DeCSS

DeCSS is a free computer program that is able to decode the contents of a video DVD that is encrypted with the Content Scramble System (CSS).

Built on DeCSS library libdvdcss the French VideoLAN team is now used by all known, open-source DVD playback programs such as MPlayer, VLC or Xine to decrypt DVDs.

The documentary Infowars shows the controversy surrounding DeCSS.

Development

The reason for the later as a CSS hack has become known development of the program was originally the inability to play a video DVD under Linux or BeOS, BSD, although the technical requirements were met. At this time there was no software DVD player for operating systems other than Windows and Mac OS, as you einschätzte from industry the market for players on free operating systems to be insignificant, and the CSS technology is not licensed for open source software.

Reverse engineering specialists used for their experiments, inter alia, a software DVD player in the company Xing and extracted from this his player -key, after which the company Xing was taken by the combined anger of the DVD industry, they have their player Key insufficiently hedged. The counter-argument was called, a software must keep their Key necessarily in memory and is so far susceptible to attacks. Other groups headed on 6 October 1999, a CSS module and Authentication Keys at. On this day, posted the hacker group MoRE ( Masters of Reverse Engineering ), which includes the Norwegian Jon Lech Johansen was the first time an announcement on their software DeCSS, the 408 enrollment key " advises " within a few seconds on the mailing list livid -dev. As of October 25, DeCSS was also the source code under the GPL, and some hackers got to a cryptanalysis of CSS, which led to the detection of serious design flaws in CSS.

In DeCSS therefore it is a reverse engineering to achieve interoperability is the in most jurisdictions at the time was legal ( eg § 69e Copyright Act). With the production of unauthorized copies it has nothing to do since this CSS not prevented.

Legal situation

In Norway, the police searched the apartment of the suspected in the development of DeCSS involved then 15 -year-old Jon Johansen and confiscated his computer equipment as well as his mobile phone as he had imprudently posted back software developed under his real name. The programmer was indicted by a display of the CCA by the Norwegian prosecutor demanded two years in prison and a fine, for the development of the program. The trial ended in December 2002 in the first instance with an acquittal, since Johansen had a hand written only the user interface to DeCSS, and secondly to bypass copy protection measures for private purposes in Norway is not punishable. The actual decoding algorithm in DeCSS came from an unknown MoRE hackers from Germany. Meanwhile, the acquittal of Jon Johansen was upheld on appeal. The plaintiffs waived an appeal before the Supreme Court in Norway. The two instances acquitted the Norwegians, because they consider copying and saving DVD movies to your hard disk for legal.

The DVD Copy Control Association (CCA ) sued the operators of websites that offered DeCSS, for infringement of the trade secret protection and the Motion Picture Association of America ( MPAA ) these for violating the prohibition of circumvention of rights control systems according to the then recently amended U.S. copyright Act of websites. In its first decision in December 1999 declined to a Californian court to impose an injunction against the site operator. However, in January 2000, the judge revised his judgment. A court in New York upheld the MPAA lawsuit against three websites. In August 2000, a district court in New York ruled that a further website owners make DeCSS no longer available and not to other sites may be left that will continue to offer. In May 2001 the New York procedural went into the second appeal. The Rector of the institution of Stanford University spoke it out for freedom of speech and the protection of public domain materials.

The legal attacks against those who make available DeCSS, sparked a wave of indignation. Legal scholars and computer switched in with expertise against the allegations. The defense costs are covered by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF ), which is threatened by the action of the fundamental right to freedom of expression. Support also comes from the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, sees a danger in the fact that digitized content can be effectively removed from the public discourse on this way.

Due to the constantly changing legal status of Linux distributor Red Hat has already decided the end of 2002, in his Red Hat Linux accompanied by only a few multimedia programs.

In Germany the circumvention of copy protection technologies (in the text of the law as a technical safeguard given hereinafter) since the amendment of the copyright law of 13 September 2003 in accordance with § 95a of the Copyright Act illegal, but only if they are "effective"; by applicable law in Germany both the offering, the dissemination and the use of so -called " circumvention software " just as punishable as instructions for circumvention of an effective copy protection. When CSS is a protective device so that DeCSS is considered under German law as illegal. Doubt can exist, however, about the effectiveness, since the mechanism is decrypted for quite some time. So decided in 2007, a Finnish court that CSS does not " effective " within the meaning of Finnish law; the latter is based on the same EC Directive and § 95a of the German Copyright Act, and therefore a similar decision appears to be possible in Germany. Time being, however, assumed that DeCSS violates German law. Representatives of the music industry by researching appropriate copyright violations on the Internet and admonish from alleged violations involving amounts of from 50,000 to 100,000 euros. Nevertheless, there are to date no judgments, as the film industry apparently does not want to proceed against the mass of home users.