2600 Appeal Rejected

blankmange writes "Wired is reporting that 2600's appeal has been rejected by a federal appeals court. "The Second Circuit Court of Appeals said in a one-line ruling that it was not going to revisit an earlier decision in which 2600 was found to be unlawfully distributing a DVD-descrambling utility. In January 2000, eight movie studios sued the legendary hacker quarterly for posting the DeCSS.exe utility, which decodes DVDs and allows them to be viewed on a Linux computer." The magazine now has 90 days to file a Supreme Court appeal." The Appeals court did not have to take the case, and they didn't. 2600 can appeal to the Supreme Court, but they don't have to take the case either - it's looking more and more as though Kaplan's ruling will stand.

Comments

Re:Is this any surprise?

[eyegor]

My car is capable of going over a hundred miles an hour. I can also use it to run over hapless pedestrians. Yet I do neither (at least not on purpose)

I own guns. I'm capable of all sorts of mischief. I choose not to.

I own a baseball bat. I don't attack people with it. Sometimes I even hit baseballs with it.

Decss is a nice tool that I can use to store my favorite DVD on my laptop and watch it when I'm on travel without dragging a bunch of extra stuff around. I don't steal movies on DVD... I certainly could, I chose not to.

Just because you can use a tool that has a legitmate purpose to break the law doesn't mean you will do so.

Plus, who has time to download some sucky dvd rip anyway? Life's too short, I'd rather plunk down the $20 or so and have a nice library. It's retarded to spend all that time stealing a movie then pay big bucks for a writable DVD.

Re:2600 cant get no respect

[Seth Finkelstein]

The "image" battle was a problem way before the appeal level. In the original ruling, the court said:

In the final analysis, the dispute between these parties is simply put if not necessarily simply resolved.

Plaintiffs have invested huge sums over the years in producing motion pictures in reliance upon a legal framework that, through the law of copyright, has ensured that they will have the exclusive right to copy and distribute those motion pictures for economic gain. They contend that the advent of new technology should not alter this long established structure.

Defendants, on the other hand, are adherents of a movement that believes that information should be available without charge to anyone clever enough to break into the computer systems or data storage media in which it is located.

Judge Kaplan wasn't exactly shy about his views, no sirreee bob ...

Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)