Hackers Are the Real Victims--of Industry Greed

The hackers are coming! The hackers are coming! By publishing decrypting software on the Internet, they have torn down the walls of security that protect the work of artists from illegal copying. Soon the market may be flooded with illegally copied digital video discs. Livelihoods are at risk.

This is the alarm sounded by Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Assn. of America. At issue is the recent publication of software that allows any computer to decrypt the data on DVDs.

There’s just one small problem: Encryption does not in any way hinder making an illegal copy of a DVD. It never has. This is because the software for decrypting DVDs is already built into all DVD players. It has to be, otherwise there would be no way for the player to read the disc. A DVD player expects an encrypted disc; a decrypted disc won’t work in a regular DVD player.

It is no easier to make an illegal copy of a DVD now than it was before the decryption software was published. And even if it was, why would you want to? It costs about $50 to pirate a DVD--about twice what it costs to buy a legal copy. It’s hard to decide who would be the bigger fool: the person who makes illegal copies or the one who apparently believes that this could be a serious economic threat.

The sound and fury over DVD encryption may not be the result of simple ignorance about what encryption does and doesn’t do. Cracking DVD encryption does threaten some industry profits, but they are not profits that have been won on the moral high ground from which Valenti sounds his clarion call.

While you don’t have to decrypt a DVD in order to copy it, you do have to decrypt one in order to play it. The decryption is done by your DVD player, and this restricts your freedom as a consumer in subtle and insidious ways. For example, the DVD industry has divided the world up into “zones,” with different encryption codes being used in different zones. Most DVD players will only work on DVDs from one zone. So if you buy a DVD in Europe and try to use it in a player purchased in the U.S., it won’t work.

This may not sound like a big deal, but there is an important principle at stake here: When you buy a legal copy of a DVD, you have a legal right to view that DVD anywhere you want, any time you want and using whatever hardware you want. Yet if you own a disc from a different zone than your DVD player, you cannot avail yourself of that right. And, if you choose to use the Linux operating system, you could not avail yourself of that right before the encryption code was published because the DVD industry refused to make DVD decryption software available for Linux.

Far from being an illegal and immoral activity, hacking the DVD encryption codes was entirely legal, moral and necessary in order to circumvent the DVD industry’s shameful attempts to restrict the legal rights of consumers through technical coercion.

There is a disturbing Orwellian overtone to Valenti’s attempt to paint hackers as villains and the DVD industry as victim in the public eye. If there is a villain in this little melodrama, it is the DVD industry, which has placed covert obstacles in the way of consumers’ rights to view legally purchased DVDs wherever and however they please. If there are victims, they are hackers, who are being sued and in some cases arrested simply for overcoming those obstacles.

Valenti says that “those who passionately believe in freedom of expression . . . have a lot on the line.”

Indeed. So do those who passionately believe in truth.