Studios lose copy protection battle

In what was regarded as a stunning jolt to the motion picture industry’s effort to prevent the distribution of software that can decode DVD copy-protection programs, a California appeals court on Thursday overturned a lower-court order barring the publication of so-called DeCSS software. The court said that such publication is no different from other types of controversial speech that is protected by the First Amendment. The issue is also being heard in federal court, where the industry has argued that DeCSS is not “speech” but in fact an instrument intended to break the industry’s copy-protection system. However, in their ruling on Thursday, the California judges stated that the industry’s “statutory right to protect its economically valuable trade secret is not an interest that is “more fundamental’ than the First Amendment.”