IP: FREE SPEECH WILL BE FOCUS OF DVD BATTLE: Edupage, April 30, 2001

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

>This week, a federal appeals court will hear the film industry's
>case against 2600 magazine, which published an article that
>included links to DeCSS, a computer code that can descramble the
>encryption on DVDs. U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled last
>year that the publication of the DeCSS code was illegal by the
>terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA) and
>ordered 2600 to remove its links. In its appeal, sponsored by
>the Electronic Frontier Foundation, 2600 argues that publishing
>the DeCSS code is, by itself, not an act of piracy, but rather
>free speech. Furthermore, 2600 argues that the DMCA does not
>allow for traditional "fair use" of copyrighted materials and is,
>therefore, unconstitutional. The appeal is backed by the ACLU,
>over 70 law professors, the American Library Association, and
>others. The film industry and its supporters, which include the
>Justice Department and the National Football League, maintain
>that DeCSS is a tool that will be used primarily for the pirating
>and subsequent online distribution of movies.
>(USA Today, 30 April 2001)



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