With strong support from the motion picture and music recording industry, Congress passed the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) with the intention of clearly defining what constitutes copyrighted material in the computer age. The DMCA states that "no person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively control access to a work protected under this title."

With the introduction of CD-ROM technology for home computers and the increasing popularity of movies on Digital Versatile Discs (DVDs), DMCA principles are already being tested. DVDs contain Content Scrambling Systems (CSS), which are encryption codes. These are intended to prevent people using computers with operating systems not officially licensed to access DVDs, such as Linux, from reading a disc's content. Late last year, two European hacker groups known as DoD (Drink or Die) and MoRE (Masters of Reverse Engineering) simultaneously discovered a flaw in DVD encryption codes. Designing an application program known as DeCSS, they reverse-engineered CSS codes to enable them to freely play and copy CSS-protected DVDs on Linux systems.

This discovery was shared with the digital community and DeCSS software was quickly posted for free download on hundreds of Web sites. One such site, 2600: The Hacker Quarterly, posted the DeCSS program until a court order demanded that the software be removed from the site. Concerned over losing their authority over film distribution, the movie industry sued a number of Web sites, claiming that the posting of DeCSS software violates federal digital copyright laws. Eric Corley, the publisher of 2600: The Hacker Quarterly, contends that posting DeCSS software does not violate copyright laws and continues to post links to foreign sites that offer the program. Eight movies studios representing the motion picture industry are presently in court against Corley, arguing that he continues to violate U.S. copyright laws.

On the One Hand...

The DeCSS program was clearly designed to elude technological encryption measures intended to maintain the security of DVD contents. As the 1998 DMCA prohibits the creation and sharing of such a program, the parties that hacked the CSS encryption codes and posted DeCSS have clearly violated copyright laws. DeCSS ensures that movies will be widely reproduced and distributed illegally.

The motion picture industry should enjoy the right to control distribution of its products under copyright laws, just as any other entertainment industry is. By legally removing the DeCSS program from Web sites, the federal government must take the initiative in enforcing copyright and intellectual property laws among the Internet community.

On the Other Hand...

DeCSS is protected under the First Amendment's "fair use" principle, since it allows the general public to gain access to the free exchange of ideas. Despite allegations by the motion picture industry that digital pirates are using DeCSS to rapidly reproduce DVDs for distribution over the Internet, current technology constraints render these ideas impractical. The amount of time it would take to download a full feature film over the Internet is extremely prohibitive.

Technology existed before the advent of DeCSS that enables individuals to copy DVDs. But the high costs of equipment and blank DVDs exceed the cost of simply buying a DVD film from a licensed retailer. Instead of trying to stuff the DeCSS genie back into its bottle, the movie industry should move to make DVD products more affordable, thereby eliminating any demand for illegally reproduced movies.

• Every DVD player must contain a 5-byte decryption key in order to play a film with CSS encryption codes.

• The two hacker groups that reverse engineered the first CSS code discovered over 170 decryption keys.

• The DeCSS program is only 60KB.

• To increase security, DVD manufacturers divided the world market into six regions with non-transferable encryption codes. Thus, a DVD machine made in China cannot play a DVD CSS film encoded in the U.S.

• It takes non-DSL Internet connections over 14 hours to download just one side of a DVD.

EMedia, Scientific American, Boardwatch, Video Business, CNN