February 2, 2000

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

DAY OF ACTION PLANNED AGAINST MOTION PICTURE ASSOCIATION IN 100 CITIES

Members of the hacker and open source communities worldwide, along with various civil liberties groups, are planning a massive leafletting campaign on Friday, February 4 to call attention to the recent attempts by the Motion Picture Association of America to shut down thousands of websites.

Lawsuits have been filed against hundreds of people, as well as an Internet Service Provider and a magazine, for having information the MPAA wants to keep secret.

The controversy centers around a computer program known as DeCSS, thought to be written by a 16 year old in Norway. The program defeats the encryption scheme used by DVD's which prohibits them from being viewed on non-approved machines or computers. It also enables DVD's from one country to be played in another, contrary to the wishes of the movie industry. It does NOT facilitate DVD piracy - in fact, copying DVD's has been possible since their introduction years ago. In its press releases on the subject, the MPAA has claimed that this is a piracy issue and they have subsequently succeeded in getting injunctions against a number of sites that had posted the program in the interests of free speech.

This is in effect a lawsuit against the entire Internet community by extremely powerful corporate interests. The lawsuit and the various actions being planned promise to be a real showdown between two increasingly disparate sides in the technological age. The consequences of losing this case are so serious that civil libertarians, professors, lawyers, and a wide variety of others have already stepped forward to help out.

Friday's action will be coordinated in 74 cities throughout North America and 26 cities in other parts of the world. Leafletting will take place outside theaters and video stores in these cities - all of which participate in a monthly "2600" gathering. 2600 Magazine has been named in two lawsuits regarding the DeCSS program and has joined with the the growing number of people who will fight these actions by the MPAA until the end.

The lawsuit has been filed by the Motion Picture Association of America, Columbia/Tristar, Universal City Studios, Paramount Pictures, Disney Enterprises, Twentieth Century Fox, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, and Time Warner Entertainment.

Contact:
Emmanuel Goldstein
(631) 751-2600 ext. 0