California supreme court to hear DeCSS distribution case

May 28, 2003

While the 321 Studios case
about DVDxCopy is still pending, there will be another lawsuit in the
states on DVD copying. There will be a hearingin a case about distributing the DeCSS code. DeCSS is software
that is able to descramble the protected content of a DVD movie. The software
was initially designed to play DVD movies using Linux, but found its way very
quickly to the windows platform.

People used it to make copies of their
DVD movies, some for backup purposes, others to pirate them. The software was
forbidden, but the source code was already available on many places on the
internet. Some people even printed the source code on T-shirts and this case is
about Andrew Bunner, who also helped spreading the DeCSS software on the
internet.

Bunner republished DeCSS on his website after reading
about it on Slashdot. He is the only defendant who has appealed the
preliminary injunction. "DeCSS was publicly available throughout the world
when Bunner published the DVD-decryption information on his website and
when the court issued a preliminary injunction," said EFF Staff Attorney
Gwen Hinze. "DeCSS is obviously not a trade secret since it's available on
thousands of websites, T-shirts, neckties, and other media worldwide."

"We're confident the Supreme Court will recognize that DVD-CCA v.
Bunner is a classic First Amendment case, just as the Court of Appeal
did," said David Greene, Executive Director of the First Amendment Project
and main author of Bunner's legal briefs. "The trial court failed to apply
the commonly-recognized constitutional test for restrictions on the
publication of 'confidential' information in DVD-CCA v. Bunner when it
issued the preliminary injunction."

There are currently several cases
pending regarding DVD copying, it will be very important for the future what the
judges will rule. If circumventing the protection on movies is forbidden, even
for backups, this will likely also be valid for Blu-ray discs and its follow
ups.

Chances are that companies then will split up their software
and remove protection circumvention routines in the packages they sell, while
silently spreading them on e.g file sharing networks.

Source: Eff.org