Gregory Maxwell wrote:
On 5/4/07, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
The problem is that it's not at all clear that this act is illegal; it would only become clear if, say, _Wired_ were taken to court and lost.
Except... 2600 was already taken to court and lost. And and lost on the appeal... and where the fact of this instance differ from the prior case, I believe they all differ towards the direction of finding for AACS-LC. ... At least you could try to argue that decss served important research purposes.... but a simple opaque 256-bit random value?
The 2600 decision, according to the text of the decision, was almost entirely based on the fact that 2600 was explicitly "trafficking" in circumvention tools, since it was pretty much a "hey download this tool here!" type of link. The court took great pains to note that any sort of academic or educational discussion of circumvention tools would be protected. Basically 2600 didn't even pretend to have a veneer of academic discussion, so it was a completely different case; if _Wired_ were taken to court and lost, that would be much more similar to our situation. In fact in the years since the 2600 case, many dozens of people have published such keys and circumvention devices in academic and educational contexts, and none has lost a court case.
-Mark