One of the things I read recently at about page 40 of the transcript at http://www.2600.com/news/2000/0121-trans.txt was that nobody is trying to restrain the posting alone of programmer's notes without the DeCSS source code. The Court seems to be considering that source code does not constitute free speech. Somebody could, however, write an English description of the algorithm. This would not be executable code, but it would be a "blueprint" from which executable code could be written. It may well be more likely to attract the protection of the First Amendment. I can't do it because I'm a British citizen, and we do not have free speech in this country. A US citizen would be able to do so, though. Disclaimer: IANAL. This may well be wrong!
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One of the things I read recently at about page 40 of the transcript at http://www.2600.com/news/2000/0121-trans .txt was that nobody is trying to restrain the posting alone of programmer's notes without the DeCSS source code. The Court seems to be considering that source code does not constitute free speech. Somebody could, however, write an English description of the algorithm. This would not be executable code, but it would be a "blueprint" from which executable code could be written. It may well be more likely to attract the protection of the First Amendment. I can't do it because I'm a British citizen, and we do not have free speech in this country. A US citizen would be able to do so, though. Disclaimer: IANAL. This may well be wrong!