-------- Original Message -------- Subject: EFF: Court Overturns Ban on Posting DVD Descrambling Code Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2004 14:49:17 -0800 From: Will Doherty <wild@private> Electronic Frontier Foundation Media Advisory For Immediate Release: Friday, February 27, 2004 Contact: Gwen Hinze Staff Attorney Electronic Frontier Foundation gwen@private +1 415 436-9333 x110 (office) Richard Wiebe Attorney Law Offices of Richard R. Wiebe wiebe@private +1 415 433-3200 x222 David Greene Executive Director and Staff Counsel First Amendment Project dgreene@private +1 510 208-7744 Court Overturns Ban on Posting DVD Descrambling Code No Evidence DeCSS Was a Trade Secret When Bunner Published San Jose, CA - A California appeals court today overturned a 1999 injunction against Andrew Bunner that prohibited him from distributing the DeCSS DVD decryption computer code, because the court found there was no evidence that DVD Content Scrambling System (CSS) technology was still a trade secret by the time that Bunner posted DeCSS code on his website. "We are thrilled that the Appeal Court recognized that the injunction restricting Bunner's freedom of speech was not justified," said Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Staff Attorney Gwen Hinze. "The court's ruling that there was no evidence that CSS was still a trade secret when Bunner posted DeCSS vindicates what we have said all along; DeCSS has been available on thousands of websites around the world for many years." "This long-delayed but gratifying victory sends a strong message to those who would try to misuse intellectual property laws and corporate power to stifle free speech on the Internet," said Richard Wiebe, who represented Bunner along with EFF. "The Court of Appeal correctly recognized the obvious conclusion that information that is in the public domain and that has been republished for months around the world can't be a trade secret." The DVD Copy Control Association (DVD-CCA) sued Bunner, together with hundreds of others, in 1999 for posting, or linking to the reverse-engineered DeCSS code. The California Supreme Court last year ruled that a preliminary injunction restraining publication of a computer program could only be justified in very narrow circumstances and sent the case back to the California Court of Appeal Sixth Circuit, which issued today's ruling, to decide whether the injunction against Bunner was justified. In a simultaneous proceeding in the Superior Court of California, the DVD-CCA sought to dismiss Bunner's motion for a summary judgment ruling that the injunction should have been lifted because any proprietary information in the DeCSS code was no longer a trade secret. Co-counsels with EFF in the Bunner case were: Richard Wiebe; David Greene and James Wheaton of the First Amendment Project; Thomas Moore of Tomlinson, Zisko, Morosoli, and Maser LLP; and Allonn Levy and Arthur Plank of Hopkins and Carley LLC. For this advisory: http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/DVDCCA_case/20040227_eff_pr.php DVD CCA v. Bunner case archive: http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/DVDCCA_case/ About EFF: The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading civil liberties organization working to protect rights in the digital world. Founded in 1990, EFF actively encourages and challenges industry and government to support free expression and privacy online. EFF is a member-supported organization and maintains one of the most linked-to websites in the world at http://www.eff.org/ -end- _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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