My first thought, on seeing this posted on slashdot, was to book it over to the monastery to see what the best and brighest of the Perl community had to say about this practical and political bit of obfuscation.

However, few of us know better than merlyn the ugly reality of what it's like to tangle with the machine of law, far removed from noble ideals about "free speech" or "rights," and his point is well taken that the monastery is not the right battleground for the DeCSS case.

I would like to point out, though, that this is a site arguably devoted to "scholarly examination," and as such is the logical place to discuss this code on it's merits as code, apart from it's political significance.

The crowinging irony is that this is precisely the sort of "chilling effect" on otherwise legitimate speech that Dr. Touretzky is protesting in his "Gallery of CSS Descramblers." In declining to discuss it here, of all places, we have provided an excellent example of the danger he's bringing to light.

I see the discussion has continued on slashdot - that's fine, they're commercial, they've probably got lawyers and would welcome the publicity of publicly jousting with the MPAA/DVD-CCA. But I've learned three new things about Perl today by following the discussion there instead of here, and that is saddening.

Peace,
-McD