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DeCSS Injunction Reversed In CA Case
kinesis writes: "For those of you following the California DeCSS case, a court of appeal just ruled in our favor, overturning the injunction imposed by a lower court. The court's opinion is available in DOC and PDF versions.
It's a great read for those who want to really understand the case. The conclusion is nicely summarized with this quote: 'In the case of a prior restraint on pure speech, the hurdle is substantially higher [than for an ordinary preliminary injunction]: publication must threaten an interest more fundamental than the First Amendment itself. Indeed, the Supreme Court has never upheld a prior restraint, even faced with the competing interest of national security or the Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial.'
" Or you can go straight to the PDF.
I told Valenti that we needed to pay those judges more. Ah well, I wonder how much an Amendment costs?
Best Slashdot Co
It's been so long since the right thing has happened in an intellectual property-related case, that I don't believe it.
Ashcroft locks up Appeals Court.
In an unprecedented move, Attorney General John Ashcroft locked up all the Appeals Court judges while waving his arms in the air screaming something about terrorists. In a later statement he made the comment "How could anyone imagine anyone but a terrorist thinking free speech was somehow more important than national security?". Reporters who asked provocotive questions were also taken away for correctional training.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
The fact that a medium of expression has a functional capacity should not preclude constitutional protection.... Computer source code, thought unintelligible to many is the preferred method of communication among
computer programmers. Because computer source code is an expressive means for the exchange of information and ideas about computer programming, we hold that it is protected by the First Amendment"
This confirms my theory that there are more sensible people in the world than I previously expected. I just loved the part where they upheld the belief that "computer source code" being an expressive means for the exchange of information among geeks. I mean, that just rocks..
Rapid Nirvana
for those who prefer text over .pdf or .doc, try here ....
Finally a small amount of sanity in this insane world. The DMCA and the legal clout that it gives big business may have another small crack now. But it seems everytime the ball gets rolling a little something stops it in its track. Just the idea of them trying to limit how I can watch a DVD or media that I legally obtained burns me up. I have just about had enough of the RIAA and MPAA and other big business shoving people around. I from this point on am not going to "buy" another cd or watch another movie that I don't get for free on the internet. But wait... don't jump to hasty conclusions about me or anyone else that is finally thinking this way. A common misconception in the world these days is that breaking the law is always wrong. WRONG. Many many times the morally correct thing to do is at odds with the "law". If the proper forum were available where appreciative listeners could pool money to send DIRECTLY to the artists that they enjoy listening to, I think many people would line up give their fair share. Its just that these strong arm tactics have me seeing red. NO ONE should be able to dictate how I listen to music or watch TV. Its a sad state of affairs when things have gotten so bad that I even feel animosity towards the cable company for upgrading my cable from analog to digital. Now I am forced to decide between one single show to watch or tape unless I pay more money for another decoder. It would not have been to this point had all of the other things not been going on in this industry. I will resist HDTV until the bitter end. What I watch is my own business... if I want to fast forward past commercials on a show I taped, so be it. I'm just plain tired of being pushed around by these people, and until there is a better way, I simply will not support it/them any longer, and I argue that this does not make me a bad person. It simply means that I am choosing the lesser of two evils. It would take a few big name artists to buck the system and back their listeners and drop out of contracts with RIAA and allow listeners to pay them directly but it has to start somewhere. The bands themselves are the logical starting point. Lawsuits will fly. People will lose money but in the long run we will all come out better than we were before if this were to happen.
Digital is, by definition, imperfect. Analog is the way to go.
notice the quote:
"We express no opinion as to whether permanent injunctive relief may be obtained
after a full trial on the complaint, as that issue is not before us."
This only prevents the preliminary injunction, it does not prevent a full trial....
Well, it is certainly a good thing that the Supreme Court holds that a language having a "functional aspect" is still protected speech.
Now I can rest easy that when good english language processors come about and all human language is source code we will still have a first amendment.
Besides, it was really taking my little brother a long time to decrypt some of my DVDs with the instructions I told him in English.
Duhhhh....
>>Or you can go straight to the PDF.
Aren't we supposed to be boycotting Adobe?
Linux User #296508 Get Counted!
