[WikiEN-l] Press coverage listing the HD-DVD key

[Anthony]

On 5/4/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/4/07, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote:
> > On 5/4/07, Joe Szilagyi <szilagyi at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I'm just curious. Isn't it a technical violation of US law/DMCA to link back
> > > to pages that include infringing material?
> >
> > I don't think that has ever been decided in court one way or another.
> > But someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
>
> It has.
> It's illegal if you knowingly do so for the purpose of disseminating
> the circumvention device.
>
> See Universal studios and friends vs 2600, and the court of appeals
> ruling which upheld it.
>
The Court went on to hold that when the Defendants [2600, who had
previously distributed DeCSS itself] "proclaimed on their own site
that DeCSS could be had by clicking on the hyperlinks" on their site,
they were trafficking in DeCSS, and therefore liable for their linking
as well as their posting.

That's fairly narrow.  It only applies to trafficking in cracking
tools, and not to all "infringing material".  And it is applied to a
defendant who previously distributed the tools directly, and then
later linked directly to the tools with a message essentially saying
"download here".

It's still pretty damning though, especially wrt the current
situation.  And 2600 claims that all the lawyers they spoke too said
they would probably lose a Supreme Court appeal on First Amendment
grounds.

Anthony