Slashdot Mirror
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."
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?
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.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
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.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
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.
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
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...
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
"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!
13 year old white supremacists are shitty web designers.
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.