Appeals court rules DeCSS is no longer a trade secret
Posted 02/28/2004 @ 4:24 PM, by Fred "zAmboni" Locklear
In the long...long...long running case between Andrew Bunner and the DVD Copy Control Association, Bunner has ultimately prevailed. In handing down their decision (.pdf), the court ruled that the DeCSS program had been so widely circulated on the Internet that it did not qualify as a trade secret anymore.
"The preliminary injunction...burdens more speech than necessary to protect DVD CCA's property interest and was an unlawful prior restraint upon Bunner's right to free speech," the three-judge panel wrote in its decision.
After Jon Johansen created the DVD decryption program DeCSS in 1999, the code quickly spread and was posted to websites across the globe (including Bunner's). The DVD CCA argued that posting and linking to the code violated trade secret protections and sued to get the code removed from various websites. After grinding slowly through the courts, the California Supreme Court asserted that trade secrets are afforded protection and reversed a previous appellate court's ruling. But in that ruling, it sent the ruling down to a lower court to determine if DeCSS was still a trade secret at the time Bunner posted it on his website. Fearful the lower court would find DeCSS was not a trade secret anymore, the DVD CCA dropped their case against Bunner and moved for the court to dismiss the appeal. Seeing this was an opportunity to scrape out a victory, and to help clarify issues involving trade secrets, Bunner opposed the motion for dismissal.
While this ruling is a victory for free speech rights, it still does not give California residents the right to post the DeCSS code anywhere they want. The code is no longer affords trade secret protection, but still may be protected under copyright statutes. The DVD CCA said they "are reviewing the ruling in its entirety to determine our next steps," but unless they are willing to bring a RIAA style copyright infringement case, this may be the last chapter in the Bunner saga.
Posted by P6 at March 1, 2004 10:50 PM
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Comments
> Bunner has ultimately prevailed. ... the court ruled that the DeCSS program had been so widely circulated ... that it did not qualify as a trade secret anymore.
Correction, Bunner did not "ultimately" prevail.
What the ruling is saying is that the trial judge (Who, if you read page 7 on the pdf is portrayed as a moron for making a grammatical mistake) should not have granted the preliminary injunction, i.e. Bunner should not have been censored prior to a definitive ruling.
However, nothing is stopping the DVD-CCA for sueing Brunner under e.g. the DMCA. However, barring any new injunctions, Bunner is free to publish DeCSS pending an outcome of that trial.
Posted by dof at March 2, 2004 04:31 AM