Cyber-pirate back to harass Hollywood

smh.com ^ | 11/29/2003

[PeteFromMontana]

Cyber-pirate back to harass Hollywood

November 29, 2003

A hacker famed for defeating Hollywood in a cyber-piracy trial has rejected allegations he has illegally unlocked a code that enables unauthorised copying of music files from the internet.

Jon Johansen, a 20-year-old Norwegian computer programmer who was cleared of piracy charges in January, has developed a source code for copying music and posted it on the internet less than a week before he is due to appear in an Oslo appeals court.

Johansen's code allows users of Apple Computer Inc's new iTunes online music store to break digital rights management (DRM) technology that prevents people copying files downloaded from the service.

On an internet site named "So Sue Me", Johansen said critics had "failed to understand that by buying into DRM they have given the seller complete control over the product after it's been sold", calling them "clueless about copyright law".

The new program circumvents iTunes' anti-copying program, MPEG-4 Advanced Audio Coding, by legally opening and playing a protected music file in QuickTime, but then, essentially, draining the unprotected music data into a new and parallel file. advertisement

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There are other programs that can circumvent copy protection schemes by capturing analog audio, though that typically causes a loss in quality. The program on Johansen's site appears to capture unprotected digital data, which could be used to make perfect copies of an unlocked tune.

The Oslo district court ruled in January that prosecutors had failed to prove that Johansen's program - called DeCSS - had been used for illegal copying of DVDs and said he was entitled to copy legally bought DVDs.

The Motion Picture Association of America, representing Hollywood studios such as Walt Disney, Universal Studios and Warner Bros, filed the original complaint at Norway's Economic Crime Unit. Since the case was the first of its kind in Norway, and a key test in determining how far existing laws protect copyright holders, prosecutors used their right to appeal to a higher court.

[steplock]

NORWAY - The land of the NEW FREEDOM FIGHTERS!

Since we seem to have lost the will to fight for our OWN freedoms in this country.....

[observer5]

What an ass*ole.

These type of idiots force these companies to impose more and more restrictions on copying this music for personal use.

The guy is an IDIOT and a jerk!

[zeugma]

Actually, what he is doing is forcing them to use ever more restrictive and inconvienient (for consumers) schemes to get around the well established principle of "right of first sale". Eventually the RIAA/MPAA will either give up (much like what happened with copy protected software several years ago), or they will attempt to control things so tightly that we won't buy it at any price. He also provides a service to owners of these files so that they can make use of them in ways more friendly to them than the studios and record labels.

He also demonstrates quite clearly, that if the data is on a computer, the user ultimately can get at the data stream regardless of what the RIAA or MPAA desire because the data has to be 'unlocked' at some point or it simply can't be displayed at all. This fact is what is driving microsoft and the media companies to push DRM crippled 'computers'. Remember, that when they speak of 'trusted computing', the person they don't trust is you.