DeCSS does not enable you to copy and distribute movies - you can just as easily distribute the scrambled digital content. What it does enable you to do is to write an unlicensed DVD player.

Not quite accurate. Although you could write an unlicensed DVD player with DeCSS technology, it also also allows you to copy and distribute movies. In addition, it allows you to circumvent the region-encoding of a given DVD.

What it allows is for the movies to be decoded into unencrypted video files onto your PC's hard disk. From there, you can either distribute them in their unencrypted form, or you can downconvert them into a smaller, internet-friendly video format such as .ASF or .MPG. Generally, those are the things you see distributed on the 'net- the smaller files downconverted from a DeCSS-enabled DVD rip.

Another thing you can create from these unencrypted video files is Video CDs, which is really what the copyright holders were so pissed about. Since Video CDs are popular in asian markets, DeCSS allows for pirates to easily create VCDs of freshly-released DVDs for distribution in those markets. And since this skips the region-lock code, too, then the companies can't easily do the regional price-fixing that the region-locking was supposed to help them do.

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Tony Fabris