THE WEIRDNESS OF REV.JIM!
Recently Norwegian court ruled that Jon Johansen committed no crime and in fact was complying with the GNU License (which basically requires any changes to the open source to be published.) when he posted DeCSS on the internet. There was no evidence of Mr. Johansen commiting any acts of piracy or illeagal copying of any DVD. In fact, the court had to agree that Mr. Johansen simply watched DVD's on his computer using the DVD player software he created for the Linux operating system.
However, the legality of DeCSS is still being debated in the U.S., where observers are watching the actions of U.S. courts on the matter. The original arguments in Mr. Johansen's case are still relevent and so I left them posted here.
As some of you probably already have heard on the news, a 16-year-old Norwegian boy named Jon Johansen has recently been charged with copyright violations for cracking the DVD Content Scrambling System (DVD CSS) and publishing a piece of code for doing so (called deCSS) on the internet.
Some of you might also know that it's two large organizations called Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA) and The DVD Control Association (DVDCA) {Isn't that an ominous sounding name?} that have sued him and that he might end up in prison for as much as THREE YEARS if he is found guilty by the court. They have also sued a large number of individuals who have helped distribute deCSS on the net.
Jon Johansen is being persecuted because he set out to port a DVD player into Linux. Being able to decode a DVD is a necessary part of a DVD player. Being able to decode a DVD has nothing to do with copyright violations as a DVD player will happily decode a disc that is reproduced byte by byte including the DVD CSS.
Download the deCSS code from
this link .
That is the source code that the DVDCA and
MPAA wants to stop by making it illegal to distribute it. Even if you don't
know how to program or have any use of it, please download it and keep it on
your computer. If enough people have access to this code we might get the
DVDCA and MPAA to understand that their attempt to censor this information is
futile and drop the charges against those who are on trial for having
distributed it. If you have a webpage or a BBS, please put it online. Urge people you know to do the same.
