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CA Supreme Court Saves LiViD, Pavlovich
joebeone writes "The California Supreme Court has suprisingly ruled that Matthew Pavlovich is not within their jurisdiction in the DVD-CCA's suit against his posting of DeCSS in relation to the development of the LiViD DVD player for open operating systems. What's surprising? It's surprising that they held that his posting of DeCSS was not actionable... (however the use of the program by users to circumvent CSS could be under the DMCA)."
I have heard lots and lots of this stuff for the US but what about Canada?
Can I play DVDs under Linux in Canada with LiViD legally?
On another topic that other law that was mentioned here last week I think it was, would help the use of the program in the US i think
What we see depends on mainly what we look for. -- John Lubbock Now search for that bug slave!
On the other hand, maybe we should keep it quiet.
My server is in CA, is yours?
their posting the DeCSS code which they use in their dvd player is legal, but because users using their dvd player are using DeCSS, their users are violating the DMCA, thus criminals?
that doesn't sound like much of a leap forward.
This is an unset area of law, based around the passage of a law surrounding a group of poorly-understood-by-the-general-populace and very new concepts. You will get inconsistent rulings on this subject, and will continue to do so for a very long time. Conservative judges, and corrupt judges with entertainment-industry links, will uphold the DMCA above and beyond the language in the DMCA itself. Liberal judges, and judges who actually understand the technical issues enough to see the DMCA is in fact about as direct a violation of constutional rights as you can get, will say the DMCA can't be enforced. None of this will be resolved until the supreme court picks up a DMCA case and strikes the DMCA down. (If the supremes uphold the DMCA, you will continue to get inconsistent rulings, as judges and juries alike look at the law, go "this is rediculous", and N-U-L-L-I-F-Y..)
There are DVD players for Linux. The problem arises when you realize the DVD consortium wants a license fee ($10,000, I think) for each type of "product" such as a software player.
In theory, someone could pay the $10K and release a closed-source plug-in for Ogle/MPlayer/Xine. However, I'm not sure if there are per-unit fees associated. There probably are and I don't think the consortium makes allowances for free software.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
We need to be extremely careful moving forward. Challenging such things as DeCSS and DMCA with the term 'open source' leads, just as it did here, to the ideal that the open source community is simply a group of software pirates.
There must be a point made, whether by press release or otherwise, that Open Source does not in anyway support the copyright infringement of any commercially available (or, for that matter, freely available) software. We need to make it clear that we are not advocates of breaking the law, as this judgement seems to suggest.
However, saying that "I am not guilty of copyright infridgement because I work for the open source community" is not a valid arguement. This is probably why it has been associated with piracy. Again, we must make the difference clear to everyone so they don't get the wrong impression.
On a similar note, since the Judges of the court obviously do not understand what Open Source is and labeled "us" as "rogue software pirates", is there any legal action we can take against the court in a defamation of character suit? It's obvious they have just degraded us and our cause without a viable reason.
Welley Corporation - SLM Scammers
Disclaimer: IANAL, but I'll give you my legal opinions anyway. ;-)
While I am all for this decision, it seems the major benefit is that it places additional legal hurdles before DVD CCA. They have to sue each non-Californian web site individually, in the state where that site resides. My guess is that the biggest hassle here as far as the DVD CCA is concerned is that each state has different laws, and the plaintiffs would have to show that posting the material was illegal in the state where the web site resides. That not only shoots the legal costs up sharply, but then you also risk having web site operators in states where posting such material is entirely legal and protected. (Never mind federal laws such as the DMCA that might also apply to a case like this.)
Of course, maybe the DVD CCA could sue from another state that has more "liberal" policies on what is within its jurisdiction.
The decision does NOT seem to make any statements about the legality of reverse-engineering CSS, or writing code to implement the DeCSS algorithm, or distributing that code. The court did not find that distributing DeCSS was legal, but rather that under these specific circumstances, Californian courts are not the ones to decide this. Not that I would have expected a more sweeping opinion given the specific focus of the question before the court.
Bottom line: This is a roadblock for DVD CCA and organizations that are similarly evil, but it is far from a conclusive win or even a sweeping victory -- at least that's how it looks from here. Any people with more legal expertise care to add to or correct these thoughts?
