In a bizarre turn of events, a complaint has been filed against 2600 in a California court by the DVD Copy Control Association. Apparently, when we reported a recent crack in the encryption used by the DVD industry, our mirroring of the crack was enough to turn us into criminals who want to destroy the entire motion picture industry and ruin all that is good in the world.

Here we go again. Only this time, WE'RE the target.

It never ceases to amaze us how those supposedly in command of technology are hopelessly lost when it comes to real world correlation. Or maybe it's more sinister - perhaps they are counting on a court system which will buy into their corporate slant and hang the rest of us out to dry without stopping to realize that none of it makes any sense.

DVD encryption was cracked. That is a fact. And all of the legal papers in the world will not erase that fact. But the DVD industry believes they can do exactly that, through intimidation and wasting valuable court time and probably millions of dollars that will be paid by the consumer in the end. If they get their way, they will actually continue to use an encryption algorithm that has been proven inferior. Where is the logic in this?

Obviously, there is none. But this isn't about logic. It's one more example of a powerful corporate entity trying to intimidate a bunch of individuals through lawyers, guns, and money. We've seen this in the hacker world countless times before and in more than a few cases, people have had their lives shattered by this seemingly unstoppable force. That alone is reason enough for us not to cave in, no matter the cost. If we allow this action against us to stand, we will be helping to establish precedent which would all but make it illegal to reverse engineer any form of technology. In other words, figuring things out would be analogous to criminal behavior. What kind of a world would that be for anyone interested in technology? What kind of a world would that be for anyone?

We don't take this kind of thing lightly. We knew there were certain risks attached to our taking a stand on the DVD issue. That in itself seems incredible to us as we had nothing to do with the actual cracking of the encryption. All we did was voice our condemnation of attempts to suppress the knowledge that had been discovered. But by keeping the knowledge alive, guilt was copied over to us in the eyes of the DVD Copy Control Association - as it was to dozens of other entities who refused to back down.

Do they believe that by shutting us down, all of the copies that have been made throughout the world will magically disappear? Of course they don't. What they do believe is that dealing us a crippling blow will ensure that we won't be around to cause trouble the next time this happens. They may very well succeed in the courts. A recent look at prosecutions and new laws seems to pave the way for just this sort of thing. But all of the scare tactics in the world will never erase the human need for knowledge and the instinctive desire to figure out things, regardless of whether or not we're "supposed to."

Naturally, any updates will be posted here. If you can't reach us, don't panic right away as we expect things to get really busy in the next few days.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

While we have every intention of sticking this out to the end, we have to face the possibility that we could be forced into submission. For that reason, it's especially important that as many of you as possible, all throughout the world, take a stand and mirror these files. Don't do this because you just want to copy DVD's - that's not what this fight is about at all. This is about freedom of information - the right we all still have to LEARN how technology works. Once this is gone, there is no end to the kind of information that could be restricted because some conglomerate somewhere decides that its dissemination could cause them some grief.

Already, a handful of sites have gone down due to this latest bit of intimidation. We need to replace them and add to the number. If we can get ten sites to host the mirror by the end of Tuesday, it will send a very strong message. To do this, all you need is a web site that you control. Understand that doing this may incur the wrath of your provider, your parents, and/or your government. We realize that you may need to bow to the pressure at some point. It's our hope that if/when that happens, more people will be there to take your place.