Source Code Freedom of Speech?

By Acheron July 26, 2000 9:08 AM

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(Nando) The Manhattan judge that is hearing the civil case over the posted DVD decoding source code on the Internet. Eight major movie studios have a lawsuit out against Eric Corley, owner of 2600.com, for putting up links and source code, and even selling T-Shirts with the decoding source code on it. Everybody has at least heard of the court proceedings. The news is that the judge is leaning towards encompassing that source code under the First Ammendment - freedom of speech, and if that were to happen, everyone would potentially be able to copy DVDs. The movie industry is of course up in arms about this, and though it will be abused by some, it will simply give Linux users ability to use DVDs on their PCs. The biggest selling point for the judge came when Carnegie Mellon computer science professor, David Touretzky, gave his testimony and basically said that if code was censored, it would have a "a chilling effect on (his) ability as a computer scientist to express (himself)." Looks like the techies may win this bout, but even if they do, I can guarantee that the movie industry is not going to sit quitely and do nothing.

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