[C]omputer source code, though unintelligible to many, is the preferred method of communication among computer programmers. Because computer source code is an espressive means for the exchagne of information and ideas about computer programming, we hold that it it protected by the first amendment. (junger v. Daley (6th Cir. 2000)))
This is too cool. As another posted said earlier, pinch me. I hope andrew bunner goes after the DVDCCA in an Anti-SLAPP (abuse of process) lawsuit if he comes out of this unscathed.
Chris DiBona
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
Don't worry, Amendments are cheap.
We have lots of Congressman and Senators paid for.
Maybe we can borrow a President from Microsoft for a while so we don't have to wait for our 2/3rds majority to be paid for.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
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# 472-byte qrpff, Keith Winstein and Marc Horowitz
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# usage: perl -I
# where k1..k5 are the title key bytes in least to most-significant order
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b=map{ord qB8,unqb8,qT,_^$a[--D]}@INC;s/...$/1$&/;Q=unqV,qb
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You know, that old constitution thing you have is pretty cool. I wish we had one.
"...The fact that a medium of expression has a functional capacity should not preclude constitutional protection... [C]omputer source code, though unintelligible to many, is the preferred method of communication among computer programmers. Because computer source code is an expressive means for the exchange of information and ideas of computer programming, we hold that it is protected by the First Amendment..."
Junger v. Daley (6th Cir. 2000) 209 F. 3d 481, 484-485
Bush Lies Watch
So essentially, nobody ever boasted that they reverse-engineered the thing, or that they clicked on a license... But simply by saying "CSS sucks" and "the DMCA is a stupid law, I should be allowed to post whatever I want", you can find yourself the defendant in a trial for which the plaintiff has minimal evidence against you?
Those nasty kids. We didn't have any real evidence against them, but they were so disrespectful.
"Like the CSS decryption software, DeCSS is a writing composed of computer source code which describes an alternative method of decrypting CSS encrypted DVDs. Regardless of who authored the program, DeCSS is a written expression of the author's ideas and information about decryption of DVDs without CSS. If the source code were "compiled" to create object code, we would agree that the resulting composition of zeroes and ones would not convey ideas. (See generally Junger v. Daley, supra, 209 F.3d at pp. 482483.) That the source code is capable of such compilation, however, does not destroy the expressive nature of the source code itself. Thus, we conclude that the trial court's preliminary injunction barring Bunner from disclosing DeCSS can fairly be characterized as a prohibition of "pure" speech. "
Conclusion:
Code == Free Speech
Compiled Code != Free Speech
So what else is new? Other than this fact is now recognized by the court?
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
No, you cannot.
This reversed the preliminary injunction only. That means that DeCSS can be distributed in source code form. If you read the PDF carefully (hint, hint) the appeals court says that, indeed, the trial court might decide to assess financial penalties for the improper disclosure, if any is found to exist. The case is still headed to trial--just without the odious preliminary injunction.
The other posters who pointed out how bad a ruling the PI was are right; it was just a matter of time before someone with judicial authority understood the "if it can be put on a T-shirt, it's speech" argument.
There are still a lot of scary, possible outcomes relating to reverse-engineering, jurisdictions which govern license agreements, and other issues. We're NOT out of the woods on this one yet, folks.
"If the source code were "compiled" to create object code, we would agree that the resulting composition of zeroes and ones would not convey ideas. (See generally Junger v. Daley, supra, 209 F.3d at pp. 482-483.) That the source code is capable of such compilation, however, does not destroy the expressive nature of the source code itself. Thus, we conclude that the trial court's preliminary injunction barring Bunner from disclosing DeCSS can fairly be characterized as a prohibition of "pure" speech."
Oh really, didn't realize slashdot went to court -- oh wait -- they made it into page 4 of the ruling!
Of interest is the explanation as to why source code is a valid means of communication and should be given first ammendment protection -- it's simply the most efficient means for programmers to communicate ideas about encryption. Even a much simpler concept, say a regular expression would take much longer to say in words than it would take to just write the damn regexp.
One thing that really annoyed me was DVDCSS's argument that there wasn't any evidence indicating that Bunner would suffer serious consequences if he'd have to stop his disclosure of DeCSS code vs what would happen if it were freely copied everywhere -- irreperable damage to DVDCSS. First, the damage has been done, although I suppose that there cuold be new dvd players coming out with that Xing master key without having paid licensing fees to DVDCSS. Second, and most importantly, being denied the right to free speech is some pretty darn serious stuff to have to live with. You can't put a dollar figure on that, and you shouldn't have to in order to justify the importance of your rights to some corporation.
