The Motion Picture Association of America is out to exterminate a computer program that cracks the security on DVDs.
In what CNET calls a major test of a new copyright law, the MPAA has moved after being rocked when programmers found a way to rip anti-copying features from DVD versions of hundreds of films. CNET says the MPAA seems to be having success convincing Web sites to remove the utility, called DeCSS, which can crack the encryption in the DVD content scrambler and let people make unauthorized copies of digital films to play on computers or television sets.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act makes it a crime to create, sell, or distribute any technology which could be used to break such copyright protection. "The MPAA takes seriously any unauthorized compromises of encryption technology," MPAA spokesman Rich Taylor says to CNET.
The MPAA has sent cease and desist orders to Web sites but are not going after people who actually use DeCSS, CNET says, because the law isn't yet on their side - it created exemptions for research, engineering, and education which still have to be reviewed and worked out by an interagency rulemaking group.
Many of the Web operators contacted have complied and pulled DeCSS - which CNET Download.com also published, with nearly five thousand copies downloaded before the site removed DeCSS. But the DVD Utilities Network says on its site that the rippers are available at some 300 different Web sites.
