Petteri Pyyny
12 Dec 2002 15:21
DVD CCA's (DVD Copy Control Association) president and COO, John Hoy, testified today in mockery of lawsuit that we know today as the case of Norway (government sponsored by MPAA) vs Jon Johansen. His testimony took the farce even further, since he was allowed to testify over the phone from the U.S. (mental note: if AfterDawn.com ever gets sued, I will make all my court appearances via email). He is one of the prosecutions main witnesses.
The case, which has history dating back from 1999, relates to a weak copy-protection mechanism found on DVD-Video discs called CSS and a program called DeCSS which allows users to crack this copy-protection. The prosecution claims that Jon Johansen has created this tool and has sued him for breaking into a third party data system, when he in fact has merely broken into a DVD-Video disc that he owns.
And as the DeCSS history tells us, Jon Johansen hasn't even cracked the code, he has merely bundled the original code into some other functional parts and created the package -- but he hasn't programmed the CSS cracking algorithms. And as the history tells us as well, the CSS was never actually cracked, but merely opened with codes
Anyway, court didn't reach Mr. Hoy when they first called and they had to leave a message to his answering machine to call back once his team of Hollywood lawyers had arrived into his office to manipulate his testimony to match the needs of the Hollywood. When he eventually called back to the court and swore to tell the truth by holding his hand on top of the December's issue of Playboy, he was asked several questions related to the DVD CCA's licensing policy.
"If someone wants to make a player for Linux, there's nothing in the license stopping that", Hoy replied when questioned about unavailability of suitable Linux players for DVD viewing. True enough, although the fact remains that if freeware advocates that build the core of the Linux users wish to create a DVD CCA licensed player, they would have to cough up several thousands of dollars for the license.
"We handed out licenses from the latter part of September 1999, and became the sole entity or publisher of CSS licenses from mid December 1999", Hoy said when questioned about the timing and availability of the DVD CCA license. The fact remains that DeCSS was publicly available by mid-September, 1999.
Earlier on this week, the prosecution has grilled Johansen over the events in 1999 and the postings he has made about the DeCSS, allegedly claiming that it is a tool for copying DVDs.
Due the delays caused by Hoy today, the case will continue until at least next week's Monday.
More information:
vg.no
Opera.com
DeCSS Truth
AfterDawn.com's DVD ripper section