There’s a nice summary of last weeks DVD Protest on the 2600 web site. I never did find out if the Dallas 2600 group did anything here. Hopefully they’ll put a little more planning into this if they do another event. Some of the reports in the summary are pretty funny. Sounds like the upside to having virtually no advance notice is that the MPAA didn’t have time to organize a response.
Only a few hours left until the DVD protest and I still haven’t found out where the heck it is. I’m assuming there’s going to be one in Dallas since there’s supposed to be a local 2600 group. I’ve been unable to find an email or phone number so despite wanting to go, it looks like nobody from NCC will make it to the protest tonight. Maybe if they hold another, they’ll actually put some planning into it and give people more than a couple of days notice and even some contact info.
We just received our DVD shirts from Copyleft today. On the front they say “DVD CCA” behind the universal circle & line “no” symbol. On the back they contain the css_titlekey(), css_decrypttitlekey(), and css_descramble() functions from the DeCSS code, making the wearer an official enemy of the MPAA and DVD CCA. Also included with each shirt is your official copy of the complete css_descramble.c source code printed on Copyleft letterhead, suitable for framing or handing to the judge when the MPAA hauls you into court for wearing their alleged trade secrets.
This news is just too weird to believe. Jon Johansen’s house was raided today. The MPAA’s power is completely out of hand. I quote from his email posted on Slashdot:
The National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime in Norway raided my home today and seized my Linux box, FreeBSD/Win2k box and Nokia cellphone. Not only I, but also my father has been indicted, since he owns the mmadb.no domain (webhotel) where my homepage(s) have been located. They also took me in for questioning which lasted 6-7 hours. It’s 2 am CET now (I just got back), I haven’t eaten, and someone’s definitely going to pay for this.
This is insane. The MPAA, RIAA, DVD-CCA, and other IP organizations are now waging all-out war against the open source movement. Please consider making a donation, however small, to the EFF to help defend the victims of these attacks. If you have access to a web site, please mirror the source.
If you’ve been following the DVD CCA’s antics, you’re probably aware that the initial hearing is today. If you’re haven’t kept up with the news, here’s a summary. The designers of DVD included a badly designed encryption system to prevent unauthorized viewing or copying of discs. Linux users with DVD drives can’t watch DVD movies they’ve legally purchased because there is no player. To solve the problem, the DVD encryption system was reverse engineered and open source software was created and distributed to play DVD discs. The DVD CCA is now trying to get a restraining order against hundreds of individuals and organizations who have talked about the open source decryption software (like I’m doing now), who have included links to sites that offer the source, or have links to the source code itself:
css-auth_tar.gz – CSS authentication source
LiVid.tgz – the Linux DVD source code
nist-0_6.tgz – an initial Linux DVD player
DeCSS.zip – for Windows
The DVD CCA has mounted a PR campaign to make it appear that the software in question is used to pirate the DVD content, something that is untrue, highly impractical, and will probably only be believed by computer illiterates (which unfortunately includes most of the media and legal system). You are encouraged to join in the fight against the forces of evil in the world by downloading the source, mirroring it on your own web site, or making a tax deductable donation to the EFF, who will be fighting the DVD CCA in court for your right to free speech.