Not according to DCMA:
(f ) Reverse Engineering.--(1) Notwithstanding the provisions of subsection (a)(1)(A), a person who has lawfully obtained the right to use a copy of a computer program may circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a particular portion of that program for the sole purpose of identifying and analyzing those elements of the program that are necessary to achieve interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, and that have not previously been readily available to the person engaging in the circumvention, to the extent any such acts of identification and analysis do not constitute infringement under this title.
I am not a lawyer but it seems to me that the case should be thrown out.
"You helped our nation celebrate its bicentennial in 17 -- 1976." --George W. Bush, to Queen Elizabeth, Wash
Nope, it's had this case been filed in a Federal Court his fat would have bene grim. DMCA is a federal law, it's up to the federal courts to enforce it.
The DVDCCA took a winning case to a wrong court and lost. However, it doesn't prevent them from learning from this mistake and trying again.
The honorable Judge J. Baxter writes in dissent: ...
The record indicates that, by intentionally posting an unlicensed decryption code for the Content Scrambling System (CSS) on their Internet Web sites, defendant and his network of ``open source'' associates sought to undermine and defeat the very purposes of the licensed CSS encrytion technology
Wow! Makes free software sound like the mafia. (Those are his quotes around open source, btw.)
I think we (open source) have a major PR problem with the judiciary to address.
-- p
"DMCA does not cover software or hardware created BEFORE the begginning of 2000"
RTFL. You can write it (maybe), but you can't distribute it. It doesn't matter if the program was written in in the Nineteenth Century: If it's available for download today, the host is in violation of the DMCA.
You don't. Someone (a company) needs to pay the one-time licensing fee to make it legal. Then freely distribute the binary-only plugin.
You, as a user, wouldn't pay an additional fee. There are no royalties with DVD formats, only what is on them.
Hmmm... I need to send a letter to SuSE, Sun and RedHat. They seem to want to push into the desktop market and this is a big sticking point.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Case history:
- DVD CCA (Delaware corp w/HQ in CA) sues Matthew Pavlovich (individual in Iowa) for "misappropriating trade secrets" (DeCSS), and posting them on the LiVid website, seeking an injunction.
- MP files a motion contending CA has no jurisdiction.
- Appeals court overturns, and eventually gives a statement why the trial court should have jurisdiction.
- (This decision) CA Supreme Court decides the trial court doesn't have jurisdiction after all.
Summary of decision:- CA may exercise personal jurisdiction "if the defendant has such minimum contacts with the state that the assertion of jurisdiction does not violate ' "traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice" ' ".
- The "minimum contacts" test must be administered on a case-by-case basis -- it's not mechanical.
- There are three tests by which a court may exercise specific jurisdiction over a nonresident:
- the defendant purposefully availed of forum (CA) benefits;
- the controversy is related to the defendant's contacts with the forum;
- the assertion of jurisdiction comports with "fair play and substantial justice"
- It's not enough to show defendant knew his actions would cause harm in CA. Plaintiff has to establish that CA bears the brunt of the harm. There are several pages showing they don't.
- Pavlovich posted on a "Web site accessable to any person with Internet access. Pavlovich never worked in CA. He owned no property in CA, maintained no bank accounts in CA, and had no telephone listings in CA. Neither MP nor his company solicited or transacted any business in CA. The record also contains no evidence of any LiVid contacts with CA." The site was links only, no interactive features. There's no evidence that anyone in CA even visited. One interesting argument: he couldn't have known he'd be harming plaintiffs in CA since the DVD CCA were formed two months after the links went up.
- DVD CCA claims CA has jurisdiction because "he should have known that third parties may use the misappropriated code to illegally copy movies on DVDs and that licensees of the misappropriated technology resided in CA". [emphasis orig] Accepting this argument would lead to a ruling "in contravention of controlling US Supreme Court precedent". It would give CA jurisdiction over far too many tort cases.
- Nevertheless, "DVD CCA has the ability and resources to pursue Pavlovich in another forum such as Indiana or Texas. Our decision today does not foreclose it from doing so. Pavlovich may still face the music -- just not in CA."
Justices Brown, Kennard, Werdegar, and Moreno voted to overturn, Justices Baxter, George, and Chin dissented.This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.