Appeals Court Upholds Ban on
DVD Decoding Software
A federal appeals court has upheld a ruling prohibiting people from posting a program that can crack the computer code protecting copyrighted DVDs, or even linking to the decoding program. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York found November 28 that the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) does not infringe on constitutional free-speech protections, Reuters reported November 29.
The decision affirmed an August 2000 ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan blocking the online hacker publication 2600 from publishing DeCSS, which allows DVD movies to be decoded and played on personal computers. Nine Hollywood studios had sued to force 2600 to remove links to the program. The American Civil Liberties Union had filed an amicus brief in January on behalf of the American Library Association, the Association of Research Libraries, and other groups urging that Kaplan’s ruling be overturned.
In another DMCA-related case, a federal judge in New Jersey dismissed a suit charging that legal threats from the Recording Industry Association of America prevented Princeton University professor Edward Felten from publishing his research on anticopying technology. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which filed suit on behalf of Felten challenging the DMCA’s constitutionality, said it intended to appeal the November 28 ruling.
The EFF also asked a California Superior Court November 28 to dismiss a lawsuit against other Web publishers who had posted DeCSS, on the grounds that the program is widely available on the Internet and cannot be considered a trade secret. A California State Appeals Court had overturned the court’s earlier ruling barring the program’s posting, finding that DeCSS is free speech and protected by the constitution.
Posted December 3, 2001.
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