Supreme Court to Take Up DeCSS Case

geekee writes "CNET has posted an article claiming the US Supreme Court will take up a 1999 case involving individuals posting DeCSS on web sites based in the US. In November, the California Supreme Court had ruled that Matthew Pavlovitch could not be sued in CA since he's not a CA resident 'with no substantial contact with California'. The injunction placed before the start of the CA trial will remain in effect. The case is essentially about juristiction when attempting to prosecute a number of defendants simultaneously in order to save on legal fees."

Comments

what about my backups!

[Tenchi-kun]

What I would like to know is how this is going to effect the consumer, because if I remember correctly, any consumer may create a copy of a movie/cd/software that they own and use that "backup" copy in order to preserve the orginal copy of the media. I remember the arguement that the MPAA had when VCRs initially came out, as well as the arguements about audio casettes as well. I don't see how making a copy of your DVDs, for your own personal use, is any different.

I can understand that they are fighting this because you can send out bootleg copies of movies on the internet, but you have to wonder, if the internet wasn't as prevelant in the USA as it is, would we even be hearing about this?

Re:what about my backups!

[LostCluster]

The problem is the way fair use is worded. It's not "You have a right to create a backup." It's closer to "If you do create a backup, you haven't violated the law by doing so."

The xxAA's can't ram through a law ending that backup exception, that'd smell funny and no representative would vote for it. So what they put instead into the DMCA is a restriction that makes it illegal to publish instructions on how to break any encryption when its used to protect a copyrighted work. If you can't decrypt the data in order to make your backup copy, it's impossible to make that backup copy.

People aren't fighting for the affirmative right to make a backup copy for one reason... people falsely think we already have it.

Re:what about my backups!

[tswinzig]

This is why this whole case is stupid.

The MPAA claims they want to stop pirates. But you don't need to decrypt a DVD's contents to pirate the movie. Just burn exact duplicates of the DVD you've already got. Your DVD player already has DeCSS built-in, so to speak.

This is not about pirating or your ability to make backup copies of DVD.

Re:Fair use & reverse engineering

[CodeShark]

Fair use, etc. and the prohibition against reverse engineering as a federal crime are both areas I would like to see the DMCA struck down as well. However, the scope of this case won't touch on much of your questions, except in the matter of "jurisdiction", which is still a huge one and I am glad that the court has taken it up because at it's core it is critical to the freedom of the Internet.

Where this case holds my interest is that the DMCA is a Federal law with country wide jurisdiction, but the CCA (and MPAA) are suing under California law and (if my non-lawyerly reading of the text is accurate) essentially applying it across state lines in a way that if allowed would essentially put a chilling effect on freedom of speech, i.e., you can say what you want as long as a corporate interest in another state can use the laws of that state to threaten you.

For my part, I really don't think that the SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States) will disagree with the circuit court, but this case could also act as a precedent setting case for other related issues outside the realm of the Internet that bear some deeper legal analysis.

That said, I think that a win for the sites that posted the DeCSS source code is not only a victory for free speech but a nail in the coffin of CSS. Until the MPAA comes up with their next form of encryption and we start the whole ball game over again.

Re:ReCSS

[mark_lybarger]

i'm sure you're being sarcastic, but that's like someone trying to sell automobile door locks from the 70's that are easily openable with a slim-jim. people know they're junk, they don't work anymore for what they were intended for, so why would anyone in thier right mind try to sell them. we've all moved on to remote keyless locks (i don't know if they're any less suseptable to breakins, i'm just assuming so for the sake of discussion).

here you have the mpaa, they put a "lock" on their IP. that lock lasted a few years if that. the locks been broken and nothing they can ever do will fix their lock. hey, here's a concept: give the consumers something they're willing to go to the theaters and watch! give them something they're willing to spend their 15-20$ to buy the dvd rather than spending 30 minutes copying it. i don't see that hapening anytime soon though

How petty

[Anonymous Coward]

All of this fervor over such trivial bullshit.It sure strikes me funny that they can find and capture such obscure folks breaking petty laws but yet they can't find Osama Bin Laden.I have come to believe that they don't want to capture him, just use the threat of him for their own hidden agenda,
and that is to take away the rights and privacy of every citizen of the U.S.A.The U.S. government wants complete control over what you and I can and cannot do.1984 is a little late, but it's coming up with a quickness.But i guess that's what the majority of voters want, too bad the majority of voters don't vote their own mind.

Spot the interesting omission?

[Rogerborg]

According to this article, DeCSS is for "DVD-copying". It is "software that can be used to copy DVDs". It "allows encrypted DVDs to be descrambled". It "injuriously [affects] the motion picture and computer industries in California.".

Now, all this is true (or debatable, for the last claim), but nowhere in this article does it even hint that DeCSS can be used simply to watch DVD's that you own, which (gasp!) is what I actually use it for. That's a worrying omission, and one which I hope doesn't signal a trend.

Re:Spot the interesting omission?

[Mr Guy]

Well of course not, that's the job of the defense lawyers. The article sumarizes the complaint, under the law. If someone makes a zip gun from a metal pipe and is arrested for shooting someone, the article wouldn't say, "The zip gun, which can also be used for piping water."

