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Politech is the oldest Internet resource devoted to politics and technology. Launched in 1994 by Declan McCullagh, the mailing list has chronicled the growing intersection of culture, technology, politics, and law. Since 2000, so has the Politech web site.
--- I am on vacation this week -- in part in NYC, though I shall escape the Times Square rush by midday Thursday -- so I'm not writing about this case. But it is one of the most important ones to come along in a while. It raises the very interesting question of what kind of information a reporter or web publisher can legally distribute. The DVD trade association plaintiffs even say *linking* to supposedly reverse-engineered info should be illegal: "Defendants knew or should have known when they posted or 'linked' to the DeCSS program that they were misusing confidential, proprietary nformation..." The DVD association and motion picture industry says their lawsuit is necessary for their business to succeed: "the wholesale copying and distribution of copyrighted motion pictures destroys the motion picture industry's ability to protect its intellectual property and destroys the market for the computer and consumer electronics industries?' DVD-based products." Journalists should pay attention. In a previous article on the controversy (http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,32449,00.html), I linked to one of the mirror sites at issue. deja.com was sued in this case for linking *automatically* to the site -- perhaps news organizations will be sued for linking *intentionally* to the same place. Excellent collection of links: http://www.dibona.com/social/dvd/index.shtml Text of complaint: http://www.dibona.com/social/dvd/text/index.shtml Wired article from this morning: http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,33303,00.html Slashdot thread: http://slashdot.org/articles/99/12/27/194216.shtml Some sites that were listed as defendants: www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=547600297 cryptome.org/dvd-free.htm slashdot.org/articles/99/11/09/1342207.shtml cryptome.org/dvd-css.htm -Declan -------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- the moderated mailing list of politics and technology To subscribe: send a message to majordomo@vorlon.mit.edu with this text: subscribe politech More information is at http://www.well.com/~declan/politech/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------