Most of our visitors are probably aware by now of the temporary restraining order granted to the Motion Picture Association of America against 2600. The order prevents 2600 and everyone they have ever had contact with from distributing the DeCSS source code. We at Humpin.org are confident that once the facts are thoroughly reviewed by a competent judge this order will be lifted and no permanent injunction will be granted.
Here is a 2600 story on this.
Thanks to the efforts of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the organization and support provided by a few of our fellow defendants we are still here! Another hearing is scheduled for January 14th.
We would like to point out to all of the mirror sites with things like "fuck the lawyers" on them that it is because of a generous group of lawyers that we are still here. These lawyers are working for free (or much less than they could get by going over to the Dark Side) and don't deserve this kind of abuse.
Here is the EFF's stance on this case.
We have just been informed that the DVD Copy Control Association is seeking a restraining order against us (named as "Doe 28") for distributing DeCSS and linking to pages that distribute it and linking to pages that link to pages that distribute it.
Section 48 of this request states that we supposedly "have received notice through the MPA and refused to remove the information at issue". This is absolutely false! We have never received any such request (from the MPA or anybody else for that matter) and we obviously were not given the opportunity to refuse! Either Jared Bobrow needs to go back to law school or the DVD CCA needs to get a new firm. This is the kind of sloppy work that could get an important document thrown out.
Here is a 2600 story on this.
The software (source as well as binaries) offered
on this site can be freely redistributed because it was published under
the GNU General Public License.
The purpose of this software is not
illegal copying of DVD disks. It is meant to provide information necessary
to be able to program a DVD player for Linux. To do this, the CSS system
needs to be incorporated in the player. Recently the (very
weak) DVD content scrambling system was deciphered, freeing the way for
a Linux DVD player. The CSS system is not a copy protection system,
since it does not prevent copying of the disk. Writing information about
the way an encryption scheme functions is completely legal. The
source code and binaries on this site are completely legal too, since they
contain no code from the DVD consortium or its members. The sources
and programs on this site were written by third parties using clean-room
reverse engineering methods which are (ready?) completly legal.
NOTE (Thu, Nov 11, 12:17pm EST): I've recently been informed that a law firm which is likely to be one that would try get these mirrors taken down has been visiting this mirror site as well as others. With that said, there is a possibility that I may have to remove this site in the near future because like everyone else, I can't afford to go to court to fight it. Luckly, it seems fairly unlikely that any law firm will ever be able to get rid of all these mirrors at this point (there are currently 41 in 8 different countries and this list is growing every day). However, I have only seen very few mirror _lists_ like this one anyplace. If anyone has the resources, it might be wise to mirror this list of mirrors as well so that the right people will still know that these mirrors exist.
Here is a 2600 story with more details on how rhythm.cx was shut down.