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Hollywood Vs. Hackers in Court

Federal case pits movie moguls against digital rebels in copyright case over DVDs.

By Reuters   

Eric Corley, publisher of 2600, a top magazine and Web site of the computer hacker underground, is set to stand trial for spreading a utility that allows DVDs to be copied and transmitted over the Web.

The plaintiffs in the federal case, which include Hollywood's eight biggest movie studios, seek to stop Corley from republishing the software code that unlocks the media scrambling within DVDs.

Corley, who now goes by the name Emmanuel Goldstein, after the hero of the George Orwell novel 1984, has been targeted by the movie industry for publicizing the existence of a software utility known as Decode Content Scrambling System(DeCSS).

"This case is about 'fair use' of information. It's about freedom of speech. It's about the right of a computer user to play with technology in any way they like, without then facing charges," the defendant says.

The case is one front in a global battle by Hollywood to prevent operators of Web sites from posting programs that allow computer users to copy movies and other digital entertainment.

Millions of computer users have discovered ways to use the Internet to share music, movies, software, and other digital information, often without paying for the privilege, via MP3, Napster and other technologies.

Testing Copyright Law

The Motion Picture Association maintains that the case simply enforces the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. It argues that no free speech issues are at stake, since the sole purpose of the DeCSS software in question is to circumvent copyright protection to gain unauthorized access to DVD movies.

"DeCSS is simply the "lock pick" in the high tech crime of breaking into another person's digital property," according to a statement on the MPAA Web site at.

The case highlights the difficulties Hollywood media titans face in turning back a Lilliputian-like armada of small-scale digital media pirates empowered by the Internet.

Corley, 40, takes unconcealed joy in tweaking the computer and media establishment by raising awkward questions concerning Internet security and electronic intellectual property in cyberspace. Backed by a legion of youthful followers, the frizzy, long-haired prankster is the modern-day embodiment of 1960s protest leader Abbie Hoffman.

Coinciding with the opening of the trial, Corley spent this weekend as the principal organizer of "H2K: Hackers on Planet Earth," a three-day New York conference where 2000 hackers and computer security experts gathered to share ways to break into computers, cell phones and payphones.

The defendant is not charged with developing the software or copying video disks himself. Rather, Corley is accused of posting the source code of the program on the 2600 Web site.

Other Case Pending

DeCSS was developed in October 1999 by a group of European programmers including Jon Johansen, a teenager from Larvik, Norway, then 15 years old, as way for Linux users to play DVD disks. Johansen is charged with violating the U.S. copy protection law, but his case has not been brought to trial yet.

Corley only became involved with DeCSS last November, when 2600 covered related issues. He says he published the source code almost as an afterthought in order to show how the software worked.

The movie studios filed suit against Corley and two other defendants in January. The other two complied when a federal judge ordered the software removed from sites, and were dropped from the suit.

Corley says he removed the DeCSS code from the 2600 Web site, but then posted details as to where else on the Internet visitors might locate the program.

The movie studio plaintiffs tried to force Corley to remove the hyperlinks, but the judge declared the issue would be settled in the trial. It is expected to run about ten days, according to Corley's lawyers.

Civil liberties groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and several well-known cyberlaw experts from the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School filed a friends of the court brief for the defendants.