When the defense attorneys give their 2 bits to the press, you'll get to see a more fair picture. The reporter likely doesn't know his ass from his elbow, it's the job of the defense to shed perspective and the judges to say, "Wait, this is bullshit RIAA" of which they seem to be doing a better and better job.

Re:Fair use & reverse engineering

[famazza]

Freedom is just a tool to make more money and keep the population under control.

• Freedom is Slavery

(Just like G.Orwell in 1984)

If Freedom is a threat to profit then something must be done. This is what DMCA is about! They are trying to transform fair use into piracy, transform right into crime.

Try to figure this. If you have a TV then you can share it with your neighbor, and he can come to your home and watch some TV. If we follow RIAA/MPAA steps to the extreme we'll have a near future where sharing your TV with your neighbor will be piracy. (reality check: Finnish Taxi Drivers Must Pay Music Royalties)

So the point here is not about what is right and what is legal. It's about what is profitable and what is not.

Re:No longer a secret

[MImeKillEr]

Personally as soon as I heard that DeCSS was banned I downloaded a copy just to prove to myself the futility of internet censorship.

You and everyone else. Thats the great thing about the internet. Ban something and 1000+ people are going to download it and mirror it everywhere. The sooner the RIAA/MPAA/etc realize that the internet is not something they can control and that we, as consumers, are going to thwart their attempts to shut off the flow of information the better off they're going to be. I personally will dance the jigg if/when the RIAA and/or MPAA get bitchlapped in court.

Hell, the idiot lawyers even included the source code for DeCSS in the court documents. There's no need for anyone to mirror it anymore!

The link above is the Hoy filing from this page...

Re:ReCSS

[racerx509]

"give the consumers something they're willing to go to the theaters and watch! give them something they're willing to spend their 15-20$ to buy the dvd rather than spending 30 minutes copying it. i don't see that hapening anytime soon though"

I disagree. Generally they do put out some decent stuff. I think what is happening is that they do not want to suffer the same fate as the RIAA. This year was the biggest year of profits since the 1930's for the MPAA. They racked up 1+ billion dollars more than they normally do, so they have no claims of lost profits like the RIAA can. They also have found a runaway success in the easily crackable yet still preferably bought DVD medium. While people can download movies from the net, most prefer to go out and spend $8.99 for that two year old movie that they want to have on DVD. Rental services such as netflix (my only real vice) are a runaway success, and I will admit, I have yet to rip and copy any of my DVDs because its too much trouble.

These guys just see the handwriting on the wall and want to nip it in the bud. I personally don't think its right that they are trying to infringe on our fairuse rights, but at least they are being more cooperative than the RIAA. They have taken the first tenative steps into online distribution that while faulty, is more than I can say for their musical cartel cousins.

Someone needs to drag out all the stops in this case. i don't like the idea of having such a wide jurisdiction when sueing somebody, but for f#ck sakes, get Felten in there. Try and make the idea of playing DVDs on linux look like something regular folks do and not something that "hackers do". Show them that we only want the same rights and abilities that we had in the analog world, and that the powers that be are trying to strip them from us. If only the defense of Pavlovich/EFF could have an ask slashdot session could I truly think they would come up with a decent defense.

I could see it now.....

Defense lawyer: Your honor, I would like to say. First Post!

"use of one case to target multiple people"

[e_lehman]

The attorneys sought to sue more than 500 people from all around the world in one lawsuit brought in Santa Clara County, Calif. [...] The point is we would like to get the Supreme Court to affirm that the use of one case to (target) multiple people who are distributing information is appropriate," Kessler said.

This is kinda scary. A major limitation on RIAA/MPAA is that they have to sue their enemies one at a time. Since each lawsuit is expensive and they have about 50,000,000 enemies, this is problematic. So they want permission to able to do a sort of "reverse class-action", where they're allowed to sue everyone at once. They started with a tidy block of 500 defendants, but why not 5000 in the next round? Or 500,000?! Woohoo!

The courts are already too-often used by those who can afford lawsuits to bludgeon those who can not. Allowing corporations to sue hundreds or even thousands of people at once would be a disaster for the American legal system and America in general.

almost there...

[bill_mcgonigle]

Just to clarify, DeCSS does not help making backups (defined as an exact copy). In fact, it's nearly impossible for the consumer to make a backup of a typical commercial DVD. The biggest problem with making backups at home is that there is no DVD-R method for making DVD-9's. The big illegal copying shops can handle this, of course. Whether this situation is technological or a result of cartel collusion is an excercise for the reader to determine.

What DeCSS does is enable fair use.

Keep repeating that over and over until you're blue in the face. Maybe somebody will hear it eventually.

disclaimer: yes, you could re-master the data from a DVD onto multiple DVD-R's, but that's not what most people mean by 'backup'.

parallel case to Dow Jones and Australia one...

[Anonymous Coward]

This looks like the first US case to take up the same jurisdiction topic (suing in a jurisdiciton where the defendant has no presence) as Australia's High Court (this earlier Slashdot story http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/12/10/00 19232&mode=thread&tid=123). If the US Supreme Court follows the reasoning of the Australian High Court then the DVD CCA will win their argument...