LawNewsNetwork: Mogul Movie Horror – Can law halt Web cracking of DVD code?

“The quick-to-download free program that unscrambles DVD’s
protective Content Scramble System is known as deCSS. Its author, a
15-year-old Norwegian, Jon Johansen, said he and two Internet
collaborators in Holland and Germany only wanted to be able to play
DVD movies on their Linux-based computers. Johansen released it on
the World Wide Web last summer….”

“From the movie industry’s standpoint, the hackers’ deCSS
program is not just some whimsical artistic creation. It could have
potentially devastating consequences for the industry and the
commercial viability of DVD as a technology, especially as
computers and DVD discs gain the capacity to store movie-length
amounts of data on the next generation of storage disk.”

“David B. Moskowitz, of Productivity Solutions, near
Philadelphia, has the computer know-how to analyze the deCSS
program, and has done so. He believes the movie industry “has its
head in the sand” to believe an electronic lock on movies would not
be picked.”

“At best, he said, encryption tools merely slow down the
decryption process. “The industry had the same kinds of fears [of
wholesale piracy] when VHS was new,” he said. But the huge
subsequent success of the commercial home movie rentals, and
lucrative additional market for Hollywood, boiled down to a matter
of economic adaptability.”

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