The Archetypical Copyfighter

Mr. Jon Lech Johanson, DVD Jon to most, has really defined himself as a sole warrior fighting against an army of those who'd like to control your and my access to all media. For those of you who are not familiar with this guy, let me start by giving some background on the story:

Back in the 1990's, Hollywood was looking for a replacement to VHS tapes that utilized digital technology to preserve & improve quality, last longer than magnetic tape, and of course spur (force) a round of upgrading for people who'd cared enough about movies to build a collection. This was occurring soon after the infamous Sony BetaMax case which established our right to make backup copies of movies and TV, as well as "timeshift" (record something to watch later). It was argued unsuccessfully that making backup copies of video was in violation of copyright law. This case established that it is legal given certain circumstances (commercial uses are not acceptable). The lawsuit was ostensibly Sony America vs. Universal Studios, however, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) was essentially behind Universal.

As I mentioned, this suit was fresh in the mind of the MPAA and at the same time, early drafts of what would eventually become the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) were being created. The law was fine and good, but it wouldn't matter at all with a little simple legal crafting. When the DVD standard was created, the top priority for features was something called CSS, which was an encryption method designed to make it so that the content on DVDs was protected from copying (copies would be a bunch of seemingly random 1's and 0's and not display video). This was followed up with the aforementioned DMCA (available here as a pdf) which prohibited "circumvention of copyright controls". See how this gets sneaky? The Sony ruling said that you were allowed to make copies of movies you've purchased, so the MPAA puts a copyright control on DVD's, then gets a law passed that prohibits the circumvention of those controls... Even if the copy would be legal, the act of copying was criminalized. BOO CSS, BOO DMCA. Things look pretty bad for you and I, the people who actually go to the trouble of paying MPAA companies (which Sony has 180'd and joined whole-heartedly, but that's another matter, wait for more on Blu-Ray).

Enter DVD Jon. With others, he developed a very small piece of software that removes the CSS encryption, making it trivial to make backup copies of DVD's, shift them to a computer, scale them to fit on an iPod or PSP, and also to put them up on filesharing networks. Two unsuccessful lawsuits attempted to imprison him. Instead of rolling over and relishing his 15 minutes of fame, he has continued to write software that helps open up the content that people purchase. Most recent efforts involve opening the DRM associated with Apple's AAC music files available through the iTunes Music Store so that people can play their purchased music on non-iPods, on linux, etc. Note that although his innovations could allow people to break the law, they are only useful to people who have PURCHASED the content.

To end this overly long post, I want to say, Here's to Jon Johansen! May the companies eventually realize that they should go after infringers not customers and that DRM is the path to the dark side.

via engadget

Raul