Now, California Court of Appeals Sixth Appellate District overturned the original injunction handed out in 1999 against Andrew Bunner and several other individuals. Back then, DVD-CCA argued that distributing the DeCSS code in California violated against state's trade secrets legislation. Court overturned the decision because DVD-CCA failed to provide evidence that the CSS, a copy protection mechanism found on many DVD-Video discs, is still a trade secret.
"We are thrilled that the Court of Appeal has recognized that the injunction restricting Mr. Bunner's freedom of speech is not justified," said Staff Attorney Gwen Hinze. "Today's Court ruling that there is no evidence that CSS was still a trade secret when Mr. Bunner posted DeCSS vindicates what we have long said; DeCSS has been available on thousands of websites around the world for many years."
The decision doesn't make DeCSS or similar tools legal in the United States, but rather makes it clear for studios that the trade secrets legislation is not the correct ammunition in the fight against DVD ripping tools. In other cases, they've instead opted to use the notorious DMCA legislation in order to block the sales and distribution of DVD rippers. None of those cases have reached the Supreme Court yet.
More information: EFF
Written by: Petteri Pyyny @ 27 Feb 2004 13:47
