To hack or not to hack. (First In/First Out).

It came as no surprise to many, to find out this month who the mystery man behind the "hack into the X-Box for $200,000" contest was. Michael Robertson, a former dotcom entrepreneur and now chief executive of US software company Lindows.com--an emerging competitor to Microsoft's operating system--revealed himself as the anonymous donor and contest's creator.

Robertson and his software company seemed sincere when they announced that their motive wasn't business-related--although the publicity generated from this whole affair must have certainly helped with the recent launch of their new OS. According to them, the contest was a sort of revolt against Microsoft's monopoly on the market. They feel that users should have the ability to run their X-boxes on a Linux operating system if they choose to do so. Nonetheless, one cannot help but wonder why Robertson hasn't been charged with a crime for leading his Linux followers into the murky world of hacking.

The law seems clear-cut. According to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, signed on October 8, 1998, it is a crime to circumvent any antipiracy measures built into most commercial software. Although--and this is where the controversy lies--the law does permit the cracking of copyright protection devices to conduct encryption research, assess product interoperability, and test computer security systems.

This portion of the law was recently put to test in Oslo, Norway, in a copyright case that involved a young teenage computer programmer dueling against major movie studio executives. Jon Johansen, known as "DYD John," had been undergoing criminal procedures by the US Motion Picture Association for having unlocked a copyright-protection code on DVDs and then widely distributing the information needed to do so, on the internet. (The DeC55 code in question is currently available online on thousands of websites.) The defense attorney in this case, is claiming that because the Nordic pirate owned the DVDs he was brealting into, he was not committing a crime. In addition, he claims that current users of the DeC55 are merely trying to watch movies on Linux computers, but that there is no authorized way to do so at this time-this seems to be a common defense, one that will surely be used by Robertson, should he be brought before a judge for his X-box hacking escapade. The case was resolved two weeks ago with the judg e ruling that Johansen was innocent, that he could watch the movies he legally owned any which way he chose to do so.

A similar case was brought to light in July of 2001 with the arrest of Dimitry Skiyarov during the Las Vegas Defcon Hackers convention, after giving a speech about his company's software that was designed to bypass the protection codes installed on Adobe Systems Ebooks. ElcomSofet, Sklyarov's company, defended the product all along claiming that the program, the Avanced Ebook Processor, is a legitimate utility that allows backup. They claim that the product is not criminal. since it is intended to be used on books that are legally purchased. Sklyarov was eventually acquitted because the courts found that the company was not aware that it was breaking the law.

It definitely looks like a lot of work lies ahead in the development of digital copyright, and in particular as it pertains to the Digital Millennium Act. Media businesses from film studios to music and book publishers are going to make the most use of this law to protect their creative property, while advocates of the right to freedom of expression are going to put up a fight in defending intellectual freedom. It will be interesting to see the many different ways this new law is going to be interpreted and how it is going to evolve over time.