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SAN JOSE, CALIF. - The licensing agency responsible for DVD security has gone to court to stem the spread of hacked code that can thwart DVD encryption.
At stake, the plaintiffs assert, is the future of the DVD format itself. But supporters of the DVD hack disagree. They point out that the DVD encryption was cracked not for piracy but as part of a project to develop a Linux-based DVD player, something the DVD industry itself has yet to tackle. Meanwhile, some are calling for increased proliferation of the DVD hack as a way to protest the lawsuit.
In a suit filed Dec. 27 at the Santa Clara County office of the California Superior Court, the DVD Copy Control Association Inc. (Morgan Hill, Calif., www. dvdcca. org) sought a restraining order forcing defendants to remove from the Internet the code for DeCSS, a small software program that can copy the encrypted video portion of a DVD disk.
In addition, the DVD group wants the restraining order to forbid linking to Web sites that contain any ofthis information. Indeed, the restraining order would even prohibit linking to sites that link to DeCSS code.
The complaint, which...