DeCSS Case Finally Settled

The Norwegian police have decided not to appeal (today was the last day to file) to the Supreme Court after the appeals court cleared Jon Johansen, the author of DeCSS (Register, ZDNet, Reuters, Aftenposten or Nettavisen along with the /. English Translation, or see the opinion in Norwegian) of violating the law by developing the program allowing DVD's to be played on Linux operating systems by decrypting the Content Scramble System code. Jack Valenti must be turning over in his grave, I mean putting on a fresh face for the next round of MPAA speech suppressing fun.

MPAA: The actions of serial hackers such as Mr Johansen are damaging to honest consumers everywhere. While the ruling does not affect laws outside of Norway, we believe this decision encourages circumvention of copyright that threatens consumer choice and employment in the film and television industries.

How do you circumvent copyright? I think they mean it was the DRM code, not copyright, that was circumvented. The DRM code is used to lock the DVD, but the courts decided that once you buy the DVD, you can do play it in whatever way you want, including on a Linux machine. In fact, that seems to support the idea that in exchange for conveying the copyright monopoly to creators, when we buy their copyrighted works, we then have reasonable right to personal use. Just because we buy something doesn't mean the MPAA gets to step into our living rooms to keep the content from playing on one machine over another. For all the money the MPAA spent fighting this, they could have developed legal players for every possible operating system.

According to the /. translation of on Norwegian report, the court also took into consideration the fact that DVDs are easy to damage and so backing them up is also a consumer right:

"The Lagmannsrett finds that a DVD is so vulnerable to damage that the purchaser must be entitled to make a copy, for example of a movie he is particularly interested in preserving", part of the verdict read.

Posted by Mary Hodder at January 05, 2004 07:16 AM