[opendvd-news] Tragedy strikes OpenDVD

[John Goerzen <jgoerzen@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

25 January 2000

As many of you are aware, many entertainment companies are afraid of
the legal use of their products.  Yesterday, companies such as MGM,
Sony, Universal, and Warner Bros. filed charges against Jon Lech
Johansen.  Mr. Johansen is the 16-year-old programmer that discovered
how to bypass the DVD encryption scheme, allowing playback of DVD
recordings anywhere.  According to reports [1], his computer equipment
was confiscated and he was interrogated for 7 hours [2] by Norwegian
police.

As the OpenDVD Group has pointed out on our site at
http://www.opendvd.org/, it was already possible to illegally copy
("pirate") DVD disks and movies without even decrypting the content.
The discovery made by the Mr. Johansen makes it possible to play DVD
recordings on systems that the DVD industry refuses to support, such
as Linux systems.  There is nothing illegal about playing DVD
recordings on Linux machines; being able to play DVDs on Linux in no
way makes it easier to pirate disks.

Resources:

 [1] http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/d121152.htm
     Brief news report of the incident

 [2] http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/01/24/2024233&mode=nocomment
     Account of the interrogation from Mr. Johansen himself

 [3] http://www.opendvd.org/journalists.html
     The OpenDVD Journalist's Fact Sheet, which summarizes the
     issues and background in this matter.

 [4] http://www.opendvd.org/
     The OpenDVD home page, with links to various resources
     about DVDs and the software itself.

Contacts:

     Contact information is present at http://www.opendvd.org/