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

[Todd Allen]

On 5/4/07, Joe Szilagyi <szilagyi at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.
>
>
> The next important question then, I think, is would Wikipedia liable legally
> if they served a DMCA takedown, and we did take it down? If the answer is
> Yes, we'd be legally safe, then perhaps mentioning the string itself isn't a
> risk. Maybe. Beyond that, the liability for posting/reposting would fall to
> users and IPs that posted it?
>
>
> --
> Regards,
> Joe
> http://www.joeszilagyi.com
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I think we're missing another question as well here.

What are they going to sue -for-?

The number's all over the net, and, by now, I'm sure it's on thousands
to millions of people's own hard drives too. Suing for an injunction
would be silly and pointless. Injunctions are granted for -relief-,
the court could not in this case provide relief.

So that leaves damages. What damages? We didn't do it. We certainly
can say "Look, we didn't damage you worth one nickel, this key was all
over the place by the time we published it, and you had no hope in
hell of recanning the worms long before we published it. We did you no
harm. By the time we published your "secret", it had long since
stopped being a secret."

-- 
Freedom is the right to know that 2+2=4. From this all else follows.