What's wrong with the press coverage of DeCSS?
Many things, but one sticks out as glaringly incorrect. Everybody's harping on the DVD encryption being broken, because now HACKERS can blantly copy any movie and distribute it and the movie studios' copyrights are being violated as we speak!
However.
DVD Encryption doesn't prevent the movie from being copied.
Let's say that again.
DVD Encryption doesn't prevent the movie from being copied.
All it does it prevent the movie from being played. That is, an encrypted DVD movie is a bunch of digital junk that doesn't mean movie to anyone. But, you run it through a decoder that has one of the special keys, and suddenly, it looks like a movie.
Oh, did I mention that in order to get one of the keys, you have to pay a fee?
I can understand if the movie industry wants to maintain their lockhold on players (though I can't understand why; my non-movie-industry brain seems to think that the equation "more players = more movie sales" tends to hold). However, can we all please stop referring to this as a copying issue?
Especially you, Jack Valenti. Do you believe everything you read on the web?
In short: People who break CSS are not then able to distribute lots of copies of movies - they could do that before (albeit copies that could only be played on legitimate, licensed players). They are, however, able to play them on non-authorized players (such as the conspicuously absent freeware Linux player).
Perhaps, you should look here for more information.