The case was brought by the Motion Picture Association of
America (MPAA), a body that represents the major movie studios in
the US. MPAA president Jack Valenti said yesterday:
"Today's landmark decision nailed down an
indispensable Constitutional and Congressional truth: It's wrong to
help others steal creative works. The court’s ruling is a victory
for consumers and for legitimate technology."
The New York court’s decision supported its earlier preliminary
injunction against Eric Corley, publisher of 2600, a hackers’
magazine. The MPAA is also suing a 15 Norwegian, Jon Johansen, who
wrote the code. The code has also been printed on the back of
T-shirts being sold by the group Copyleft, which itself is being
sued by the MPAA.
2600 said: “It wasn't completely unexpected… In the end, all of
our concerns about the First Amendment and freedom of speech went
right out the window.” The code in question is known as DeCSS and
it bypasses the security of DVDs, known as CSS. The case was
brought under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. 2600
said:
“Because DeCSS exists to bypass CSS, its
very existence violates the Digitial Millenium Copyright Act
(DMCA). It doesn't matter that DeCSS wasn't created as a pirating
tool whose purpose is to copy DVDs. It doesn't matter that DeCSS
was created so that people could view their own DVDs on their own
computer systems including those (such as Linux) for which no
"legal" player had been developed. The DMCA says that anything that
bypasses access control is in violation, regardless of how unfair
that access control may be… As we expected, this means we must now
fight the constitutionality of the DMCA.”
2600 announced its intention to appeal yesterday’s decision.
