“It’s the Davids vs. Goliath. By attacking reverse
engineering, Hollywood’s barrage of lawsuits over DVD code strikes
at the heart of the open-source revolution….“
“Historically, Hollywood has fought against any new technology,
from radio to television to VHS, it feared would dent its core
business — the movies, worth $6.9 billion in U.S. box office alone
in 1998.”
“The last time the industry went into the trenches was back in
1984, when it lost a Supreme Court battle to ban the home video
player format. Sixteen years later, the story could have a much
different ending. This time the industry is armed with the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a law passed in 1998 that gives
copyright owners unprecedented control over products such as DVDs
or CDs. Under the act, the entertainment industry’s content control
continues even after its products have been sold and extends over
previously legal actions like reverse engineering. In fact, under
the DMCA the VCRs in 84 percent of U.S. households could,
theoretically, be deemed illegal because they can be used to tape
copyrighted TV shows and movies.”