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DeCSS programmer turns attention to iTunes
News The Norwegian's 1999 program, called DeCSS, ignited a debate over the legality of copying DVDs that has yet to end. Now widely distributed, DeCSS and similar tools are the foundation for much of Hollywood's fear that digital versions of movies will...
[November 25, 2003, 8:35]
DeCSS code-crack dispute back in court
News The film industry and a hacker publication will head back into court Tuesday in the DeCSS case, a legal dispute that could dictate whether it's legal to publish or link to certain materials online. The legal dispute began in January 2000, when the...
[April 30, 2001, 9:36]
DeCSS case runs into California roadblock
News The suits target open-source Linux computer code known as DeCSS that defeats the security software on DVD-formatted movies. The motion picture industry's effort to ban computer code that subverts its DVD encryption scheme has suffered a setback in...
[December 18, 2000, 9:11]
DeCSS banned again
News The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals refused 2600's request to reconsider a ruling that prohibits the publication from posting or linking to code known as DeCSS. In another setback for free speech advocates, hacker magazine 2600 has lost its bid for an...
[May 20, 2002, 7:31]
Alleged DeCSS hacker faces two years
News Johansen became an Internet icon three years ago after he co-authored the DeCSS utility that unwraps the copy protection found on DVDs, known as Content Scramble System (CSS). But DeCSS can also be used in the piracy of DVDs, and this enraged the...
[December 10, 2002, 7:57]
DVD cracker indicted for DeCSS program
News It did come as quite a surprise," said Robin Gross, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who has been helping Johansen navigate the legal quagmire created since his program, DeCSS, first raised the ire of movie studios.
[January 11, 2002, 13:39]
DVD Jon fights DeCSS appeal
Talkback Should we be prosecuting someone who has created an item that could be used for illegal purposes? Balaclava manufacturers beware!
[December 3, 2003, 12:20]
US praises DeCSS non-publication decision
News In a filing submitted to the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in New York, the Justice Department lashed out at hackers and praised a lower court ruling that bans hacker magazine 2600 from publishing a code known as DeCSS.
[February 23, 2001, 8:39]
Arguments presented in DVD cracking case
News California Attorney General Bill Lockyer called DVD-cracking software DeCSS a tool for "breaking, entering and stealing" during a hearing before the California Supreme Court on Thursday. The program DeCSS is a burglary tool," Lockyer told the...
[May 30, 2003, 8:05]
Hollywood 'burns' as DVD encryption hack surfaces
News A utility called DeCSS, that is purported to be able to read any DVD disk and save those files unencrypted to a local hard drive, is all over the Web like a rash. The readme.txt file that forms part of DeCSS 1.2b downloadable .zip file -- the...
[November 3, 1999, 11:48]
Oxford University targeted by MPAA
News The Web page, which contains information about the DeCSS DVD application for Linux, was taken down by the University Wednesday following a call from the MPAA. The organisation is currently prosecuting the creator of DeCSS and a number of US sites...
[May 19, 2000, 16:03]
DVD Jon cleared of piracy
Talkback However, too few articles point out the fallacy that DeCSS has anything to do with copying -- it is only useful for viewing DVDs. Copying can be done just fine without DeCSS. I guess one of the reasons for maneuvering the appeal results to...
[December 23, 2003, 10:08]
Norway piracy case brings activists hope
News In another case related to the DeCSS code, a publisher who posted the code online lost repeated rounds in its federal court battle. The acquittal in Oslo, Norway, of 19-year-old Johansen, one of the creators of the DVD-cracking code known as DeCSS...
[January 9, 2003, 9:02]
Week in review: Copy-protection drama, scary robots and faster wireless
News Teenage Norwegian programmer Jon Johansen was acquitted by an Oslo court for his role in creating DeCSS, a technology designed to strip copy protections from DVDs. It all sounds a bit dodgy so far, but because Johansen merely used DeCSS to view a...
[January 10, 2003, 16:37]
Free speech victory for DVD crackers
News Allegedly created by a 15-year-old Norwegian programmer named Jon Johansen, the DeCSS software was designed to let DVDs play on computers running the Linux operating system. The appeals court released a decision on Thursday overturning an earlier...
[November 2, 2001, 10:12]
US court: Reverse engineering is 'presumptively legal'
News The plaintiff, the DVD Copy Control Association, had argued that Andrew Bunner violated its intellectual property rights by posting on the Internet code known as DeCSS that can be used to bypass Hollywood's encryption scheme for DVDs.
[March 1, 2004, 10:40]
Small victory for studios in DVD-copying case
News An organisation of movie studios and consumer-electronics makers filed the lawsuit in 1999 against scores of activists who posted the DeCSS.exe utility. The DVDCCA's case bifurcated after a second defendant, California resident Andrew Bunner, did...
[January 3, 2003, 8:24]
DVD Jon seeks compensation
News While Johansen is widely reported as being the "lone gunman" behind the creation of the DeCSS de-scrambler, DVD interest sites maintain the DCC code itself was broken by an anonymous German hacker. A text file that is said to be distributed with...
[January 28, 2004, 10:20]
Hollywood's war on open source
News DeCSS and the Content Scrambling System (CSS) are at the kernel of much of the legal brouhaha. He had been accused by the DVD Copy Control Association of the theft of trade secrets for linking to DeCSS, an unlicensed Windows-based DVD player that...
[February 28, 2000, 9:05]
Torvalds lambastes DVD lawsuits
News The program, known as DeCSS, circumvents the Content Scrambling System, which is intended to block unauthorised players from playing DVDs. Another suit brought by the Motion Picture Association of America charges three Web sites with violating...
[February 2, 2000, 17:04]
