As if that weren’t enough damage to have to control, a pair of European programmers announced on the same day that they were able to bypass the copy protection on DVDs because a DVD software licensee failed to secure its decryption key. The licensee: Xing Technologies, which RealNetworks acquired earlier this year. Thanks to Xing’s blunder, a tiny program called DeCSS that will allow anyone to copy DVDs to their hard drives is making the rounds on the Internet, leaving Hollywood execs quaking in their BMWs. Angering consumers and studios in a single week, it seems, takes a RealEffort.
