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News.com Links to DeCSS Program
zorglubxx writes "In less than a week News.com has published 2 articles ([Oct 3] and [Oct 7]) talking about copyright law and the DMCA where they LINK to DeCSS. Not source but compiled Windows version called DeCSS.exe. News.com know that 2600 lost their fight for linking to DeCSS so I wonder why they are doing this. Trying to make a point? Civil disobedience? An honest mistake?" Update: 10/08 02:51 GMT by T : An anonymous reader writes "In the time between when I read the first and second referenced articles, the links were updated to point the DeCSS gallery rather than DeCSS.exe"
Here in Norway, DeCSS co-author Jon Johansen has become somewhat of an icon in the fight for rights in the digital age. There's an interview with him here, in which he speaks about how he got involved with DeCSS, and the whole thing about the controversion trial. Also, the EFF has supported him tremendously with legal assistance. Their official Jon Johansen page is here.
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
cnn.com did link to DeCSS at one point. When people noticed, and pointed out how hypocritical this was the link was taken down, of course.
You bet they'd get sued. CBS, ABC, NBC, et al get served on a regular basis, sometimes for being unwitting, others for a clear display of corporate disobedience. 60 Minutes, a CBS program, has been the target of many such. Sadly, they've toned down their desire to lock horns (probably advice from their legal department to the producer, i.e. "The show is getting expensive to defend, stop revealing damning things about people and businesses.")
Regarding the original post:
Trying to make a point? Civil disobedience? An honest mistake?"
Yes, Declan makes clear his position:
I don't think a clue-by-four could make his position anymore clear.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Back in 1999, a whole bunch record companies(including sony, virgin, warner etc.(their Danish departments)) sued two Danish guys for maintaining a list of links to MP3 files from their web site.
The weird thing about this case was that all the focus was on the guys maintaining a link list, none of the sites who actually committed the crimes was sued(meaning the sites who actually did the ripping and hosting of the music).
I can understand why they sued the linking guys, BUT(huuuuge but) they should have went for a site shutdown plus maybe a minor fine. They didn't, they sued them for lost profit. Which is the exact same paragraphs that you would get sued by if you copied/ripped the music.
The whole case was build around they where linking directly to the mp3 files(hosted on various warez sites), and they eventually got them convicted(to pay 100000 DKr(roughly 12500$)) on this fact. This of course, effectively meaning that linking directly to illegal files is, here in little old Denmark, considered as serious a offences as making the files available.
So if CNET was doing this in Denmark, they could be in trouble.
If any of you read Danish, you can find the complete court transcript here:
http://sql.dklaw.dk/vl-dom/