By Robert Lemos
ZDNet News
March 8, 2001 4:31 AM PT
MIT student Keith Winstein and alum Marc Horowitz say they're out to prove a point: Publishing code that decrypts and plays DVD movies is not a crime.
In their case, they assert it's about teaching copyright issues and is thus protected under the First Amendment.
Last week, a Web site published the pair's seven-line program, which unscrambles the protection around a DVD so quickly that a movie can play at the same time, although the film appears choppy. It's the shortest program to break DVD defenses to date.
"It is nice to have a short" program, said Winstein, an undergraduate in electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "You can write these seven lines of code on a piece of paper and give it to someone. It's ridiculous to say that that's not protected speech."
The act, however, may make the duo a target of the Motion Picture Association, the collection of Hollywood studios gunning for anyone who tries to break the digital fence surrounding the content on digital video discs.
The MPA is looking into the new program, spokeswoman Emily Kutner said Wednesday.
Winstein and Horowitz created the program as part of a two-day MIT seminar that Winstein taught earlier this year on the debate surrounding the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the controversial law that broadens copyright holders' power to protect their content online.
During the course, Winstein used the short program to illustrate that breaking DVD encryption is trivial, he said. "It was definitely not a copyright-circumvention course for DVDs."
To date, Hollywood has rigorously defended its digital turf.
A year and a half ago, several researchers broke the encryption that protects DVD movies as part of an international open-source project to allow the discs to be played on the Linux operating system. Known as the Content Scrambling System, or CSS, the encryption protecting DVD content acted as a digital defense protecting what movie studios consider to be near-perfect copies of their films.
Want to learn more?
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2693768,00.html
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"I'd like an order of fries, a quarter pounder with cheese, I love the light in your eyes, would you go out with me please? I am in love with a McDonald's Girl, she has a smile of innocence so tender and warm, she is an angel in a polyester uniform."
ZDNet News
March 8, 2001 4:31 AM PT
MIT student Keith Winstein and alum Marc Horowitz say they're out to prove a point: Publishing code that decrypts and plays DVD movies is not a crime.
In their case, they assert it's about teaching copyright issues and is thus protected under the First Amendment.
Last week, a Web site published the pair's seven-line program, which unscrambles the protection around a DVD so quickly that a movie can play at the same time, although the film appears choppy. It's the shortest program to break DVD defenses to date.
"It is nice to have a short" program, said Winstein, an undergraduate in electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "You can write these seven lines of code on a piece of paper and give it to someone. It's ridiculous to say that that's not protected speech."
The act, however, may make the duo a target of the Motion Picture Association, the collection of Hollywood studios gunning for anyone who tries to break the digital fence surrounding the content on digital video discs.
The MPA is looking into the new program, spokeswoman Emily Kutner said Wednesday.
Winstein and Horowitz created the program as part of a two-day MIT seminar that Winstein taught earlier this year on the debate surrounding the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the controversial law that broadens copyright holders' power to protect their content online.
During the course, Winstein used the short program to illustrate that breaking DVD encryption is trivial, he said. "It was definitely not a copyright-circumvention course for DVDs."
To date, Hollywood has rigorously defended its digital turf.
A year and a half ago, several researchers broke the encryption that protects DVD movies as part of an international open-source project to allow the discs to be played on the Linux operating system. Known as the Content Scrambling System, or CSS, the encryption protecting DVD content acted as a digital defense protecting what movie studios consider to be near-perfect copies of their films.
Want to learn more?
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2693768,00.html
------------------
"I'd like an order of fries, a quarter pounder with cheese, I love the light in your eyes, would you go out with me please? I am in love with a McDonald's Girl, she has a smile of innocence so tender and warm, she is an angel in a polyester uniform."