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.

Comments

But no DVD X Copy.

[ackthpt]

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?

Re:But no DVD X Copy.

[fishbowl]

So I can't use CSS on my products? Why not? Why are other producers allowed to use dvd encryption and I am not? Now we're getting into 14th amendment territory as well.

Don't tell me it's okay for someone to abridge my rights just because you don't think "I need that".

I don't personally care about the DVD X-Copy folks, but I do care deeply about the implications when it's been alleged that their product which has other, plainly legal uses, has been deemed wholly illegal.

The more the big media companies control the means of production, the harder it becomes for independent producers.

libdvdcss

[Dwonis]

So does this mean Debian can now distribute libdvdcss in main?

what about 2600?

[chrisopherpace]

I recall a while back about 2600 losing their case on which they were linking to DeCSS, wonder if they can get it overturned by a judge. Probably won't though, knowing the government (after all, they are evil hackers!).

slashdot quotes

[benna]

Interesting the decision quotes slashdot. Maybe the people that were saying not to joke about MyDoom were right. (or maybe not)

Re:slashdot quotes

[Anonymous Coward]

My personal favorite:

Second, the evidence in this case is very sparse with respect to whether the offending program was actually created by improper means. Reverse engineering alone is not improper means. (See footnote 7 ante.) Here the creator is believed to be a Norwegian resident who probably had to breach a Xing license in order to access the information he needed. We have only very thin circumstantial evidence of when, where, or how this actually happened or whether an enforceable contract prohibiting reverse engineering was ever formed.

There were dozens of slashdot comments to this effect when the whole shebang was going down the first time.

I wonder if I should be happy that our voice is heard worldwide and effecting the very body of law, or scared shitless that AC's like me (an International AC, I should add) could be making ripples in court decisions that effect merely the state of California.

The Internet really bends/breaks the legal system, and this brief is a great example of it.

Re:How does the DMCA and Trade Secret Work Togethe

[Dukael_Mikakis]

It's foolish, of course. Trying to protect silly "trade secrets" behind a poorly conceived law is the worst thing to happen to digital media (and the internet). It's like being a restauranteur and crying "No fair" and refusing to sell desserts to customers who taste a dessert and ask, "Is that cinnamon?"

If people are going to buy your product, and be exposed to it, they will naturally have to gain some familiarity with it. It's silly to want a food critic taste your food so he could publish a glowing review and then get upset when he writes what he (correctly) believes to be your ingredients.

The DVD-CAA wants the DVD format to be adopted and for it to be widespread and popular, but they complain about anything that comes from people using it and that would help distribution.

It's been said, but if they want their DVD encryption to be impenetrable (and hence popular with the MPAA) they should actually try to make it tough to crack instead of hiding behind a flimsy law that has apparently been dismissed in this particular case.

It's just like any software (i.e. IE) being lackadaisical about security and then complaining about people breaking the law by writing viruses. Yeah, it's a law, and people shouldn't do it, but then some people also don't care.

Re:How does the DMCA and Trade Secret Work Togethe

[pavon]

It's been said, but if they want their DVD encryption to be impenetrable (and hence popular with the MPAA) they should actually try to make it tough to crack instead of hiding behind a flimsy law that has apparently been dismissed in this particular case.

Except, that is theoretically impossible, which is the whole point of the DCMA. Since bullet proof DRM impossible, just make it illegal to create device that doesn't honor DRM, then the average user will never be able to break it, and the minority of people that do, will be small enough to ignore or sue. Well that was the theory until p2p showed that it was possible for the minority to anonymously distribute their cracked works to the majority.

Of course, all this DRM is completely unnecissary, just look at the software industry's experiance with it.

Sherman, Set the Wayback Machine

[ewhac]

It seems my report and analysis from August 2001 was closer to the mark than I dared believe. To wit:

...the evidence in this case is very sparse with respect to whether the offending program was actually created by improper means. Reverse engineering alone is not improper means. (See footnote 7 ante.) Here the creator is believed to be a Norwegian resident who probably had to breach a Xing license in order to access the information he needed.
-- Court ruling, page 12 [emphasis mine]

I essentially said the same thing in my analysis: That DVD CCA's entire case hinged on whether the end-user "license" was valid and binding.

My opinion remains unchanged: end-user "licenses" are unethical, and should not be allowed to stand. See my old-ish editorial on the subject for more detail.

Schwab

I apologize for the pain this is causing anybody

[Teancum]

I have come to know on a first-hand basis what effects that ordinary people here on /. can have.

I posted the original story about deCSS back in November of 1999. It probabally would have been brought up eventually here on Slashdot, but it was amazing to me to see just how quickly this legal action (originally against Jon Johansen) spawned a whole battle cry from readers here on this site. I was an active participant on the LiVID discussion group back then and this was one situation where I knew that this really needed to be seen by a much larger audience. I had absolutely no idea just how far the /. community would go with this, but on the whole I'm fairly pleased with what has happened. It has helped to define the attitudes of a whole generation of programmers and set legal precedence that I hope is going to, in the long run make it easier to freely express myself in software. Yeah, my part was real tiny but it doesn't take much to get everything moving. I also deliberately tried to lay low during this entire controversy because I already saw the legal mess that everybody who came in contact with this whole affair went through. I made it through without one single problem.

My only regret is that similar actions haven't happened against the DVD Consortium (formerly DVD Forum and prior to that... well, does it really matter?) in regards to the DVD-Video specification. Although some of it is patented (mainly the MPEG-2 portions), for the most part that DVD-Video spec is protected by the same trade secret laws that the CSS algorithms were also protected by. The only problem is that the DVD-Video spec is much more complicated and won't simply fit on the back of a T-shirt.

I had the good fortune of actually being able to read the formal DVD-Video specs (as an employee), and implemented a multiplexor/authoring system following those specs. It is from this experience that I am absolutely committed to open specifications. There was so much I wanted to disclose to the other LiVID members information I knew about those specs, but I deliberately stayed on the sidelines and simply said "Yeah you are going in the right direction" or "No, I think you got that model wrong. Try something else."

The full potential of utilizing the DVD-Video still has yet to be realized, and unfortunately I don't think it ever will be. I'm talking a genuine "hacking" of the capabilities of a standard DVD-Video player like you have in your home entertainment system, not just the Linux box that you also want to play some DVD movies on (although knowledge of the spec can also help that effort). The DVD/optical disc format is a totally different medium of delivery from video tape, but unfortunately most movie studios simply treat it as only a glorified version of a VHS cassette (DVD extras on a typical release not withstanding). Worse yet, people who consider DVDs to be just another version of VCDs.

I also wouldn't mind trying to put something together right now, as I'm currently unemployed, but that is another story altogether. I can't afford the current specs even if I was fully employed right now.