MPAA Applauds On DVD Crypto Injunction January 20, 2000

In a setback for civil liberties proponents, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) on Thursday convinced a federal judge to grant an injunction ordering three individuals to remove information about DVD encryption from their Web sites. The MPAA is arguing that the defendants in the case - three Web site operators who have posted DVD encryption protocols on their home pages - stole trade secrets and compromised intellectual property rights. The ""ruling represents a great victory for creative artists, consumers and copyright owners everywhere. I think this serves as a wake-up call to anyone who contemplates stealing intellectual property,"" said Jack Valenti, president and chief executive officer of the Motion Picture Association of America in a release. ""This ruling also means that when Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in 1998, it gave the creative community a powerful tool to defend our rights."" Defending the Web site operators is the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which contends that not only do the DVD protocols not meet the minimum standard for ""trade secrets,"" but that the Web site postings are a clear example of constitutionally protected free speech. ""In the end, whether you like it or not, what they are doing is legal,"" said EFF spokesperson Tom McGuire. ""What they are advocating may not be (legal), but what they are posting on their sites is."" Many of the attempts to break the DVD industry's Content Scrambling System (CSS) stem from the fact that no DVD viewing devices have been licensed for computers running Linux and other alternative operating systems, McGuire said. The tech-savvy Linux community responded by working to break the protocols and develop its own devices. While that hacking may or may not be legal, the posting of the protocols clearly is, he said. One of the EFF's concerns in the New York case was that ""the tone of the proceedings was that these are scofflaw hackers who need to be shut down,"" McGuire said. ""That tone colored some of the judges perspective of (the defendants)."" Compounding that view is the fact that one of the defendants in the case has hurled obscenities at the MPAA on his Web site. ""It's hard to make some of these guys look like they have white hats,"" McGuire said. The MPAA case coincides with a civil case brought in a California Superior Court against some 50 defendants by the DVD Copy Control Association (DVD-CCA), a not-for-profit, industry-backed organization that owns and licenses DVD encryption technology. The EFF is awaiting a judge's ruling on a similar injunction being sought in that case. In its brief filed against the DVD-CCA complaint, the EFF wrote ""In this case, (the) plaintiff seeks an injunction of unprecedented breadth and intrusiveness on traditional free speech rights in order to defend a supposed trade secret that was never very secret at all. (The) plaintiff seeks prior restraint against hundreds of news sources on the Internet, claiming the right to enjoin discussion of their Content Scrambling System (CSS). That discussion centered on the results of efforts to break the weak security structures on which the CSS depends."" From the EFF standpoint, the MPAA represents a somewhat more significant thereat that the DVD-CCA. ""They've hired the best and they've got the money to make it happen,"" McGuire said. McGuire contends that the EFF is ""venue-hopping"" - bringing cases on the DVD issues in a number of jurisdictions in order to boost their chances of victory and spread thin the resources of groups such as the EFF, which are involved with defending the cases. The MPAA was not immediately available for comment on this story.

Source: Reported by Newsbytes.com, http://www.newsbytes.com.