DeCSS Trial Day 5
DVD & DeCSS
7/24/2000; 12:43:07 PM 'EFF's defense team landed a surprising blow to the MPAA in Court on Friday when it revealed that the Livid Project has built an open source DVD player for Linux machines using DeCSS.... Pavlovich [who led the project to develop the player] stated the Livid Project's DVD player was created by lawful reverse engineering under the open source development model, which relies upon dozens to thousands of programmers around the globe working collaboratively. DVD players such as Livid's, manufactured independently from DVD-CCA and the MPAA, are not legally required to restrict consumer player features because they are not subject to a CSS license. Through this litigation the studios were hoping to ban DeCSS before independent groups used the code to create consumer-friendly DVD players that could compete with DVD-CCA's monopoly on players.'

Slashdot has collected a lot of links on the topic.