[CrackMonkey] Tell The World About Your Information Rights -- Friday, 2/4/2000

[Mr. Bad]

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                            STOP the MPAA!
                  Protect your Information Freedom!

                Join us Friday, February 4 2000 at 7PM
                 at the Sony Metreon in San Francisco
                to protest the MPAA's attack on DeCSS
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The Motion Picture Association of America has begun suits against
Linux developers and Web site owners across the globe to stop the
distribution of a piece of DVD-playing software for Linux.

The software is Open Source and was developed independent of the
mainstream DVD-licensing consortium (DVD-CCA) because the movie
industry had blocked development of a Linux DVD player. A piece of
software called DeCSS is used to unscramble the data on the DVD disk
to allow it to be played.

As analog participants in a digital world, the movie industry is very
frightened by usage of their copyrighted material they don't
explicitly control. To stop a supposed threat that they don't
understand, the MPAA and the DVD-CCA have come blasting with both
barrels against the Linux community, Web site owners, and software
freedom advocates everywhere. The information rights violations are
racking up fast, including the following:

        * The MPAA is suing Web masters in Federal court for
          distributing the source code for DeCSS.

        * The DVD-CCA are currently suing in California courts several
          Web site owners who simply *linked* to the source code for
          the DeCSS software.

        * Under pressure from the MPAA, the Norwegian government has
          arrested the 16-year-old developer who originally wrote the
          DeCSS software.

We believe that this is a horrendous abuse of the legal system, and a
particularly scary precedent for the open forum that is the World Wide
Web. Why should you care?

        * If you buy DVDs...

          ...you should care that the MPAA wants to decide where and
          how you privately view the movies in your own home.

        * If you use Linux or other Free Software...

          ...you should care because this type of action threatens the
          open source development method on which all Free Software is
          based.

        * If work on the Web or have a Web site...

          ...you should care because the DeCSS situation could start a
          precedent where -you- could be sued for simply linking to a
          site that may or may not violate someone else's copyright.

To let the Motion Picture Association know that freedom lovers won't
take this kind of treatment sitting down, a national flier campaign
has been organized by 2600 Magazine, one of the plaintiffs in the
DVD-CCA case. More information is available at this URL:

        http://www.2600.com/news/2000/0130.html

A diverse group of concerned individuals will be staging a local
protest at the Sony Metreon in San Francisco, on Friday, February 4th
at 7PM.  We will be passing out fliers to movie patrons to make them
aware that their ticket money is going to pay for punitive lawsuits in
an attempt to thwart free speech. We will have signs and chants and
generally just have a good time hanging out with freedom-loving geeks
and other digital people.

The Sony Metreon is located at 4th Street and Mission, one block from
the Powell St. BART station. We'll be convening on the sidewalk
outside the 4th & Mission entrance. You should bring some fliers from
the above 2600.com URL to pass out.

Hope to see you there,

~Mr. Bad

P.S. Feel free to pass this message along. 

-- 
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 Mr. Bad <mr.bad at pigdog.org> | http://pigdog.org/ |  RoR - Alucard
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