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发信人: linuxrat (竹剑居士*农大历史上最差的学生), 信区: Linux
标  题: 关于DeCSS法案的最新消息(3)[FWD]
发信站: BBS 水木清华站 (Sat Jan 22 08:22:09 2000)

URL: http://news.cnet.com/
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     Film industry fights DVD decryption sites
     By Sandeep Junnarkar
     Staff Writer, CNET News.com
     January 21, 2000, 9:30 a.m. PT

     The Motion Picture Association of America is gaining ground this
     week in its ongoing campaign to eliminate a program that cracks the
     security on DVDs.

     The movie industry trade group has sent out an additional 500
     cease-and-desist letters to Web site operators accusing them of
     violating U.S. copyright law, after chalking up a victory in the
     Southern District of New York yesterday. Federal judge Lewis Kaplan
     issued a preliminary injunction against three defendants sued by
     the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) for the
     distribution of the de-scrambling program on the Internet.

     Those defendants have been ordered to take the material in question
     off their Web sites.

     "Judge Kaplan's ruling represents a great victory for creative
     artists, consumers and copyright owners everywhere," Jack Valenti,
     CEO of the MPAA, said in a statement. "I think this serves as a
     wake-up call to anyone who contemplates stealing intellectual
     property."

     The motion picture industry has been on a warpath for about six
     months, sending letters to hundreds of Web sites ordering them to
     remove the "offending" code or links to it. The MPAA started its
     battle after a 16-year-old Norwegian student posted code known as
     DeCSS on a Web site that theoretically would allow a user with a
     DVD drive on his or her PC to make copies of DVD movies and store
     them on the PC's hard drive or copy them to rewritable CD-ROMs.

     Since that time, the utility has spread almost like wildfire,
     multiplying to hundreds of sites. In cases where the people have
     not folded, the MPAA has taken them to court under a myriad of
     legal tactics--including accusations of stealing trade secrets.

     But civil liberties advocates are firing back at the MPAA. The
     Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a nonprofit organization
     providing pro bono legal counsel to the defendants in the New York
     case and another case in California, argues that many of the sites
     do not offer copyright cracking tools but discuss the "the
     technical insecurity of DVD."

     "These cases are not about piracy or hacking," Tara Lemmey, EFF's
     executive director, said in a statement. "They are about censorship
     of speech critical to science, education and innovation."

     The film industry maintains, however, that distribution of the
     DeCSS goes beyond playing DVDs on other operating systems and
     allows people to make illegal copies of movies for distribution.

     With its latest round of letters, the MPAA continues its tactics of
     using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to pressure sites
     to remove the code. The New York-based firm of Sargoy, Stein, Rosen
     & Shapiro, which represents 11 major movie studios including
     Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros. and Columbia Pictures, is trying
     to get more sites to remove the DeCSS utility.

     The DMCA made it a crime to distribute technologies designed to
     circumvent copyright protection measures.

     One letter was sent to Brian Ristuccia, who runs a Web site that
     contains information about the DeCSS.

     "These activities constitute infringement of the exclusive rights
     to make copies and to distribute copies; and constitute an
     infringement of copyright by offering goods or services which are
     primarily designed to circumvent technological protection
     measures," the letter states.

     Ristuccia, who received the cease-and-desist letter Wednesday, said
     he is not about to back down. He acknowledges that his site
     contains the Linux Video and DVD Project (LiViD) and other features
     but maintains that the "claims that the publication of these items
     violates copyright law are false."

     "I appreciate the fact that there are cultural perceptions about
     how information should flow, but the people who have those
     perceptions still must conduct themselves in conformity with the
     law," said Harvey Shapiro, an attorney at the law firm representing
     the MPAA. "By putting (the decoder) up there and allowing people to
     make copies of the software, it might constitute an infringement of
     copyright."

     Although the DMCA, passed in October 1998, made it a crime for a
     person to breach copyright-protected devices, that part of the law
     has not gone into effect yet because of exemptions for research and
     education.

     Yesterday's preliminary injunction in New York comes less than a
     month after a Santa Clara County, Calif., judge rejected the
     industry's request for a temporary restraining order against 72
     people accused of violating trade secrets by helping distribute the
     decoder over the Web.

     The judge in the California case rejected an initial request for a
     restraining order last month but is expected to hold a hearing on
     the matter next week.

     The defendants argue that the DeCSS was developed to make the DVD
     format compatible with Linux operating software so that DVDs could
     be played via computers that run Linux.

     Many in the software industry consider reverse engineering both
     legitimate and important for the development of systems'
     interoperability, citing the importance of the open source movement
     in challenging Microsoft's control of the desktop with its Windows
     operating system. The EFF says the DVD case strikes at the heart of
     reverse engineering.

     "Today's decision is a major wake-up call for the $30 billion Linux
     community," EFF cofounder John Gilmore said in a statement. "If
     Judge Kaplan's reading of the DMCA holds, then it will become
     illegal to build open source products that can interoperate and/or
     compete with proprietary ones for displaying copyrighted content."

     Morever, the New York decision could impinge on people's rights
     over the use of their DVDs.

     "If this ruling is upheld, it would be a huge blow to fair use,"
     which gives people the right to make copies for personal use
     without the author's permission, said EFF staff attorney Robin
     Gross.

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