“Legal actions filed by eight motion-picture companies seeking
injunctions against Web site operators for posting a controversial
software program have drawn fire from an online civil rights group
that contends the move is unconstitutional.”
“The complaints were filed Jan. 14 in an effort to block the
Internet distribution of a software utility called DeCSS, which
breaks the encoding system used in millions of digital video discs
(DVD). DeCSS was originally created by Norwegian programmers who
reverse-engineered the DVD Content Scrambling System (CSS) to give
computers running the Linux operating system DVD playback
capability….”
“The EFF is sponsoring the legal defense of Andrew Bunner,
the sole defendant to come forward in the DVD-CCA case.
According to Lemmey, the EFF legal defense team will argue this
week that DVD-CCA’s request for a preliminary injunction would
essentially stop a public discussion about DVDs work, constituting
a prior restraint of an important public discussion, which is
forbidden by the First Amendment. The preliminary injunction
hearing is scheduled to take place today at Santa Clara County
Superior Court in Santa Clara, Calif.”