from: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,37647,00.html Click Here: <A HREF="http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,37647,00.html"> Movie Studios on the Warpath</A> ----- Movie Studios on the Warpath by Declan McCullagh 1:25 p.m. Jul. 18, 2000 PDT NEW YORK -- Hollywood escalated its attack on hackers Tuesday, arguing in court that 2600 magazine was complicit in promoting the piracy of DVDs. "There are copies of decrypted DVDs being offered on the Internet and in hard copy," said Leon Gold, an attorney representing eight movie studios in the trial that began this week. In January, the companies sued 2600 for distributing the DVD descrambling DeCSS utility. "Did you download the DeCSS executable from any of the sites 2600 linked you to?" Gold asked an industry witness. "Yes, I did," replied Robert Schumann, CEO of Cinea. Schumann said he used DeCSS to penetrate the copy protection of the hit movie You've Got Mail. Cinea receives the bulk of its income from consulting contracts -- in this case, $325 an hour from the Motion Picture Association of America and its law firm, Proskauer Rose. Schumann was the chief architect of DIVX, the company created to sell pay-per-view DVD technology, and lauded the failed scheme as "a convenience product for the consumer." He also attacked "newer and insidious file-sharing utilities" like FreeNet and Gnutella as additional threats to the future of the entertainment industry's copyrighted works. During cross-examination, an attorney for 2600 spent the better part of an hour trying to show that neither the MPAA nor its member companies had any evidence that DeCSS had been used by online pirates. "Do you know of any DVD that has been sold anywhere in the world that has been decrypted with DeCSS?" asked Martin Garbus. "Not with absolute certainty, no," Schumann replied. He also said that he didn't know of anyone who distributed a DVD online that had been decrypted with DeCSS. As Garbus kept pressing, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan seemed to become irritated. Kaplan compared the query to asking the CEO of Procter & Gamble for the name and addresses of babies that are using Pampers diapers, a task that might be difficult to perform even though the company sells millions of diapers a year. "You are asking the Pampers question," Kaplan said. "I'm absolutely not asking the Pampers question," Garbus replied. Kaplan wasn't quite satisfied. "There's all sorts of evidence that there are postings on the Internet ... that people are out there offering to swap this stuff." Garbus also suggested that everyone in the industry knew that the CSS encoding system used to protect DVDs would be broken eventually, and shouldn't be surprised that it happened. Also testifying Tuesday morning was Frank Stevenson, a Norwegian programmer who last fall published the first crypto analysis of the CSS algorithm. "In an effort to hone my own cryptographic skills, I decided to take a look at CSS," he testified. "It didn't take me long to (find) serious weaknesses." Other programmers, including Norwegian teen hacker Jon Johansen, used his work in creating DeCSS. Johansen, who was in the courtroom with his father, was forced to leave after the judge determined he could be a potential witness and should be sequestered. Johansen said he plans to return to Norway on Thursday, so he would have to take the witness stand Wednesday or Thursday morning. After the lunch recess, with some prodding from the judge, both sides said they would stop squabbling and agree to speed up the trial. "Plaintiffs are willing to stipulate that there is no direct evidence in which an identifiable person decrypted (a DVD) using DeCSS," Kaplan said after a having a private chat with both teams of lawyers. That agreement could save the defense hours of laborious cross-examination. The trial, which is expected to last weeks, will resume Wednesday morning. Kaplan in January granted a preliminary injunction to the MPAA plaintiffs that prevented 2600 from distributing DeCSS, saying to do otherwise would result in "immediate harm" to the industry. Copyright © 2000 Wired Digital Inc., a Lycos Network site. All rights reserved. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! 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