Gregory Maxwell wrote:
On 5/4/07, Delirium <delirium(a)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