A group of Norwegian programmers has reportedly cracked Hollywood's digital encryption code for DVD movies.

"This opens a whole can of worms," said Michelle Abraham, senior analyst with multimedia-market researcher Cahner's In-stat Group. "The movie studios will be hard-pressed to stop this."

The group is said to have posted a program on various newsgroups and Web sites that allows anyone with the proper equipment to copy DVD movies to a PC's hard drive.

Abraham said movie studios could pull movies off the shelf, stop releasing new ones or develop a new security format.

But with more than 6,000 titles due to hit the market by the end of the year and 7 million players sold worldwide in 1999, any of those choices could devastate the consumer interest that has finally gelled around digital video discs.

A detailed reported is available at www.zdnn.com .