I'm glad the judge ruled in "our favor".
The last line of the ruling:
The order granting a preliminary injunction is reversed. Defendant Andrew Bunner shall recover his appellate costs.
Of course, that only covers his appellate costs, but it's at least something.
I assume that the ruling, if the Supreme Court doesn't hear it, will stand, but that another circuit court may interpret differently, in which case it will eventually go to the Supreme Court. Looks like it's time to donate to the EFF, so that they will have the funds to argue the case at the next level.
Did anyone ever really doubt the 6th district? I mean, aren't those honors from Berkeley, mostly? Seriously, all this chatter and breathing of sighs of relief is a little embarassing. Expect the best from your justice system. And dont be so surprized when you get it. This is still America.
From Page 13:
"The "fair use" exception permits copying and use
of a copyrighted work "for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting,
teaching . . . , scholarship, or research" under certain circumstances. (17 U.S.C., 107.)
It "offers a means of balancing the exclusive rights of a copyright holder with the
public's interest in dissemination of information affecting areas of universal concern,
such as art, science and industry. Put more graphically, the doctrine distinguishes
between 'a true scholar and a chiseler who infringes a work for personal profit.' "
(Wainwright Sec. v. Wall Street Transcript Corp. (1977) 558 F.2d 91, 94.)
. . . the statutory prohibition on disclosures of trade secrets is of infinite
duration rather than "for limited Times." While the limited period of copyright protection
authorized by the United States Constitution ensures that copyrighted material will
eventually pass into the public domain, thereby serving the public interest by increasing
its availability to the general public, the UTSA bars disclosure of a trade secret for a
potentially infinite period of time, thereby ensuring that the trade secret will never be
disclosed to the general public."
I would think that you can use this citation to argue that copyrights, while supposed to be limited in scope, are now becoming de facto limitless, and thus are not 'for limited times'.
If you read the decision, you'll see that the judges are not establishing that the First Amendment always or typically trumps Copyright, just that the First Amendment trumps prior restraint in the form of preliminary injunctions in a trade secret case of this kind. The appeals court could still conceivaly come back and approve a final judgement against the distribution of DeCSS, and the court will surely uphold actions against individuals distributing copyrighted DVD materials through benefit of DeCSS.
Which puts matters back into the interesting realm of practical enforcement of copyright on an open Internet.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
Does anyone outh there know of any set top DVD players out there that use DeCSS instead of licensing CSS from the DVDCCA? I'm thinking of buying my mother a DVD player for Christmas and I'd perfer not to give the DVDCCA any more money then is nescissary.
Yes, it's way to scary to program in assembler now-a-days. The human brain can't store both Perl and Assembler code, so one of them has to go.
Your analogy limps pretty badly. I think that few people would deny that plans and blueprints are preferred methods of communications among civil engineers. The bridge itself would be more like object code, which only the truly l33t use to communicate with other humans. Source code, on the other hand, is perfectly valid means of communication. Ever see a civil engineering textbook with an actual bridge in it? How about a programming book with source code?
You should worry about this -- yes, it's clearly unconstitutional, and with time and money it would obviously be overturned.
However -- look how long it has taken. Two years, I believe. The problem is that large companies and consortiums of companies can run roughshod over individuals with impunity. Sure, it'll be overturned if someone can scrape together enough money or get enough support to go to a group like the EFF, but it takes *years* to do so. In the meanwhile, their business practices continue unabated.
Will right prevail eventually? Kind of, maybe. But the point is that they shouldn't have the nerve to try to forbid people from playing their own DVDs with any software they choose. You buy the DVD, you should have the right to play it and enjoy it anywhere at any time. You're not infringing on their rights by doing so -- but they're infringing on yours by trying to limit what you can and can't do.
People *should* go ballistic when their rights are trampled on. Thank God this guy was willing to fight.
While you have certain rights on paper as a citizen of the United States, if no one stands up for those rights it's the same as not having them at all. Look at what Ashcroft and his cronies are trying to do... until the Terrorist Act makes its way to the Supreme court, it'll be used to abuse the rights of many people -- I guarantee it. People who are not a threat to the country or our safety, just people who are nuisances to large corporations and/or the present administration. I have no doubt that that law will be overturned eventually -- but probably five to six years from now, after doing amazing damage to people who don't deserve it. Someone will challenge it and prevail, others without the money to go through the process of appeals and whatnot will simply have to take their lumps or worse.
