NY DeCSS Case: Final Briefs Online

Iambic Pentametor writes "Defendants' brief is here and plaintiffs' is here. Openlaw has very comprehensive coverage including an ongoing discussion commenting on the briefs. The decision by Judge Kaplan is expected probably within a week."

Comments

Net censorship

[FascDot Killed My Pr]

I wonder if net filtering software allows its users to look at "online briefs"
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Let's look at the possibilites here

[Sentsix]

This is actually pretty clear cut, with three possible outcomes:

#1. Defendants Win:
The immediate result is widespread beer-drenched parties thrown by open-source/hacker/free-speech types, who cook hamburgers and use the remaining charcoal to burn record execs in effigy. The following day not only is DeCSS available everywhere, it also has a user friendly interface and over 15,000 skins. Within 48 hours there are over 1,500 posts about the subject on slashdot.

#1. Plaintifs Win:
The immediate result is widespread beer-drenched parties thrown by anyone who receives money from the movie industry. During the party the execs start to plan a "Running Man" type picture staring the 2600 crew (which ends with "that bastard Goldstien" being eaten alive by his own computer. The following day there are several thousand people of varying ages either in jail, or on the run trying to avoid incarceration. Within 48 hours there are over 1000 posts about the subject on slashdot (There would be more, but there's only so much bandwidth out of Canada).

#3. One side wins, the other appeals:
The immediate result everyone bitches about the ruling at beer-drenched parties. The following day there are over 1,500 posts about this subject on slashdot.

Bottom line? This lawsuit is nothing but a tool in the conspiracy by Hemos to raise Slashdot traffic. You heard it here first!

The Midnight Watch - All the news that's fit to ridicule:

Judges and Constitutionality

[rjh]

Every United States judge, without exception, is authorized to decide whether or not laws which come before them are Constitutional. The lowest magistrate (the lowest rung on the Federal judicial ladder) can declare laws unconstitutional (they never do this, of course--small worm, big freakin' hook, all that). District judges (the next ladder up) do it more often than magistrates do. Appellate judges are where the real judicial power is exercised; 99.9% of all judicial cases in the United States end at the appellate level.

We hear about Supreme Court decisions because the Supreme Court's jurisdiction is the entire United States, plus all of its territories and holdings. Appellate decisions only affect a few states; District and Magisterial decisions only affect the district in which they preside.

For instance, in Bernstein v. US, coming out of California District Court, District Judge Marilyn Patel declared certain portions of the ITAR/EAR to be unconstitutional. The very instant Judge Patel entered her ruling, those unconstitutional portions of ITAR/EAR were annulled--in fact, the instant she entered her ruling, those portions of ITAR/EAR were retroactively declared to have never existed. (Legally, unconstitutional laws are void "ab initio"--"from the very beginning". It's as if the laws were never passed.)

At some level of the Executive Branch, it was decided to appeal this decision. It went from a California District court to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers most of the West Coast. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed Judge Patel's ruling. Suddenly, those portions of ITAR/EAR were null and void throughout the entire Ninth Circuit.

Had the Executive Branch appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court heard the case, and the Supreme Court affirmed Judge Patel's ruling, those portions of ITAR/EAR would have become null and void throughout the entire United States, its territories and holdings.

Thoughts

[Ketzer]

From the MPAA's brief:

Indeed, defendant Corley (and other defense witnesses) established that: (1) the Content Scramble System ("CSS") is a technological measure that effectively controls access to, and copying of, plaintiffs' copyrighted works...

I would say "not so effectively controls..."

Anyway, I don't have any one specific point, just some thoughts.

My first impression is that the MPAA's looks like a professional legal brief, while the EFF's looks like a dull web-page.

They cite that they have been damaged by DeCSS, because it takes from them: the assurance of protection that CSS gives to their valuable, copyrighted digital content released on DVDs.

That's pretty weak. Much like demanding that your neighbors go around handcuffed. Sure, it restricts them from doing some things, (like watching DVDs on Linux) but it affords you the assurance of protection from being punched.

They follow this by pointing out the threat, as they see it: That with increasing compression techniques (in particular DivX) and hard drive space, movies may find their way into rapid free circulation.

They have a bit of a point there, in a few years, compressed mpeg video may be tossed around like mp3s are now. I don't think that mp3s have eliminated the CD market, nor do I expect DivX to eliminate the DVD market. At the least, there's a bunch of people out there with CD players and DVD Players who don't have bitchin' computers hooked up to the net via broadband and equipped with a terabyte of drive space. Unfortunately, this is a practical argument, not a legal one. As a geek, I keep looking at it from a technological standpoint. As soon as they show you the information, (movie or song) it's yours. You can screen capture video and record audio. It's really that simple. Sure, DeCSS is much more convenient, but it's not going to make a difference as far as copying goes.