California appeals court deletes DeCSS injunction [fs][ip]

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: EFF: Court Overturns Ban on Posting DVD Descrambling Code
Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2004 14:49:17 -0800
From: Will Doherty <wild () eff org>


Electronic Frontier Foundation Media Advisory

For Immediate Release: Friday, February 27, 2004


Contact:

Gwen Hinze
  Staff Attorney
  Electronic Frontier Foundation
  gwen () eff org
  +1 415 436-9333 x110 (office)

Richard Wiebe
  Attorney
  Law Offices of Richard R. Wiebe
  wiebe () pacbell net
  +1 415 433-3200 x222

David Greene
  Executive Director and Staff Counsel
  First Amendment Project
  dgreene () thefirstamendment org
  +1 510 208-7744


Court Overturns Ban on Posting DVD Descrambling Code

No Evidence DeCSS Was a Trade Secret When Bunner Published

San Jose, CA - A California appeals court today overturned a
1999 injunction against Andrew Bunner that prohibited him
from distributing the DeCSS DVD decryption computer code,
because the court found there was no evidence that DVD
Content Scrambling System (CSS) technology was still a trade
secret by the time that Bunner posted DeCSS code on his
website.

"We are thrilled that the Appeal Court recognized that the
injunction restricting Bunner's freedom of speech was not
justified," said Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Staff
Attorney Gwen Hinze. "The court's ruling that there was no
evidence that CSS was still a trade secret when Bunner
posted DeCSS vindicates what we have said all along; DeCSS
has been available on thousands of websites around the world
for many years."

"This long-delayed but gratifying victory sends a strong
message to those who would try to misuse intellectual
property laws and corporate power to stifle free speech on
the Internet," said Richard Wiebe, who represented Bunner
along with EFF. "The Court of Appeal correctly recognized
the obvious conclusion that information that is in the
public domain and that has been republished for months
around the world can't be a trade secret."

The DVD Copy Control Association (DVD-CCA) sued Bunner,
together with hundreds of others, in 1999 for posting, or
linking to the reverse-engineered DeCSS code.

The California Supreme Court last year ruled that a
preliminary injunction restraining publication of a computer
program could only be justified in very narrow circumstances
and sent the case back to the California Court of Appeal
Sixth Circuit, which issued today's ruling, to decide
whether the injunction against Bunner was justified.

In a simultaneous proceeding in the Superior Court of
California, the DVD-CCA sought to dismiss Bunner's motion
for a summary judgment ruling that the injunction should
have been lifted because any proprietary information in the
DeCSS code was no longer a trade secret.

Co-counsels with EFF in the Bunner case were: Richard Wiebe;
David Greene and James Wheaton of the First Amendment
Project; Thomas Moore of Tomlinson, Zisko, Morosoli, and
Maser LLP; and Allonn Levy and Arthur Plank of Hopkins
and Carley LLC.

For this advisory:
http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/DVDCCA_case/20040227_eff_pr.php

DVD CCA v. Bunner case archive:
http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/DVDCCA_case/


About EFF:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading civil
liberties organization working to protect rights in the
digital world. Founded in 1990, EFF actively encourages and
challenges industry and government to support free
expression and privacy online. EFF is a member-supported
organization and maintains one of the most linked-to
websites in the world at
http://www.eff.org/

                           -end-



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