The charges were filed by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), an organization backed by the biggest companies in the movie business (Universal, Disney, Time-Warner, Columbia/Tristar, MGM Studios, Twentieth Century Fox), which accuses him of violating copyright law. Shortly after the program was put online, the MPAA also filed an injunction against over 500 web sites that had copied and linked to the computer files. It was an attempt to stop the spread of DeCSS, but of course, on the Internet, this was a pretty futile action.

Why is the movie industry so afraid of this teenager and his computer program? Because DVDs are the video medium of the future, and the movie industry wants to protect their interest in this potentially lucrative market.

The issue for the MPAA is one of control; they want to control every aspect of DVDs, from the top down, even at the cost of consumer rights. For example, regional codes on both DVDs and the DVD players ensure that DVDs sold in a certain region can only be watched in that region, and not anywhere else. This means that DVDs released in Japan cannot be seen on American DVD players. DVD players must have technology licensed from the movie industry in order to function properly, and that license costs companies a fair amount (about $10,000 a year).

The MPAA wants to ensure that they have an ironclad grip on the DVD market. They don't want any of that power to slip away, especially now, in its burgeoning period. The availability of DeCSS has already allowed programmers to work towards what the MPAA fears most: DVD software that functions on computer operating systems that the MPAA does not currently support.

What this basically boils down to is a case of consumer rights versus corporate greed, and the MPAA has never been an organization for consumer rights. Twenty years ago, the MPAA crusaded against the VCR, telling people that it would destroy copyright values. DeCSS is currently being used to create DVD software players that would allow people to view movies outside MPAA-approved parameters, or in other words, to simply watch the movies which they have paid for.

The consumer rights battle continues today in other industries, such as the Recording Industry Association of America and its crusade against the ubiquitous MP3 format, which allows CD-quality music to be quickly and easily transferred from computer to computer.

Jack Valenti, head of the MPAA, stated in a press release: "We have filed suit in federal court to stop Internet hackers from distributing the software designed to circumvent the encryption technology that prevents unlawful copying of DVDs. This is a case of theft. The posting of the de-encryption formula is no different from making and then distributing unauthorized keys to a department store. The keys have no real purpose except to circumvent the locks that stand between the thief and the goods he or she targets."

While seemingly a convincing argument, the analogy is technically false. An anonymous user on the web site opendvd.org made a different comparison: "a DVD Movie is basically just a message (the movie) written in secret code on a piece of paper. To read the message (watch the movie), you need a secret decoder ring. To be a pirate, you need a photocopier, but you don't need a decoder ring because you don't really care what the secret message is, as long as your photocopier makes nice, crisp copies that your client (who has a decoder ring) can read." Essentially, the encryption scheme does not protect copying in any way, rather it restricts the viewing of the movies to only authorized and licensed DVD players. The encryption scheme does not stop DVD pirates at all. However, with DVD-R discs costing more than $50 each, it is currently cheaper and easier to buy the real movie than a pirated copy.