Law vs. Net on DeCSS

Today, we have a case where the power of law is lined up all on one side, while the power of the Net is lined up on the other. The assumption of people like Lawrence Lessig is that "East Coast code," in the form of law, will lose these battles. But it could be he_s wrong. At issue is DeCSS. DeCSS, if you haven_t heard of it, is a computer program that lets you unscramble the encryption on a DVD disk and copy its contents. A DVD is a digital medium that can hold an entire movie, and "early adopters" are abandoning videotape in droves because it provides a better experience. But the problems of videotape piracy multiply a thousand-fold with DVD, because if its contents can be unscrambled, the resulting copies are perfect. Thus, a classic battle is joined, the power of the law vs. the power of the Net, the need of "information to be free" against the need to protect copyright. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is very clear, and the plaintiffs in this case are highly motivated. So it should be no surprise that the Motion Picture Association of America won a complete victory in the U.S. District Court in New York against DeCSS. While the "hacker" site 2600 is complaining loudly, it has removed an article about cracking the DVD encryption from its server. The day after New York ruled, a preliminary injunction was issued against the DeCSS code in Santa Clara, targeting 500 sites around the world and ordering they remove the DeCSS source code. Letters demanding that even links to the program be removed are now being sent. The author of the program, a Norwegian programmer named Jon Lech Johansen, says he has been arrested and his computers have been seized. "What happens next is everyone else in the universe mirrors DeCSS," wrote Declan McCullough of The Well to a shared list run by FCC advisor David Farber.