Okay, I am going out on a limb and will say that the attached article describes
the most important free speech case effecting economic power in the new
information economy we have seen. This suit seeks to prevent information on how
to break the copy protection on DVDs from circulating on the Web.
In every other injunction legally issued in intellectual property cases, the
party enjoined were enjoying direct economic gains from their use of the
plaintiff's allegedly infringed or stolen intellectual property. If this case
is upheld, we are moving into a new age where the government will use legal
injunctions to enforce the ignorance needed to sustain the economic monopolies
of the IP owners.
Nathan Newman
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
=======================================
January 22, 2000
Judge Bars DVD Copier From Websites
By The Associated Press
SANTA CLARA, Calif. (AP) -- A judge has ordered Web site operators to stop
disseminating a program that makes it easy to copy DVD movies and audio discs, a
victory for the digital video and film industries.
The software, called DeCSS, allows users to unlock the security code on DVDs and
copy movies to personal computers.
A DVD trade group sued the Web site operators, alleging theft of trade secrets.
Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge William Elfving issued a preliminary
injunction Friday barring the sites from offering DeCSS to users. He had refused
last month to grant a temporary restraining order pending hearings on the trade
group's lawsuit.
His ruling follows a similar decision Thursday by a federal judge in New York,
who ruled that three Web sites posting DeCSS had violated the 1998 Digital
Millennium Copyright Act.
Internet activists said Elfving's decision abridged the Web site operators' free
speech rights, but he disagreed.
``If the court does not immediately enjoin the posting of this proprietary
information, the (industry's) right to protect this information as a secret will
surely be lost,'' Elfving wrote.
Jeffrey Kessler, lead attorney for the DVD Copy Control Association trade group,
said the decision ``establishes that the rules of intellectual property apply on
the Internet, just like in all areas of commerce.''
Kessler was not worried the program would continue to circulate in defiance of
the court order. ``Most people are law-abiding,'' he said.
The lawsuit was filed last month against 27 named and 72 unnamed ``John Doe''
defendants.
Lawyers for the site operators said the ruling was an affront to their belief in
open sharing of technology.
``This isn't about hacking or privacy. It's about sharing legitimate information
and code developed in the open-source community,'' said Tom McGuire, a spokesman
for the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation.
McGuire said his group would contest both rulings.
