[ Thanks to Bryan
Taylor for this link. ]
“EFF’s defense team landed a surprising blow to the MPAA in
Court on Friday when it revealed that the Livid Project has built
an open source DVD player for Linux machines using DeCSS. Livid
(short for Linux Video) Project leader Matt Pavlovich testified for
the defense that his group had been working for months to create a
way for Linux users to watch the DVDs they own on the machines that
they own. Pavlovich testified that DeCSS was an important step in
creating the Linux DVD player and offered to perform an in-court
demonstration of his important new innovation. Although the
studios’ lawyers objected to the Livid player demonstration as
“irrelevant,” the MPAA conceded they would not contest the
existence of the independently created DVD player.”
“Pavlovich stated the Livid Project’s DVD player was created
by lawful reverse engineering under the open source development
model… Through this litigation the studios were hoping to ban
DeCSS before independent groups used the code to create
consumer-friendly DVD players that could compete with DVD-CCA’s
monopoly on players.”