The president of the Motion Picture Association of America
(MPAA), Jack Valenti, said:
“We’re putting a stake in the ground saying
you can’t do this… You can’t break this code, you can’t put the
code on the internet, you can’t have file-sharing with movies the
way you do with music. We’re going to protect our copyright.”
The MPAA is suing the Norwegian 15 year-old who wrote the
program, numerous web sites that posted the program’s source code,
and even an e-commerce retailer called Copyleft that is selling
T-shirts that list part of the code.
The teenager who wrote the program, Jon Johansen, claims he did
so because his PC used the Linux operating system and his DVD games
were only compatible with Windows software. He broke the encryption
and then posted the program on a Linux users' web site from which
it was copied to other sites.
The case is being brought under the US Digital Millennium
Copyright Act of 1998, in terms of which it is a violation “to
descramble a scrambled word, to decrypt an encrypted work, or
otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a
technological measure without the authority of the copyright
owner.”
The MPAA argues that Johansen is in violation of this Act. It is
also a violation of the Act to offer to the public decrypting
technology. It is on this ground that the MPAA argues a hacker
magazine’s web site is also responsible.
The defence put forward is, first, that there is no evidence of
the program being used to pirate movies, and second, that the
actions are protected by the right of free speech.
