DeCSS Haiku And T-Shirts

1999

Date: October 1999 · Place: Norway and the open web · Figures: Jon Lech Johansen (DVD Jon), 15-year-old programmer, Larvik, Norway · Seth Schoen, EFF, author of '42.zip is not a virus' DeCSS Haiku · MPAA, plaintiff · Tags: Crypto, Free Speech, T-Shirt 01. 456 Lines Of C In October 1999, 15-year-old Jon Lech Johansen in Larvik, Norway, releases DeCSS, a 456-line C program that decrypts the Content Scramble System used on commercial DVDs. He just wants to watch DVDs on his Linux laptop. The MPAA files suit in New York under the new DMCA, the first major test of the 1998 law. Judge Lewis Kaplan rules in 2000 that publishing the DeCSS source code is illegal. The web responds by translating DeCSS into every conceivable form. 02. Haiku, T-Shirts, Prime Numbers Seth Schoen writes the DeCSS Haiku, 465 stanzas of formally-correct haiku that compile, in spirit, to the DeCSS algorithm. The code is printed on T-shirts sold by Copyleft. The 1,401-digit Phil Carmody prime, whose binary representation is the gzipped DeCSS source, is published as a prime number that is also illegal speech. The DeCSS T-shirt becomes the uniform of every 2600 meeting and Defcon hallway from 1999 to 2003. Free-speech case law catches up in 2001 when the Norwegian acquittal of Johansen establishes that reverse-engineering for interoperability is legal in Norway. Johansen later co-founds doubleTwist and works on iTunes interop. "Now help me, my friends, / Cluster many minds in code / And lay legal traps." — Seth Schoen, 'DeCSS Haiku' stanza 3, March 2001 Sources • Seth Schoen, 'DeCSS Haiku' full text, EFF archive (March 2001) • Universal v. Reimerdes, 111 F. Supp. 2d 294 (S.D.N.Y. 2000) • Norwegian Supreme Court, Johansen acquittal (5 January 2004)