http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0005/howe.shtml
# FADE TO BLACK BY JEFF HOWE
#
# The Motion Picture Association Shuts Down Crypto Research
#
# [Image] t's 2:30 p.m. and Roman Kazan and his fianc\351e
# huddle on a couch in the entryway of Judge Lewis A.
# Kaplan's chambers. Kazan is one of three defendants
# accused of violating copyright law by distributing
# DeCSS, a piece of software that the Motion Picture
# Association of America says can, in theory, be used to
# copy DVDs. Over the next three hours, Kazan's confidence
# gives way to confusion then outrage.
#
# At 5:30 p.m. the judge hands down a preliminary
# injunction against him.
#
# "I'm being sued for something I have nothing to do
# with," he says. Indeed, Kazan doesn't care a whit about
# DeCSS, and he never even heard of the program until he
# was served court papers. But this is immaterial, as the
# lawyers say.
#
# Kazan's been picked because he owns an ISP that hosted
# the code, and in the eyes of the motion picture industry
# that makes him a target. After the injunction, MPAA
# president Jack Valenti would say it was "a great victory
# for creative artists and consumers everywhere." But some
# civil libertarians and the core of the computing
# community take a starker view, and Kazan agrees.
#
# "I have nothing, I mean nothing, to do with this. It's
# like, I'm the landlord and I'm getting charged for a
# crime committed by one of my tenants," Kazan says. Mark
# Litvack, an MPAA attorney, says they are "willing to
# work with" Kazan. But a promise to drop him from the
# suit has so far not materialized.
[snip]
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http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0005/silverglate.shtml
# DVD DESPERADOES BY HARVEY A. SILVERGLATE
#
# Are the Hackers Unfairly Prosecuted?
#
# In a fit of megalomania, Canute, the 11th-century
# king of Norway, held his hand over the ocean and ordered
# the tide to recede. When it comes to the information
# age, Canute's modern-day successors are the film studios
# and their trade group the Motion Picture Association of
# America ( MPAA ). They've unleashed a furious legal
# barrage against the cypherpunks who found a way to
# decrypt and copy DVDs. So far, the case has gone
# industry's way, but in the long run, their attack seems
# as doomed to fail as Canute's attempt to master the sea.
#
# The industry says it spent hundreds of millions of
# dollars implementing the technology to safeguard the
# studios' copyrights of movies distributed on digital
# videodiscs, and they were not about to let that money go
# down some hacker's drain.
[snip]
