But Bresson, 28, had his mother, brother and grandparents in the audience and his girlfriend videotaping his talk at the three-day Def Con conference, just in case he was accused of treading too close to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998.

"There's a fine line between creating technologies that bypass copyright protections and demonstrating them," he said yesterday. "I decided to do it because I think the message is important."

His message is that people's rights to make "fair use" copies of copyrighted material for personal use are being eroded by copyright holders. He cited as examples recording companies selling CDs that can't be played in PCs or car CD players, movie studios selling DVDs that can only be viewed in specific geographic regions and emerging technologies that prevent people from copying their own CDs.

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