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Global Internet Liberty Campaign
Member Statement
In Defense of Free Speech on the Internet
January 14, 2000
German
Version
Spanish
Version
Japanese
Version
French
Version
We, the undersigned members of the Global Internet
Liberty Campaign - a coalition of more then 50 civil liberty
groups worldwide - believe that the lawsuit of the Digital
Versatile Disc Copy Control Association [DVD-CCA]
against dozens of people worldwide may have a severe and
harmful impact on free expression.
We believe that intellectual property owners should not
be allowed to expand their property rights at the expense of
free speech, legal reverse-engineering of software programs
for interoperability reasons and discussions of technical
and scientific issues on the internet.
DVD-CCA's lawsuit is in direct conflict with United
Nations human rights accords and the First Amendment of the
United States Constitution.
THE CASE
Just after Christmas the Digital Versatile Disc Copy
Control Association (DVD-CCA) filed a case in California
against people around the world who published information
about the DVD Content Scrambling System (CSS), or links to
such information, on the internet.
The root of the case is the allegation that the
reverse-engineering of the DVD CSS system was "improper"
(paragraph 18), "unauthorized" (para. 20), "wrongfully
appropriating proprietary trade secrets" (para. 21),
"unauthorized use of proprietary CSS information, which was
illegally "hacked" (para. 22). The DVD-CCA have yet to
provide substantial proof of these allegations, and they are
unlikely to be proven true in a court of law.
In their lawsuit, they claim that the defendants are
violating the association's trade secrets and other
intellectual property rights by publishing and discussing
the source code of (or simply linking to other sites that
publish or discuss) a legally reverse-engineered means of
decoding DVD discs.
On the contrary, the individuals targeted by the DVD-CCA
have engaged in legitimate, protected speech, which includes
software, textual descriptions, and discussions of DVD CSS.
This speech is in no way copied or acquired from the
DVD-CCA's trade-secret documents.
Copyrights do not give anyone any rights in "ideas", but
only protect the exact form in which they are expressed.
Similarly, trade-secret law only controls people who agreed
to keep it secret and have been told the secret; other
people remain free to independently discover the secret.
The ideas being discussed and implemented were apparently
extracted by having an engineer study a DVD product
("reverse engineering"), which is legal in most countries.
Indeed, the 1998 United States Digital Millennium Copyright
Act provides specifically in section 1201(f) that reverse
engineering of a copy-protection encryption system is legal
for reasons of "interoperability" between computer
systems.
The decoder source code at the center of the case, called
"DeCSS", was created (by third parties, not the defendants)
to enable Linux computers to utilize DVD drives and content,
since the industry itself failed to produce the necessary
drivers for this operating system.
In the DVD CCA's claim, the DVD-CCA have made the highly
questionable suggestion that the source code's real purpose
is to enable illegal duplication of DVD discs.
Experts such as Eric s. Raymond have concluded that CSS
does nothing to prevent piracy. In fact DVDs can be copied
already by using other means, so nobody needs DeCSS to
duplicate DVDs and DVD-CCA knows this very well. The notion
that DeCSS could play a role in the distribution of pirated
movies via the internet is absurd. At the speed most users
currently use, a movie would take over a week to
download.
THE REAL BACKGROUND
The real objective behind CSS technology and this law
suit is to prevent movies sold in one zone of the world from
being played on DVD players in another zone. The movie
industry simply fears to lose revenue, if a film released in
the US can be viewed on DVD players in Europe, Asia, or
South America, before it is shown in theaters there. (The
motion picture industry have recently demanded that
manufacturers stop producing and selling "world" zone
players able to play movies sold in any zone.)
DVD-CCA also licences player manufacturers and software
vendors who have produced DVD player software for use on Mac
and Windows systems. DeCSS and related work enable the
creation of new "rogue" DVD players in the freeware realm,
that compete with controlled commercial products. This,
DVD-CCA fear, would cut into manufacturing and licensing
profits.
OUR POSITION
We, the undersigned members of the Global Internet
Liberty Campaign believe that this lawsuit may have a
harmful impact on free expression. In our opinion, the DVD
CCA's actions are in direct conflict with United Nations
human rights accords and the First Amendment of the United
States Constitution, because the information that the
programmers posted is legal.
We also object to the DVD-CCA's attempt to blur the
distinction between posting material on one's own web site
and merely linking to it. If the original
reverse-engineering was legal, as we believe, then the
subsequent re-publication of the information is legal as
well.
DVD-CCA's tactics have created the perception that the
DVD-CCA believes in swift oppression, using large bankrolls
to send lawyers against little people.
We believe that intellectual property owners should not
be allowed to expand their property rights at the expense of
free speech - particularly when the speech in question
explains how companies have prevented the dissemination of
new scientific ideas.
We believe the DVD CCA is using intellectual property
laws to subvert free speech in cyberspace.
SIGNATURES
ALCEI
Associazione per la Libertà nella Comunicazione
Elettronica Interattiva
American Civil
Liberties Union
Canadian
Journalists for Free Expression
Centre
for Applied Legal Studies
Computer
Professionals for Social Responsibility
Cyber-Rights
& Cyber-Liberties (UK)
Derechos
Human Rights
Electronic
Frontiers Australia
Electronic
Frontier Canada (EFC)
Electronic
Frontier Foundation (EFF)
Electronic
Privacy Information Center
Equipo
Nizkor
FITUG
e.V.
Fronteras
Electronicas España (FrEE)
Index
on Censorship
Internet
Freedom
IRIS
(Imaginons un reseau Internet solidaire)
NaST
(Networkers against Surveillance Taskforce)
NetAction
Peacefire
International
quintessenz
VIBE
FURTHER INFORMATION
The Global
Internet Liberty Campaign
Factsheet
from Opendvd.org
Fascmile
of the complaint for injunctive relief for misappropration
of trade secrets by DVD-CCA
Wired
news article
San
Jose Mercury news article
Eric
S. Raymond on the Case
German
language analysis
ACTION
Join the Global Internet Liberty Campaign's
fight against the DVD-CCA's lawsuit. Email
erich-moechel@quintessenz.at
to sign on.
Send a letter or email to the DVD-CCA to express
your opinion:
DVD
Copy Control Association
225 B Cochrane Circle
Morgan Hill CA 95037, USA
john.hoy@lmicp.com