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DeCSS Trade Secret Case Comes to an End - Again
Andrew Bunner writes "We asked the courts to rule on our appeal of the DeCSS preliminary injunction (even though the DVD CCA dropped the case) and... we won! No more preliminary injunction. Here's the official ruling (pdf)." This is the last gasp of this case, which we've been following for some years now. This ruling goes into some depth analyzing the trade secret claim, gets the ruling "right", and should be helpful in future cases on similar topics.
Page 7:
"The court stated that trade secret status should not be deemed destroyed merely because the information was posted on the Internet..."
Holy crap, what exactly *would* destroy trade secret status if posting to the internet doesn't do the job?
Do you have ESP?
that debian distros will now be able to include working DVD players?
DeCSS ok, but not DVD X-Copy. Why is that? Because DeCSS doesn't do anything by itself, but having X Copy demonstrates criminal intent?
Yep. That's an apparent contradiction. This is why we have appeals courts. When contradictory rulings start happening at the first-levels, the appeals courts have to sort them out. If the appeals courts can't get their act together, that's what Supreme Courts are for.
I still don't understand how anyone can allege criminal intent: My church produces a DVD of original music and stage acts. I copy the DVD using DVD X-Copy. Not only is there no criminal intent, but the mere allegation of criminal intent actually treads on my rights to freedom of speech, and it could infringe on my relgious practice. It's getting close to claiming a hold on my copyrights, or even the public domain.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
In NYS vs. 2600 the judge's decision made use of an analogy I posted to Slashdot. This isn't to say he got it from me, it was a fairly obvious analogy, but it was known at the time that both parties were reading arguments on Slashdot and I believe incorporated some of them into their arguments.
Sometimes we are watched.
Oh yeah. The analogy?
Buying a DVD is like buying a book locked in a safe, where the seller won't give you the combination unless you pay him additional money.
This is as far as the judge took it in ruling against 2600. My analogy went on to point out that DeCSS was like getting the combination from some other source to open the safe you own to read the book you own. And there's certainly no law against cracking your own safe, or providing instruction to someone on how to do it.
KFG
Maybe a statement along the lines of "This information is believed to have been legally obtained by means of reverse engineering." could take away much of the uncertainty in future cases.
Combined with rapid internet wide distribution, this seems a solid way to publish information obtained through reverse engineering in the public domain.
This is why the DMCA is a bad law. You can make legal backups, however you cannot circumnavigate teh copy protection on the DVD. So while you have the rite to make a copy, you do not have legal access to do so. If a DVD is NOT CSS encrypted (and yes, there are some of those out there) then you can just treat the DVD contents like any other data when making a copy. So as long as the DMCA stands, DVD X Copy has no legal use.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
I'm also developing an enormous amount of respect for those judges whose opinions manage to be very readable, even when discussing arcane technicalities of law (and, in this case, technology) -- many of us engineers could learn a thing or three from these folks about clear writing.
-Brian
You cant use CSS on your product without a license and more then I can use the contents of your videos in mine.
The contents of his videos are protected by copyright law, so although you can use a legally acquired copy however you want, you're right that you can't make more copies without a license.
CSS is an algorithm (and thus uncopyrightable), it isn't patented (if it had been nobody would have had to crack a DVD player's keys or reverse engineer the algorithm to begin with), and now it isn't a trade secret anymore. What exactly do you think he needs a license for?
Why is parent modded as funny?
Our rights have been trampled here, the innocent have not only been assumed guilty and lumped into a guilty mass, but to add insult the best response by the MPAA is that we should perhaps shell out more dough; and its FUNNY? - RTFL
It is apprehensible that some token jackass with a triple digit income suggests I pay a red cent in order to obtain what I have already purchased...such wisdom is what has limited the amount of dvd's I own to literally a handful.
How do I keep track of people who are fingering