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[FYI] GILC: In Defense of Free Speech on the Internet
- To: debate@fitug.de
- Subject: [FYI] GILC: In Defense of Free Speech on the Internet
- From: "Axel H Horns" <horns@t-online.de>
- Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2000 21:00:02 +0200
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- Organization: PA Axel H Horns
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http://www.quintessenz.at./gilc.html
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In Defense of Free Speech on the Internet
Deutsche Version
Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2000 01:46:10 +0100 (MET)
We, the undersigned members of the Global Internet Liberty Campaign -
a coalition of more then 50 civil liberty groups worldwide - believe
that the lawsuit of the Digital Versatile Disc Copy Control
Association [DVD-CCA] against dozens of people worldwide may have a
severe and harmful impact on free expression.
We believe that intellectual property owners should not be allowed to
expand their property rights at the expense of free speech, legal
reverse-engineering of software programs for interoperability reasons
and discussions of technical and scientific issues on the internet.
DVD-CCA's lawsuit is in direct conflict with United Nations human
rights accords and the First Amendment of the United States
Constitution.
THE CASE
Just after Christmas the Digital Versatile Disc Copy Control
Association (DVD-CCA) filed a case in California against people
around the world who published information about the DVD Content
Scrambling System (CSS), or links to such information, on the
internet.
The root of the case is the allegation that the reverse-engineering
of the DVD CSS system was "improper" (paragraph 18), "unauthorized"
(para. 20), "wrongfully appropriating proprietary trade secrets"
(para. 21), "unauthorized use of proprietary CSS information, which
was illegally "hacked" (para. 22). The DVD-CCA have yet to provide
substantial proof of these allegations, and they are unlikely to be
proven true in a court of law.
In their lawsuit, they claim that the defendants are violating the
association's trade secrets and other intellectual property rights by
publishing and discussing the source code of (or simply linking to
other sites that publish or discuss) a legally reverse-engineered
means of decoding DVD discs.
On the contrary, the individuals targeted by the DVD-CCA have engaged
in legitimate, protected speech, which includes software, textual
descriptions, and discussions of DVD CSS. This speech is in no way
copied or acquired from the DVD-CCA's trade-secret documents.
Copyrights do not give anyone any rights in "ideas", but only protect
the exact form in which they are expressed. Similarly, trade-secret
law only controls people who agreed to keep it secret and have been
told the secret; other people remain free to independently discover
the secret.
The ideas being discussed and implemented were apparently extracted
by having an engineer study a DVD product ("reverse engineering"),
which is legal in most countries. Indeed, the 1998 United States
Digital Millennium Copyright Act provides specifically in section
1201(f) that reverse engineering of a copy-protection encryption
system is legal for reasons of "interoperability" between computer
systems.
The decoder source code at the center of the case, called "DeCSS",
was created (by third parties, not the defendants) to enable Linux
computers to utilize DVD drives and content, since the industry
itself failed to produce the necessary drivers for this operating
system.
In the DVD CCA's claim, the DVD-CCA have made the highly questionable
suggestion that the source code's real purpose is to enable illegal
duplication of DVD discs.
Experts such as Eric s. Raymond have concluded that CSS does nothing
to prevent piracy. In fact DVDs can be copied already by using other
means, so nobody needs DeCSS to duplicate DVDs and DVD-CCA knows this
very well. The notion that DeCSS could play a role in the
distribution of pirated movies via the internet is absurd. At the
speed most users currently use, a movie would take over a week to
download.
THE REAL BACKGROUND
The real objective behind CSS technology and this law suit is to
prevent movies sold in one zone of the world from being played on DVD
players in another zone. The movie industry simply fears to lose
revenue, if a film released in the US can be viewed on DVD players in
Europe, Asia, or South America, before it is shown in theaters there.
(The motion picture industry have recently demanded that
manufacturers stop producing and selling "world" zone players able to
play movies sold in any zone.)
DVD-CCA also licences player manufacturers and software vendors who
have produced DVD player software for use on Mac and Windows systems.
DeCSS and related work enable the creation of new "rogue" DVD players
in the freeware realm, that compete with controlled commercial
products. This, DVD-CCA fear, would cut into manufacturing and
licensing profits.
OUR POSITION
We, the undersigned members of the Global Internet Liberty Campaign
believe that this lawsuit may have a harmful impact on free
expression. In our opinion, the DVD CCA's actions are in direct
conflict with United Nations human rights accords and the First
Amendment of the United States Constitution, because the information
that the programmers posted is legal.
We also object to the DVD-CCA's attempt to blur the distinction
between posting material on one's own web site and merely linking to
it. If the original reverse-engineering was legal, as we believe,
then the subsequent re-publication of the information is legal as
well.
DVD-CCA's tactics have created the perception that the DVD-CCA
believes in swift oppression, using large bankrolls to send lawyers
against little people.
We believe that intellectual property owners should not be allowed to
expand their property rights at the expense of free speech -
particularly when the speech in question explains how companies have
prevented the dissemination of new scientific ideas.
We believe the DVD CCA is using intellectual property laws to subvert
free speech in cyberspace.
SIGNATURES
American Civil Liberties Union
http://www.aclu.org
Canadian Journalists for Free Expression
http://www.cjfe.org
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
http://www.cpsr.org
Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties (UK)
http://www.cyber-rights.org
Derechos Human Rights
http://www.derechos.org
Electronic Frontiers Australia
http://www.efa.org.au
Electronic Frontier Canada (EFC)
http://www.efc.ca
Electronic Privacy Information Center
http://www.epic.org
FITUG e.V.
http://www.fitug.de
Fronteras Electronicas España (FrEE)
http://www.arnal.es/free
Index on Censorship
http://www.indexoncensorship.org
Internet Freedom
http://www.netfreedom.org
IRIS (Imaginons un reseau Internet solidaire, France)
http://www.iris.sgdg.org
NetAction
http://www.netaction.org
Privacy International
http://www.privacyinternational.org
quintessenz
http://www.quintessenz.at
VIBE
http://www.vibe.at
FURTHER INFORMATION
The Global Internet Liberty Campaign
http://www.gilc.org
Factsheet from Opendvd.org
http://www.opendvd.org/journalists.html
Fascmile of the complaint for injunctive relief for misappropration
of trade secrets by
DVD-CCA
http://www.lemuria.org/DeCSS/dvd-v-500.htm
Wired article
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,33303,00.html
San Jose Mercury
http://www.sjmercury.com/svtech/news/indepth/docs/dvd122999.htm
Eric S. Raymond on the Case
http://www.opendvd.org/esr.html
German language analysis
http://futurezone.orf.at/futurezone.orf?read=detail&id=13421
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