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[FYI] Movie Mogul Horror



http://www.lawnewsnetwork.com/stories/A19120-2000Mar20.html

Mogul Movie Horror

                Can law halt Web cracking of DVD code?

                By Thomas Scheffey 
                The Connecticut Law Tribune 
                March 21, 2000 


                Eight of the nation's major movie studios, battling
                the spread of a computer program which removes
                DVD copy-protection, have the creator of a Norwalk,
                Conn. computer hacking Web site in their
                crosshairs.

                Paramount, Disney, Columbia Pictures, 20th
                Century Fox, MGM, Tri-Star and Time-Warner are
                joining in a concerted Hartford, Conn. federal court
                action, Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Jeraimee
                Hughes, to keep the Web site designer from offering
                downloads of a recently-discovered "key" to the
                movies' encryption. 

                DVD technology has grown to a million-per-week
                sale of more than 4,000 movie titles. It could be the
                successor technology to the popular VHS tapes that
                are currently the bulk of the home movie market.
                Unlike magnetic VHS tapes, copies of digital
                variable discs can be as crisp and clear as the
                originals -- which makes the threat of widespread
                piracy all the more serious, in the movie industry's
                view.

                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. 
...

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