Universal V. Reimerdes

Universal V. Reimerdes

Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Reimerdes was the first test of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a United States federal law.

The plaintiffs, 8 movie studios, successfully sought an injunction against the distribution of DeCSS, a program capable of decrypting content protected using the Content Scramble System (a DRM scheme commonly used to protect DVDs.) It was produced and released without a license from DVD CCA, the trade organization responsible for DVD copy protection. DeCSS was released in October 1999 on LiViD, a mailing list focused on producing programming tools and software libraries relevant to DVD use on Linux. The motion picture industry became aware of the existence of DeCSS later that same month and began litigation on a number of fronts.