Mr. Johansen and his supporters claimed strenuously that DeCSS was not in fact an aid to illicit copying. In fact, they argued that CSS was not really designed to protect DVDs against illicit copying. Commercial DVD "pirates" do not need to crack the CSS encryption. Quite the contrary: they produce exact copies of the DVD, CSS encryption and all, and the buyer's player dutifully decodes it and plays it. Mr. Johansen claimed that his goals were very different from those of the pirates. 30
The motivation was being able to play DVDs the way we want to. I don't like being forced to use a specific operating system or a specific player to watch movies (or listen to music). Nor do I like being forced to watch commercials. When your DVD player tells you "This operation is not allowed" when you try to skip commercials, it becomes pretty clear that DRM really stands for Digital Restrictions Management.4 31
In Mr. Johansen's view, CSS was simply an attempt to control consumers, an attempt which should be a valid target for legal reverse engineering. He has a point. There were indeed other ways to copy DVDs which did not require DeCSS and which gave you files of more manageable size. CSS was indeed more than a simple anticopying device. The entire scheme—the keys, the licenses, the hardware requirements—was designed to give movie studios greater control over their movies in a number of ways, some of them unrelated to copying. On the other hand, he overstated the point. One function of CSS was indeed to make it harder for the average person playing a DVD on a computer to copy the file from the DVD to her hard disk and give it to a friend. It is very easy for the average 14-year-old to take a commercial music CD, change the songs into smaller files in the MP3 format, and share them with a friend. It is not as easy to do the same thing to a DVD—not impossible, just harder—and CSS is one of the reasons why. 32
Mr. Johansen's program, DeCSS, was quickly made available worldwide. Mirror sites provided copies of the program and lists of such locations were easy to find using standard search tools. One such list was provided by the online site run by a magazine called 2600: The Hacker Quarterly. The magazine features everything from pictures of pay phones from around the world to tips on how to hack into computer or telephone systems. Its publisher is one Eric Corley, who goes by the name Emmanuel Goldstein—the resistance leader in George Orwell's 1984. 33
In 1999, Universal City Studios brought suit against a number of individuals for distributing DeCSS. The case was called Universal City Studios v. Reimerdes et al. Corley was among the defendants. The suit prominently included a claim that the defendants were violating the DMCA. It was in this case that the DMCA received its first major legal challenge. 34
Depending on the characterization of the facts, the case seems to be about very different things. It could seem a classic First Amendment fight. ("Plucky magazine publisher told copyright law forbids him from linking to other sites on the Internet!") Or it could seem the very essence of illegal activity. ("Shadowy site which unashamedly caters to computer 'hackers' tries to spread access to the burglar's tools of cyberspace!") 35
Of course, most lawsuits involve conflicts over facts. Much of what lawyers do is put the same facts into different conceptual boxes. But here, merely describing what Corley does, what hackers are, or what 2600 magazine is all about involves one in a profound culture clash. The best way to capture the clash may be to quote from an early entry about Corley in Wikipedia, the remarkable online encyclopedia. 36
The encyclopedia first quotes the description of 2600 magazine from Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, the federal district court judge who decided the Reimerdes case. 37
"2600: The Hacker Quarterly has included articles on such topics as how to steal an Internet domain name, how to write more secure ASP code, access other people's e-mail, secure your Linux box, intercept cellular phone calls, how to put Linux on an Xbox, how to remove spyware, and break into the computer systems at Costco stores and Federal Express. One issue contains a guide to the federal criminal justice system for readers charged with computer hacking. In addition, 2600 operates a web site located at 2600.com (http://www.2600.com), which is managed primarily by Mr. Corley and has been in existence since 1995." 38
The Wikipedia article then continues as follows: 39