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FC: Appeals judges jab at 2600 lawyer during DeCSS oral

------- Forwarded message follows ------- Date sent: Tue, 1 May 2001 19:01:13 -0400 From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> To: politech@politechbot.com Subject: FC: Appeals judges jab at 2600 lawyer during DeCSS oral arguments Send reply to: declan@well.com

http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,43470,00.html

DVD Piracy Judges Resolute By Declan McCullagh (declan@wired.com) 2:05 p.m. May. 1, 2001 PDT

NEW YORK -- A trio of federal judges lobbed sharp questions on Tuesday at a law school dean who argued it should be legal to distribute a DVD-descrambling utility.

The judges, from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, spent an hour quizzing attorneys for both sides in Universal Studios v. Remeirdes et al, a high-profile case that has pitted Hollywood against the open-source community.

The panel of three judges appeared to be more sympathetic to the legal arguments raised by the entertainment industry.

Judge Jon Newman predicted the widespread availabity of the DeCSS descrambling utility would boost piracy of DVDs. "Not a remote theoretical possibility, but a highly likely virtual certainty," Newman said.

Kathleen Sullivan, the dean of Stanford Law School, said the panel should rule the Digital Millennium Copyright Act -- which a district judge said outlawed DeCSS -- was unconstitutional, or at least did not apply to her client, hacker-zine 2600 Magazine. Last year, a coalition of movie studios sued 2600 for distributing a copy of DeCSS.

Sullivan compared the controversial DMCA to a "kind of digital straightjacket" that restricts even people who purchase DVDs from copying them or using them in other ways, such as using digital excerpts in presentations, that courts have deemed permissible under U.S. law.

"It's as if the laws, as applied, say you can't print a blueprint of a copying machine," Sullivan said.

[...]

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