DeCSS
CSS stands for "Content Scrambling System" - so its not hard to guess what DeCSS might be...
In January 2002 a Norwegian teenager was indicted under the Norwegian criminal code for his involvement in producing the software DeCSS, which enables the breaking of encryption that is on many commercial DVD discs. He was prosecuted under laws which prohibit "the breaking of a protective device in a way that unlawfully obtains access to the data", opening a closed document or breaking into a locked repository.
These laws had previously been used to prosecute those who had broken into banks or phone company records, but it was the first time that it had been used against someone who has broken an encryption system. The indictment came after two years of pressure from the US entertainment industry who were trying to challenge illegal copying and distribution of DVDs.
The teenager Jon Johansen had bought the DVD disc, but was unable to play it a computer running the Free Software GNU/Linux operating system. The encryption on the disc, designed to prevent the playing of unlicensed discs, also meant that it could not be played on his Linux computer. The teenager was one of an award-winning open source software team working on developing a DVD player for Linux and it was in this context that DeCSS was originally published. However the development of the software led to a series of lawsuits in the USA by Hollywood companies afraid that it would lead to a new wave of DVD "piracy".
In one such case, the USA based hackers magazine 2600, which had posted news and links to the DeCSS code on its website, was also sued. A major movie studio claimed that, under the "Digital Millennium Copyright Act"(DCMA), passed in the USA in 1998, publication of the programme should be illegal. The US court found against 2600. While the court confirmed that computer programmes should be protected as free expression, it decided that the potential misuse of DeCSS justified a complete ban on distributing the program via the internet.
One year later in Norway, Jon Johansen was aquitted, on the principle of "fair use": that is that once a media product is bought, there should not be unfair restrictions on how it is used. However, in the USA and beyond, the effect of the DCMA on software developers and consumers is being felt and its scope is still being tested in the courts.
LH