DeCSS

["Eric M. Hopper" <hopper@omnifarious.mn.org>]

	You all know me, and know that I never send mass e-mail.  This
is one case in which I will break my own rule.

	The reason is that something very sad has happened in the world
today.  A 16 year old boy has been arrested and put in jail because he
managed to figure something out.  He figured out how the encryption
technology used to protect DVDs works.  This hasn't happened in some
backward country where scientific investigation is punished, or free
though supressed.  It happened in Norway, at the behest of several large
corporations.

	These corporations use DVD encryption to attempt to prevent
their works from being copied.  They also use them to prevent their
works from being viewed in particular regions of the world, and to
control the prices of their works on a region by region basis,
circumventing the free trade that would normally equalize prices.

	The thing this boy figured out, threatens their profits, and
that is why he is in jail.

	To make things perfectly clear...

	He did not steal anything from anybody's computer.  He did not
come into possession of stolen documents.  He did not sign an agreement
by which he obtained priveleged information.  He simply looked at the
way the information was encoded on his DVD, and the public knowledge of
the essentials of the system, and he broke it.

	He did not do this to set up a copying ring.  He did this so he
could watch DVDs on his computer.  The movie industry had not seen fit
to write a player which he could use to watch them on his computer, and
so he did what was necessary to watch the movie he had purchased.

	And, being a public spirited person, he published the code
necessary to do this so that others who found themselves in the same
situation could also watch the movies they had purchased.

	Here is an article, and some comments which, perhaps, better
explain the gravity with which I treat this situation:

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/01/25/0827258&mode=thread

	What can you do?

	Boycott DVD players.  Boycott DVD movies.  Complain to your
congressman.  Complain to your representative.  Tell others.

	I, personally, will never accept any fetters on what I can
learn.  I will never curb my thoughts to avoid peeking into that which
is forbidden for me to know.  This is an attempt to restrict those very
things.  By telling this boy that he may not figure out how something
works, they are telling all of us that there are things we are not
_allowed_ to discover.  All in the name of profit.

*sigh*,
-- 
Its name is Public Opinion.  It is held in reverence. It settles everything.
Some think it is the voice of God.  Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet
broke a chain or freed a human soul.     ---Mark Twain
-- Eric Hopper (hopper@omnifarious.mn.org  http://omnifarious.mn.org/~hopper) --

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