Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

A ruling concerning a unique lawsuit in which the DVDCCA (DVD Copy Control Association) sued over 500 people all over the world in one lawsuit to stop the use and distribution of DeCSS by California Supreme Court was put on hold by justice Sandra Day O'Connor of the US Supreme Court. The California court stated that one of the main defendants could not be sued in California since he was a resident of Texas. This did not address the issues of course, but after the California supreme court ruling there was in effect no injunction on DeCSS. The move by O'Connor reinstates the injunction until the case can be addressed further by the supreme court.

This is a complicated and very monumental case. Of course the intellectual property rights of the studios should not be trampled, but at the same time neither should those of the consumer. My take is that consumers should be allowed to copy DVDs they OWN for their own personal use. Backup copies, kids copies (copy DVDs to VHS for kids use, if you have kids you understand this one) etc. Also this case is complicated because the makers/distributors of DeCSS are not themselves breaking any laws. The attorneys argue trade secret violations, but come on, this is a few hundred lined of code that cracks their crappy misguided "copy protection". That code by itself is not a violation. The studios technically would have to prosecute each individual case of someone that USES DeCSS to pirate a movie (or thats how it should be, not just slam the guys that wrote it, whom wrote it to see DVDs they OWNED on Linux when there was no alternative, they are basically being sued for not using DVD players and using their brains and Linux to watch movies they paid for).

The studios should step up on this one and drop the lawsuits and drop CSS and drop Macrovision. Of course that will never happen, but imagine if all this effort to prevent piracy went into making the movies available for 5 or 10 bucks instead of 30? Most people are honest and WANT an original copy (at least many people I have asked and thats my own preference). If the prices are reasonable then just buy it. If the studios took that tack they would make more money and make their customers happier (again, IMHO).

For more see the linked news.com story.   Supreme Court steps into DVD-copying case: news.com