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Ok, here's the deal... in early November a Norwegian group called MoRE (Masters of
Reverse Engineering) cracked the DVD encryption by LEGALLY reverse-engineering Xing's
software DVD player. Software reverse-engineering is legal in Norway, and the software
is released under the GPL. The software will simply copy the movie data from your DVD
disk and plop it onto your hard drive.. this is perfectly legal.
Obviously the RIAA (Record Industry Association of America) is not really thrilled that
their holy copy protection scheme was broken, so they tryed to intimidate the
distribution of it from the web. They managed to scare a few sites, but there remains an
list of about 70 mirrors. Note that the list of mirrors is now up to 180 ACTIVE SITES! So, to summarize, this software is simply software to allow linux users to view DVD movies from their hard-drives. Based on all information available to me, I believe it is 100% legal to post this code, as it violates NO copyrights,patents or laws, and neither myself or any of the creators of this code ever signed a non-disclosure agreement to protect DVD trade secrets, nor did the DVD industry ever provide myself or the creators of this code with any trade secrets. At no point in time did anyone ask me to mirror this content. I am providing this content because I believe it is legal, and useful information.
NOTE: I've had to remove DeCSS from my site, when my ISP got this Email from the MPAA. If you are looking for DeCSS, be sure to check the DeCSS mirror list. I'm sure there are some sites up that are hosted on servers outside the reach of MPAA's lawyers.
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