MESSAGE
| DATE | 2003-05-29 |
| FROM | Dave Williams
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [hangout] Arguments made in DVD-cracking case
|
From:
http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-1011326.html?tag=lh
California Attorney General Bill Lockyer called DVD-cracking software
DeCSS a tool for "breaking, entering and stealing" during a hearing
before the California Supreme Court on Thursday.
"The program DeCSS is a burglary tool," Lockyer told the judges, adding
that the movie studios lose millions of dollars because of piracy over
the Internet.
California's high court is considering whether a ban on the posting of
the code, which cracks the content-scrambling system designed to protect
DVD movies, violates free speech. Lockyer, who's gearing up to run for
governor next year, appeared on the side of the DVD Copy Control
Association, which is arguing that the posting of the code on the Net
should be banned.
The case, DVD CCA v. Bunner, started four years ago, when the DVD CCA
sued Andrew Bunner and hundreds of other people, saying they violated
California trade-secret law by displaying links to the code.
A trial court in Santa Clara County, Calif., granted an injunction
banning the posting of the code, but Bunner appealed, saying the
injunction violated his free speech rights. The Sixth District Court of
Appeals in San Jose, Calif., agreed with Bunner and reversed that
injunction, so the DVD CCA appealed to the California Supreme Court.
During Thursday's hearing, DVD CCA attorney Robert Sugarman told the
seven-judge panel that the software is designed "to allow individuals to
steal a trade secret and, by virtue of that, hack into a system that
protects the trade secrets of motion picture makers."
At one point, Judge Kathryn Werdegar asked whether DeCSS deserved a
strict standard of trade-secret protection since it was already widely
distributed on the Internet. Sugarman said that it did.
"If that were the case, especially with the Web, an infringer could
quickly post a trade secret and then say there's no real need or purpose
for relief, because it's already out there," Sugarman said.
Bunner's lawyer, David Greene, told the court that the DVD CCA was
trying to stop the flow of information by seeking a ban on posting the
code by people who are unrelated to the case. Greene said Bunner put the
code on his site after reading about it on Slashdot and wasn't involved
in creating DeCSS or originally posting the code to the Web.
"To call Mr. Bunner a third party is being generous," Greene said. "He's
a 100th party." Greene said the trial court, in granting the injunction,
failed to consider that the ban violated Bunner's free speech rights.
"We're not saying it's impossible for people to protect their trade
secrets," Greene told the court, saying they just must do it within the
limits of the First Amendment.
The judges are expected to issue a ruling in the coming weeks or months.
Federal courts have already said Web publishers who posted DeCSS
violated federal copyright law, namely the Digital Millennium Copyright
Act. But the DVD CCA sued Bunner and others under state trade-secret
laws. In a similar case brought by the DVD CCA against one-time Purdue
University student and current Texas resident Matthew Pavlovich, the
same court that is hearing the Bunner case ruled that California courts
did not have jurisdiction, because Pavlovich had no ties to the state.
The Bunner case has attracted attention from a wide variety of free
speech advocates and programmers including the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, the Institute of Electrical Engineers and the Computer and
Communications Industry Association, which have urged the court to rule
in favor of Bunner.
After Thursday's hearing, Bunner told a throng of reporters that a
decision against him could have dire consequences for software
development in general and the open-source community in particular.
"It's probably more important for other people than it is for me," said
Bunner, 26, who now works as a developer for Epiphany in San Mateo,
Calif. "If this makes it harder for people to reverse-engineer things,
then it makes it more difficult to make really useful things."
Many software developers depend on decryption programs like DeCSS to
learn about the inner workings of certain programs and to make
compatible products.
Bunner said he originally posted the code so that people could use it to
play their DVDs on the Linux operating system, a practice that was all
but impossible at the time. He said he forgot about it until the DVD CCA
called him and told him he better take the code down. Bunner said he
never thought that posting computer code on his Web site would put him
at the center of a high-profile legal tangle over free speech and trade
secrets.
"It's a little surreal," Bunner said, standing just a few feet from the
attorney general while gazing at the television and radio microphones
that had been thrust in front of his face.
____________________________
NYLXS: New Yorker Free Software Users Scene
Fair Use -
because it's either fair use or useless....
NYLXS is a trademark of NYLXS, Inc
|
|