If that's not worth getting upset about, I don't know what is.
Yes, it's a win, but the court made it perfectly clear that it holds no opinion on the REAL stakes in this war.
The real stakes are the loss of the DVDCCA monopoly over permissable player features.
The entire DVD industry, through the DVDCCA, have devised a set of mutual licensing handcuffs that they are all to wear -- DVD player manufacturers may not manufacture DVD players with unencrypted digital outputs. They may not manufacture and sell region-free players. This keeps the ability to make fair use of DVDs out of the hands of consumers.
If the trade secret status of the decryption algorithms is found to be lost, then third parties, not bound by restrictive DVDCCA licenses, may well be free to offer DVD players with such consumer-friendly features as unencrypted digital outputs, no region codes, and the ability to fast-forward over unwanted trailers and FBI "notices", while the entire current DVD player industry will be unable to match those features, due to their contracts with the DVDCCA, without in effect dissolving the entire licensing structure and having to compete in, horrors, an open, unrestricted marketplace.
Those are the real stakes. They have nothing to do with copyright infringement, and everything to do with what may turn out to be a "suicide pact" amongst all DVD hardware manufacturers.
The court offers soothing, reassuring words to the DVDCCA and current player manufacturers:
We express no opinion as to whether permanent injunctive relief may be obtained after a full trial on the complaint, as that issue is not before us.9 We further have no occasion to decide whether damages for Bunner's disclosure would be appropriate in these circumstances. DVDCCA may, of course, bring an action for damages or even injunctive relief against anyone who violates the Act by conduct rather than speech.
"violates the Act by conduct" presumably means to manufacture an unlicensed player, and that's the real reason that the MPAA/DVDCCA is spending millions of dollars suppressing DeCSS.
Computer source code, thought unintelligible to many is the preferred method of communication among computer programmers.
"that's like saying bridges are the preferred method of communication among civil engineers. code is for compilers, text is for people."
Source code *is* text, except in languages like National Instruments' LabView.
Blueprints and engineering drawings, not bridges, are a suitable method of communication between civil engineers. They can be "converted" to bridges by builders reading the blueprints. That does not destroy their value as a medium of communication.
Source code is a way to express an algorithm in a way that it may be *both* understood by humans and converted into executable form.
The court specifically recognized that the corresponding object code would not be a medium of human-human communication, but rather in the nature of a mechanical device.
The quote you made from the decision is in the context of discussions of encryption. Surely, for a complicated encryption algorithm, the clearest, most precise, and most unambiguous expression would be a code-like representation, whether in pseudo-code or a real programming language.
Are you suggesting that bridge designers communicating with bridge builders by text alone would work? Do you think the bridge would at all resemble the true intentions of the designer? Would it even be safe to walk across? I believe we would clearly prefer that communication to take place through accurate drawings.
Likewise, discussions between cryptographers and people implementing encryption systems would almost certainly be most accurate if conducted using code-like constructions. Accurate descriptions of encryption technology are essential to avoid potentially serious errors, such as security flaws. Therefore, communication in source code is far preferable to ordinary text.
OK, I've read thru the PDF of the decision.
IANAL, but it seems to me that it boils down to the appelate court saying (with a lot of other things):
Source Code is Free Speech. DCMA cannot override the right of free speech, especially if it does not involve the use of slander, libel, or "fighting words".
Therefore, you cannot have a trade secret law, especially one from a state, override the constitutional right to free speech. Ever.
This implies that I can thereby describe WINE as free speech, and MSFT can't sue me for trade secrets, since it's an alternate method for responding to inputs and outputs.
This also implies that DCMA is functionally flawed on a constitutional basis.
This lastly implies that the only way to overturn this is to have the US Supreme Court or some higher court overturn this decision.
Good.
Time to start coding!
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
it seems that they are actually using Trade Secret law to suppress DECSS, not the DMCA...
Not just Trade Secret Law, but California's Trade Secret Law, which is quite different from that of other states.
