Hearing On DVD Encryption Postponed

The next phase of a lawsuit pitting Linux users against the gatekeepers of DVD encryption has been postponed to Tuesday (January 18).Judge William Elfving originally was due to hear arguments in California Superior Court Friday (January 14) on whether the court should block the distribution of a small software program called DeCSS.The lawsuit is filed not by DVD makers themselves but by the DVD Copy Control Association (Morgan Hill, California, http://www.dvdcca.org/dvdcca/index.html), a licensing body created to administer the Content Scrambling System (CSS), a proprietary encryption scheme invented to dissuade DVD piracy.Ultimately, the suit asks for a permanent injunction (http://cryptome.org/dvd-v-500.htm) to block use or distribution of DeCSS or any information related to the CSS scheme. In the January 18 hearing, scheduled for 1:30 p.m. PST, Judge Elfving will consider arguments for a preliminary injunction, having already denied a request from the DVD CCA for a temporary restraining order.While multiple PC and electronics companies have been granted CSS licenses, none has developed a Linux-based DVD player. That led to the creation of DeCSS, a software program that allows DVDs to be played on Linux-based computers. The DVD CCA claims that DeCSS could not have been created without violating a software licensing agreement, thus making the creation and spread of DeCSS a violation of the CSS trade secret. The association is suing to block distribution of the software, particularly on the Web.Trade secret protection is the crux of the case but has been overshadowed by the issue of DVD piracy. In arguing why the CSS trade secret needs continued protection, the DVD CCA raised the spectre of piracy, claiming DeCSS allows easy copying of DVDs and could become a key factor in the spread of piracy.DeCSS users and open-source software advocates scoff at those claims, noting that DVD copying has been possible for years; even with DeCSS, they say the process is too cumbersome to be worthwhile. They also claim that DeCSS was built solely to enable Linux-based DVD players and was never intended as a copying tool.On December 29, Elfving denied the request for a temporary restraining order blocking DeCSS distribution. Linux advocates immediately declared victory, having amassed 30 programmers to appear at the last-minute hearing in support of the defendants.Realistically, though, the restraining order had little chance of being granted. Allonn Levy, the attorney retained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (http://www.eff.org/) to represent the defendants, noted after the December 29 hearing that judges rarely grant such short-notice orders in cases where free speech is involved. ""To stop the speech before it even comes out, that's very serious"", he said.John Gilmore, cofounder of the EFF, agreed. ""The decision could easily go the other way [on January 18], because for a TRO [temporary restraining order], there's a much higher burden of proof,"" he said.The EFF has filed several briefs in support of the defendants, all of which are available on the Web at http://www.eff.org/pub/Intellectual_property/DVD/.

Source: EE Times www.eet.com