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The Industry's Center for DVD Resources |
Due to the highly technical nature of this subject, there have been many requests on the part of the press to have the key points organized and explained in non-techno jargon.
For a technical response to the issues of the CSS scheme please read this.
Journalists with suggestions for facts to add or questions to answer on this page, feel free to write to: feedback@opendvd.org. We really appreciate the (often very much to the point) feedback given to us by journalists, so if you have the time, please drop us a line... Thanks!
If you want a good story on the legal side of the matter, please read I want my DVD, your honor. It conveys some of the most important points in an entertaining way. This document should not be used as a legal reference, as it has been pointed out that there are a few errors regarding the legality.
The movie industry tries to defend their decryption code as a copy protection code, thereby opening a window to sue people for making available tools for piracy (because then "they are able to copy the movie"). Even though you could argue that this is equal to the 1983 ``Betamax decision'' where the movie industry tried to outlaw VCR recording of TV programs to watch them later. Also see the Home Recording Rights Coalition for more information on how consumers have had to fight for their right to home recording (even though that right is granted in the Berne Convention on copyright).
This very clear explanation of what cryptography means in this case was lifted from this message (sorry - post currently unavailable) in our message board. We'd like to thank the anonymous poster...
"Look, it's like this - a DVD Movie is basically just a message [the movie] written in secret code on a piece of paper. To read the message [watch the movie,] you need a secret decoder ring. To be a pirate, you need a photocopier, but you don't need a decoder ring because you don't really care what the secret message is, as long as your photocopier makes nice, crisp copies that your client (who has a decoder ring) can read. All these guys did was make a decoder ring that works under linux, because all the commercial decoder rings only run on Windows [or standalone DVD players.]"
The OpenDVD.org Group