I think you're correct that the appeals court did not directly rule on the use of the DCMA to suppress free speech, but they implied that even the DCMA must bow to the constitution, since it is not a constitutional amendment in its own right. Free speech wins against all but other constitutional laws, from what I can gather of the decision.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
For the first time in a couple years I'm experiencing a glimmer of hope that the checks and balances in our system of governance may actually wind up protecting my rights -- as a programmer, computer & software user, and free citizen of the US -- from the despicable encroachment currently being realized at the hand of law enforcement agencies and especially private corporate interests.
Of course, after Bush v. Gore, y'all forgive me if my cynicism WRT to the Supreme Court keeps this glimmer of hope faint indeed.
Quick. Someone at RedHat, Mandrake, or some other distribution put out a DVD player package. Make a big stink about "innovation" and "giving the customer what they want" If the govt. tells you to stop, counter with:
1) "stop what?"
2) "it is too tightly integrated w/ the OS"
3) "we need to innovate"
4) "OK, we'll change the name of the program"
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
The real obstacle ahead is the DMCA, which gives legislative weight to EULAs. In this case they weren't challenging the DMCA. The court sidestepped talking about the DMCA issue by claiming that they were not going to rule on whether Jon Johannsen's reverse engineering in Norway was "proper". But that's the real problem here: we are still being denied our "fair use" of software, and it's not even clear whether people in countries with less restrictive laws can exercise those rights for us.
It doesn't look good in this area to me. I doubt the DMCA will be overturned since the issue here is not "free spech" vs "trade secrets", but "IP rights" vs "fair use". IP rights are guaranteed in the constitution and its not clear that "fair use" is. The best we can hope for is that some court will rule that the constitution both guarantees those IP rights but also limits those as well (a la "fair use") and thus EULAs can't impose Draconian rules on how to use software.
Is a "trade secret" a legally protected entity, and not just "this thing we're not telling anyone, because it's important they don't know about it"?
I thought the algorithms stopped being "trade secrets" as soon as they were publically know.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
That was a very interesting read. I do like stories that have a happy ending. :)
What was most interesting was the distinction made between copyrighted works and trade secrets.
Since copyrighted works have a "fair use" policy, it is clear why the DVDCCA attacked under the premise of a "Trade secret" violation. However, the strategy backfired. severely:
My favorite quote (2nd hand source noted) was this:
"'If a threat to national security was insufficient to warrant a prior restraint in New York Times Co. v. United States, the threat to plaintiff's copyrights and trade secrets is woefully inadequate.' (Religious Technology Center v. Lerma (E.D.Va. 1995) 897 F.Supp. 260, 263.)"
Ouch, indeed! This may mean the eventual demise of the California Trade Secrets Act, as its scope is to far-reaching.
What was of interest, however, is that there was no discussion of the DMCA, which may have aided the cause of the DVDCCA. Perhaps the DCDCCA did not want to use that trump card, for fear that their case may rise to a federal court, and bring the DMCA under scrutiny.
Why is that interesting? The DVDCCA must have felt that their strongest case did not lie in protection under the DMCA
(chapter 12, section 1201, subsection b), aware of the (obvious) orthogonality of the DMCA vs Frist Amendment, but rather in trying to re-address the issue under the pretenses of a trade secret.
Oh, BTW, here is that bit from the DMCA to which I referred:
"ADDITIONAL VIOLATIONS.
(1) No person shall manufac-ture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any
technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof,..."
Of couse, IANAL (but I play one on slashdot!).
-D
"If the source code were compiled to create object code, we would agree that the resulting composition of zeroes and ones would not convey ideas."
This is a good example of "dicta", meaning a comment on an issue that is not before the court (at least this court didn't think it was before it -- I agree it may have actually been wrong about that).
Of course, it's difficult to understand how DeCSS could disclose any secrets if it's a meaningless string of 1's and 0's with no "conveyed ideas". What does that say about copyrightability of binary software, let alone the DVD movies, which are also 1's and 0's. Of course, DeCSS was created by somebody extracting the ideas from just such a compiled object code, so perhaps if the Court had been briefed on this subject it's dicta would be different.
Kaplan heard extensive expert testimony on that very point. The one thing Kaplan actually did buy off on is that the journey from human thought to speech to source code to object code is a continuum.
DeCSS is not source code, but rather a precompiled Windows executable!
Many people have distributed just the executable, but I'm baffled to hear you suggest that there is no source code. There is, it's in C, it's widely available and it's under the GPL no less.
