc, copied to
the computer’s hard drive or burned to a second DVD.“Its author, a Norwegian teenager named Jon Lech Johansen, said
he wrote DeCSS because he wanted to be able to watch DVDs on his
Linux computer and no authorized playback software was
available.“The movie industry preferred to describe DeCSS as a
lock-picking tool, useful only for piracy. It successfully filed
suit to prevent the posting of DeCSS to Web sites from the United
States…”