Hollywood's War on Open Source

By Sushuma February 28, 2000 2:24 PM

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(ZDNet)-Matthew Pavlovich arrived home from a Caribbean cruise with his parents and grandparents over the holidays to discover he was a wanted man.?Back on shore, a string of messages from friends and acquaintances awaited the Purdue University senior.?Among them, an ominous question: How does it feel to be a defendant in a lawsuit? Puzzled, Pavlovich did some investigating and soon learned he was one of dozens of defendants named in one of a barrage of DVD lawsuits: accused by the DVD Copy Control Association of the theft of trade secrets for linking to DeCSS, an unlicensed Windows-based DVD player that potentially lets users view and copy DVD movies.?That came as a surprise to Pavlovich, since he wasn't aware of any links to DeCSS on his site and is trying to create applications that enhance, not pirate, DVDs.?Pavlovich is working on LIVID, a video and DVD development project for the Linux operating system.?Among his plans -- to make a voice-activated system that lets users scan a DVD movie to find a certain line of dialogue.?"It's kind of a shame they don't see the big picture," Pavlovich said of his legal adversaries, who misspelled both his name and the name of his site in the suit.?"The big question is: What are they going to do next? What are they going to force us into next?" To find the answer, you only need look at what Hollywood has already done.?

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