Magazine Seeks Relief from Court-Ordered Censorship
Urges Decision to Permit Publication of DVD Decoder Software
New York - January 14, 2002 - 2600 Magazine today requested that a U.S. court reverse an earlier ruling prohibiting publication of the software code called DeCSS which permits DVD owners to view DVDs on players that are not approved by the entertainment industry.
Stating that "free speech principles should turn not upon newly minted distinctions between pen-and-ink and point-and-click," the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and lead counsel Kathleen M. Sullivan today asked the full Second Circuit Court of Appeals to hear Universal v. Corley.
"By permitting publication of code in an online magazine, the Second Circuit would recognize that Internet speech is fully protected by the First Amendment as established by the U.S. Supreme Court in ACLU v. Reno," noted EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. "The most egregious part of the previous decision prevented even linking, the lifeblood of the Internet."
In November, a three-judge panel held that the magazine could be banned from publishing or linking to DeCSS. That panel rejected pleas from 46 intellectual property professors, 17 top computer scientists, 8 top computer security experts, the Association for Computing Machinery, the American Library Association, the ACLU, and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, among many others.
A court decision on the request is expected later this spring.
Links:
More information and legal filings in the 2600 case:
http://
2600 Magazine:
http://www.2600.com/
About EFF:
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading civil liberties organization
working to protect rights in the digital world. Founded in 1990, EFF actively encourages
and challenges industry and government to support free expression, privacy, and
openness in the information society. EFF is a member-supported organization and
maintains one of the most linked-to Web sites in the world:
http://www.eff.org/