Hollywood Paranoia Hits New Heights

MPAA Sues CopyLeft Over Tee Shirt

Shirt Reprints deCSS Source Code

The horse were talking about is the DVD de-scrambling utility DeCCS code. DeCSS is a program several hackers worldwide developed to allow them to play their properly and legally purchased DVDs on Linux computer operating systems. CSS stands for COPYRIGHT SCRAMBLING SYSTEM. DeCSS unscrambles the code so the video is viewable on a DVD player. The DVD player you bought at your local electronics store already has the code built in and licensed from the CSS developers. But there were no Linux players with the legal code.

And who are those wranglers yelling "THIEF?" Why they're the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). These cowboys want to lock up every horse this side of the Rio Grande.

Only the horse they're trying to retrieve is not a pure-bred champion, it's actually an old mule, dressed up to look like a horse. You see, CSS is NOT is a copy protection scheme. You can duplicate the DVD disks all day long with CSS fully intact. No problem. So why did Hollywood ever develop the scheme and why do they care if a few million copies of the deCSS utility are bouncing around the world?

Because the MPAA also makes money by selling their own deCSS technology to DVD Player Manufacturers. It's a bonus source of income.

They also care because they are trying to perpetuate the lie that it is a copy protection scheme. And our judges, like Santa Clara Superior Court Judge William J. Elfing, know so little about technology that the MPAA may actually succeed in perpetuating the "big lie."

So what did little CopyLeft do wrong? They printed a little tee shirt that reveals the full source code of the DVD de-scrambling utility DeCCS. Yea, like anyone who doesn't already have the widely distributed program would ever understand the tee-shirt.

"Coding is NOT a crime," Copyleft's online catalog says, "so express your disapproval of the DVD CCA and support OpenDVD advocacy."

Steve Blood, the founder of Copyleft, said that his company received a summons on Monday, and that he has not decided how to respond to the action. "It's hard to know what to do when you're just a tiny company in New Jersey," Blood said.

Copyleft has sold more than 4,000 OpenDVD T-shirts designed by Copyleft programmer Dom Belizzi. The company has donated more than $12,000 of the proceeds to the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) defense fund, and Blood says that a second round of donations will be underway soon.

"Copyleft is distributing and selling T-shirts with DeCSS emblazoned on the back of them," said an attorney for the Hollywood Motion Picture group that brought the original lawsuits. It would seem that every tee shirt sale is another theft of the same "secret."

But Robin Gross, a staff attorney for the EFF who is coordinating the defense of the 500 or so firms being sued, said that she "can't help but think that this only hurts (the DVD CCA's) future case. It underscores the obvious -- that this code is in fact speech that they are trying to squelch."