Any American who reads books, watches movies, listens to music, or uses computer programs should be aware of and paying close attention to the case of the Motion Picture Association of America et al versus Eric Corley, also known as "the DeCSS Case". This is not a case of system crackers and bitlegging content pirates as the MPAA tries to portray it, but a case that strikes to the heart of and threatens to redefine property rights, the roles of content providers and consumers, and the definition of copyright itself. This case has recently taken a new and unexpected turn with assistant US Attorney Daniel S. Alter filing a motion to intervene representing the United States of America in support of the MPAA.

As a consumer, the issues are simple. Why shouldn't I be allowed to watch my DVD that I bought on my computer that I bought with my software that I bought? Why shouldn't I be allowed to do anything with my DVD that I bought, be that playing it, throwing it out, or using it as a coaster or wall decoration? Why shouldn't I be allowed to build my own device to play the DVD content if I do not like the device that is offered by the content owners?

The motion picture industry claims that they have the right to dictate how their product is used, beyond their copy-right and any trade mark rights they may have on portions of the product. Before the "digital age", every time content providers tried to assert this so called "right" they were laughed at and ignored by the public, and rebuffed by the courts. Now, they are still laughed at and ignored by the public, but the legislature and the courts are agreeing with them.

The Content Scrambling System, or CSS, is a format for storing movies on DVD drives. A DVD player must decode the CSS-formatted movie to play it. The movie industry offers DVD player manufacturers a way of decoding their CSS system, for a hefty price. Independant of the movie studios, an alternative decoding system known as DeCSS has been developed. DeCSS would enable anybody to build a DVD player without needing to pay to license the industry's method. Furthermore, a manufacturer building a player using DeCSS would be under no contractual obligation to comply with the movie studios' region scheme, where a player built in the US will refuse to read discs bought in Japan or the UK even though it is techically capable. The movie studios are suing Eric Corley for publishing DeCSS in the magazine he manages, 2600, and offering for download an implementation of it from the magazine's web site. The defendant is not accused of copying movies, nor is the CSS method protected by any patent. Rarely has the legality of a computer program been questioned; Even damaging viruses and denial of service tools are legal to own and distribute as long as they are not used to harm anyone else's computer system.

The name DeCSS is actually used to refer to many different iterations of the same thing. The first DeCSS was computer code to read CSS-encoded movies that was anonymously published to a mailing list for software engineers trying to add DVD functionality to the Linux computer operating system, essentially placing it in the public domain as no one has come forth to claim ownership of it. Another DeCSS is the Windows program written by Jon Johansen of Norway, which translates a movie from DVD format into a standard computer movie format and stores it on the hard drive allowing it to be viewed at the user's leisure, even from Linux which at the time could not read DVDs but was capable of reading Windows hard drives. Another "DeCSS" is the CSS_Descramble code written by Derek Fawcus, which has been widely distributed, even so far as being printed on T-shirts. The alternative CSS-reading system is the basis for the Xine and Livid-OMS DVD player computer programs, which are funtional software with the capability to read and play movies stored on DVD drives.

Alter's brief begins by attacking the reputation of Corley's magazine, pointing out that it "has included articles on such topics as how to steal an Internet domain name, access to other peoples e-mail, intercept cellular phone calls, and break into computer systems at Costco stores and Federal Express." The United States, who Alter represents, has massacred millions of civilians, imprisoned over one hundred thousand citizens at once for no reason other than their ancestry, been a chief proponent of the enslavement of the "inferior" African race, consistantly refused to honor treaties signed in good faith with bordering nations, and organized the overthrow of several democratically elected governments by dictators and ordered its own citizens residing in foreign nations executed for speaking out against this. None of this has anything to do with the issue at hand.

The tactic used is to win an argument on emotion, not facts. By painting Corley as a career criminal before any argument starts, they prejudice the judge against anything his defense might have to say. 2600 Magazine is an easy target for such attacks, having published several articles on electronic mayhem and being one of the loudest supporters of infamous conman Kevin Mitnick, who was jailed without trial for nearly five years before pleading guilty and was the only prisoner in the history of the United States to be denied a bail hearing. One wishes to think that judges decide cases solely on the merits, but when computers are involved, this tactic of attacking the defendant's character almost always works. Witness the case of Mattel vs Skala and Jansson, two students who published a 20,000 word report on the quality of Mattel's "Cyber Patrol" web filtering program and wrote a program allowing parents to view the list of sites banned by it. Despite that neither of them had ever set foot in the United States, Mattel's lawyers argued enough fear into US District Judge Edward F. Harrington that he not only heard and decided Mattel's case on US soil, but declared that Skala and Jansson were "purveyors of death and violence" and showed the same "philosophic bias which incited the degradations of slavery and the Holocaust". For giving parents the ability to measure the quality of a black box product. This is what happens if you're painted with the smear of "hacker".

Alter continues to argue that after using DeCSS to decrypt a movie, one could illegally transfer the resulting movie file across the Internet. While true, this means nothing as to the legality or illegality of DeCSS since it does not itself allow for any method of copying the file over the Internet. Furthermore, the use of DeCSS code in existing movie players shows that it has substantial non-infringing uses. The right to existance of questionable products which could be used for copyright infringement, such as double-decker videocassette recorders, has been upheld before. Even without DeCSS, an image of the entire contents of the DVD disc could be copied to the hard drive with the standard data duplication computer command, dd, and then sent across the internet to be decoded later. In fact, directly copying the entire contents of a DVD disc is the preferred method of the large-scale copyright infringers of southeast Asia who have been active since at least a year before DeCSS was released. Rather than operating on the internet, they produce counterfeit discs using the same type of machinery used by the movie studios, and sell these discs to retail stores where they sit alongside the legitimate copies.

Almost the entirety of Alter's actual argument in support of the MPAA is based on a new law called the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which was passed by Congress unanimously in 1998. The DMCA goes beyond the standard copyright, which grants content owners a short-term monopoly on the first sale of their product, by restricting anybody from accessing an author's work, if it is protected by a technological measure. In other words, using, making, or trafficing in any product or information that allows you to read, view, or hear an author's work is illegal. Since reading a copyrighted work is now a civil offense forbidden by law, content owners are granted a de facto monopoly on the use of their product through selective enforcement.

What will be decided in this case is whether consumers have any rights to a product they have purchased beyond what the seller is willing to give them, and it looks like the consumer is going to lose badly. Some consumer rights, such as the concept of Fair Use, have been written in law, but it has been determined that they were overridden by the more recent passage of the DMCA. Although there is no Constitutional protection of consumer righs, the Ninth Amendment of the Constitution states that the explicit enumeration of rights "shall not be construed to deny or disparage other rights retained by the people". If you believe you have such natural rights to use a product you own as you see fit, write your representatives and ask them to repeal section 1201 of US Code Title 17.