FITUG e.V.

Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft

Free Speech Rights for Computer Code?

http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/07/biztech/articles/31rite.html

July 31, 2000

Suit Tests Power of Media Concerns To Control Access to Digital Content

By AMY HARMON

t was perhaps the most arcane statement in all the hours of acronym- filled testimony, one that came on the last day of the six-day trial. But it may have been a turning point in an important battle over the limits of a new copyright law, a potential landmark case that ended its trial phase last week in Manhattan and now awaits a verdict by the judge.

More news coverage may have been devoted to the recent legal wranglings over Napster, the Web service that the recording industry has accused of abetting widespread music piracy. But the Manhattan case, involving the copying of DVD movie disks, may have more far- reaching effects -- both on the way cultural products are consumed and on whether computer code is deemed to be speech deserving of First Amendment protection.

>From the witness stand last Tuesday, Prof. David S. Touretzky, a

computer scientist at Carnegie-Mellon University, paged through a series of exhibits that included lines of software source code in the C computer language, an English-language description of the code, long strings of ones and zeros known as object code and a picture of a T-shirt with the object code printed on it.

All of the exhibits pertained to the subject of the trial: a software program that enables a user to decode the scrambling technology meant to prevent DVD movie disks from unauthorized copying. Professor Touretzky, an expert witness for the defense, told the judge that if he saw fit to ban any one depiction of the DVD-unscrambling software he would have to ban them all, because they all communicate the same thing.

"I see this as having a chilling effect on my ability as a computer scientist to express myself," Professor Touretzky said. He was referring to the court's preliminary injunction that barred a Web site from posting the underlying, or source, code for the cracking program. "If the court upholds this injunction, what would happen is that certain uses of computer language -- my preferred means of expression -- would be illegal."

[...]

Zurück