Hollywood group asks judge to seal courtroom in DVD-copying case http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10227195-38.html?part=rss&subj=news&ta g=2547-1_3-0-5
SAN FRANCISCO--A Hollywood trade group asked a federal judge on Friday to kick the public out of a courtroom, saying confidential information about DVD encryption would be disclosed. An attorney for the DVD Copy Control Association, which is involved in a lawsuit here over DVD-backup software sold by RealNetworks, said details about the technology used to encrypt DVDs justified the unusual request. "The MPAA is trying to seal proprietary specifications," said DVD-CCA attorney Reginald Steer, referring to the Motion Picture Association of America, another party to the case. Steer said the trade secrets related to licensing technology and CSS, or Content Scrambling System, which is an algorithm used to encrypt DVDs. DVD-CCA once filed a lawsuit against programmer Jon Johansen, who wrote a DVD-descrambling utility that circumvented CSS--a suit that had the unintended consequence of publicizing the code widely, including on ties, T-shirts, and at least one haiku poem. The MPAA, the lobbying group for the six largest film studios, alleges that RealDVD violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) because it bypasses the copy protection built into DVDs. The DMCA generally restricts companies from developing products that circumvent antipiracy protections, but Real says that its RealDVD product complies with the law. It's unclear exactly what information concerns the MPAA and DVD-CCA. Because Johansen's DeCSS code--which was the subject of an injunction nine years ago by a court in New York--is so widely distributed including through a online gallery published by a Carnegie Mellon University researcher, it may be difficult for Hollywood to claim that anything about CSS is confidential. On the other hand, the lawyers may stand a better chance of arguing that specific contracts are confidential. The case is taking place before U.S. District Judge Marilyn Patel, who said she would wait until later in the day to make a formal ruling about whether to close the courtroom. Patel's initial response, though, seemed skeptical. She joked that if DVD-CCA and the MPAA wanted to close the courtroom, "You should have gotten yourself a private judge. This is an open forum." Under long-standing U.S. law, courtrooms are open by default. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which is binding on Patel, has said that judges considering closing a courtroom or sealing records "must provide sufficient notice to the public and press to afford them the opportunity to object or offer alternatives. If objections are made, a hearing on the objections must be held as soon as possible." Once that hearing is held, the courtroom can only be closed if specific conditions are met, including that there are no alternatives that are practical. Also, the judge must "make specific factual findings," and not just claim it was necessary. CNET News' publisher, CBS Interactive, may challenge any courtroom closure. CNET intervened last year in federal court in a case pitting Facebook against ConnectU to unseal documents, a dispute that ended up before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. *********************************** * POST TO MEDIANEWS@ETSKYWARN.NET * *********************************** Medianews mailing list Medianews@etskywarn.net http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