Many people predicted early on that the C source code would be made legal, while the binary would not be. Of course, DeCSS is completely irrelevenet now. libdvd, drip and their peers are much more robust.
Dur-hey.
This is because those of us who actually understand these machines have realized their economic implications, and that they make copyrights obsolete.
Computers are designed to copy things. Indeed, computers as we understand them today would be useless if they lacked the ability to copy data and move it around. What the Feudal Intellectual Property Lords are trying to do is tell you, down to the smallest detail, what you can and can't make copies of, and what you can and can't do with those copies.
Consider the program Cthugha, which is an audio visualization program. It takes the digital representation of the music on CD and turns it into a light and color show. The IP Lords assert that, unless you have been granted explicit permission by them to do something with "their" music, you should be held criminally accountable. They have never granted explicit permission for you to run "their" music through a color organ. Hence, copyright violation.
Further, since the output of Cthugha is directly related to the musical input, the output could be construed as a derivative work (since there is no new "creative material", only a purely mechanical translation from audio space to visual space). Absent a license, derivative works are expressly prohibited by copyright law. Hence, using Cthugha is a copyright violation; and Cthugha could be held as a device whose sole purpose is to violate copyrights, and would be banned. (And after all, why should Cthugha's authors profit even reputationally from a color organ that would be useless without "their" music, when the major labels should be able to make money by selling you one?)
This is how adherents to current IP law think. This is not reasonable. This is not forward-thinking. This is not socially redeeming in any way. This is stupid. It is reductio ad absurdum, except that it is being taken seriously. On the contrary, it merits nothing but ridicule.
That's why you're seeing so little regard for, "traditional IP laws and rights." It's because they don't merit respect. The era of ubiquitous and zero-cost manufacturing, as heralded by the computer, makes them irrelevant and obsolete.
Please note extremely carefully: I am not saying artisans and inventors should not be justly compensated for their creative works. But the "traditional" laws we have in place for doing this no longer have any realistic bearing on the real world, since the machines themselves defy the fundamental assumptions made by the law. The whole system needs to be scrapped and re-designed anew.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
?!?
He did release source code to DeCSS. What do you think everyone was mirroring?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Certainly, this is a victory for the open source crowd. The idea that source code is speech is so natural to us as to be common sense. Having that view upheld by the court is indeed a triumph of law.
However, I'm afraid I have to put a damper on the fun. The court ruled that source code is speech; compiled executables received no such protection. As such, posession of the DeCSS source code is legal, but use or posession of binaries, or even compilation of source (which would produce a binary) is not legal. "You can have it, but you can't use it."
As a practical matter ( WARNING! I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice! If you try this don't say I told you it was OK! If ever there was a time for the BLINK tag, it's this disclaimer...), since you can posess the source code, there is nothing to realistically stop you from using the binaries. In theory, when the system works right, you cannot be searched without a warrant, which requires probable cause to obtain. If you give the feds probable cause, you deserve what you get, but if you keep your mouth shut and use the software quitely in your home, nobody should be able to get a warrant, and you should not be subject to prosecution (under the rule of "it's only illegal if you get caught"). This would also rule out binary distribution--draws attention to yourself. ( Another BLINK disclaimer: I am not advocating breaking any law. I am merely offering my uninformed interpretation of the legal system. ) The DMCA has not been overturned here, it has just been found not to apply to source code. And for those who are thinking what I'm thinking, interpreted languages aren't a back door. You may be able to posess the Perl version of DeCSS, which is executed from source (for all practical purposes), but execution would be circumvention, and the DMCA says "no" to that.
Good points from the case:
Bad points:
Brief summary, in my own words: you can have it, but you can't use it.
"Make it ten--I am only a poor corrupt official."
--Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), Casablanca
``Code is for compilers, text is for people''?
No.
A natural language like English is, of course, the preferred means of communication for informal discourse. Natural languages, however, are often too ambiguous and verbose to function well when expressing precise algorithms.
Those of you who are programmers, you tell me: which is easier to understand, the DeCSS code in C, or the same code in haiku? (I think you can find the latter off Dr. Felten's homepage at Princeton.) Which is easier to work with?
Taken at its face value and out of context, the court's statement is going to be somewhat ridiculous, yes. However, that does not change the fact that programming languages are as useful for communicating algorithms between people as they are for communicating algorithms from a person to a computer.