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Scholars Debate Right to Publish Software Code
Journalists and scholars have filed briefs supporting an online publisher’s right to publish software code that breaks encryption used on digital versatile discs (DVDs). DVDs, which are used by the motion picture industry as an alternative to videocassettes for distributing movies for home viewing, often incorporate a technology called CSS that prevents them from being copied. When the publishers of the online magazine 2600.com (a companion publication to 2600: The Hacker Quarterly) put on their Web site the code for the decryption program, DeCSS, they were sued by a group of entertainment corporations led by Universal Studios.
In August 2000 U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, declaring that posting DeCSS on the Web site constituted a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The defendants appealed, saying that the right to publish information is a basic First Amendment right.
Friend-of-the-court briefs in support of the publishers’ appeal have been filed by the American Library Association; the Association for Research Libraries; the College of Communications at California State University, Fullerton; the Student Press Law Center; and several groups of law and computer science professors, among others.
Some in the creative community disagree with the publishers’ position, however. The American Federation of Musicians; the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers; the Graphic Artists Guild; the Writers Guild; and others have filed briefs supporting the plaintiffs and Judge Kaplan’s decision. They argue that authors of copyrighted work have legitimate rights to protect their work, and that the publication of DeCSS may be regulated because it is a functional tool designed to protect against copyright infringement. The case illustrates the conflicts inherent in copyright issues for professors, who are both creators and users of copyrightable materials.
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