In October 1999, a small group of hackers 1 developed the program DeCSS (for “ Decrypt Content Scrambling System ” ) to crack the encryption system on commercial DVDs and posted the software and its code on the Internet, distributing it worldwide. The DeCSS source code and the DeCSS application served as tools for those individuals designing DVD players for computers running on the Linux operating system. Because all DVD players must have a way of decrypting the information on a DVD before they can play the movie, DeCSS was invaluable in developing early DVD player technology for computers using operating systems other than Windows or Mac OS (Warren 2005). The DVD Copy Control Association (a consortium of copyright interests such as movie studios who license CSS), following the release of DeCSS in 2000, mounted a legal campaign against Internet sites publishing the DeCSS code, distributing the application, or linking to sites distributing the application and code. They argued that DeCSS violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998 2 by allowing the circumvention of technology designed for copyright protection and by promoting unsanctioned copying and distribution of protected material.