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| Entertainment News - updated 2:14 AM ET Oct 20 |
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By Craig Linder WASHINGTON (The Hollywood Reporter) --- The University of Rochester planned a broad slate of events to celebrate its 150th anniversary this weekend, from the traditional football game to symposia on the university's latest research. They didn't plan a protest against the MPAA. But that's exactly what they're going to get when MPAA chief Jack Valenti arrives in upstate New York today to moderate a forum of Rochester alumni who work in Hollywood. Taking aim at the MPAA's lawsuits against the distributors of software that decodes DVDs, a group of Rochester students plans to hold a rally during Valenti's session, which will also include Warner Bros. chairman Barry Meyer and Universal Pictures vp Robert Rubin. By descrambling the encryption of DVDs, the DeCSS software allows users to use the disks on computers that run on the Linux operating system. The software also enables Web surfers to share the disks' copyrighted materials over the Internet, without paying for the DVD. The MPAA scored a victory when a New York federal court ruled that a 1998 law forbids Web sites from posting the DeCSS code. The students planning the rally contend that banning DeCSS could hamper the growth of Linux and Unix, alternative computer operating systems to Apple's Macintosh and Microsoft's Windows systems. Valenti rejected that argument, referring to U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan's decision. "Judge Kaplan already made the first decision," Valenti said. "He labeled it a blatant violation of copyright law." The New York DeCSS case won't be the only target of today's protest. The students plan to also argue against the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, which made it illegal to circumvent electronic copyright protections. "We consider it unconstitutional," said Eric McCarthy, one of the protest's organizers. "It violates freedom of speech by putting restrictions on source code for computers." Organizers claim that the DMCA violates the First Amendment by forbidding "fair use" of copyrighted materials in academic publications and other legitimate works. They also believe that computer code should be protected as a form of expression like speech or publishing. "Code is an expression," McCarthy said. "You have to realize that by restricting code, you're telling people what they can and cannot write." The copyright act was developed after lengthy discussions with groups interested in protecting fair use and has withstood court scrutiny, Valenti said. Traditional protected uses are not affected by the DMCA, and only copyright-evading uses are forbidden, he said. "If anyone wants to make that claim, they should appeal the case and go to the next court," Valenti said. "The point is: A federal district judge has made short shrift of all these counter-arguments." The Rochester protest is only the latest in a series of protests by DeCSS devotees. During the New York trial, protesters outside the courthouse waved placards with pictures of Jon Johansen, the 16-year-old hacker who created the DeCSS code. Activists have sponsored a contest to encourage hackers to spread the DVD-viewing software in nontraditional ways. The winner hid the code in an Internet image posted on her Web page. Anyone who downloaded the image also downloaded the software. MPAA spokesman Rich Taylor said he is not surprised by the ongoing protests, though he said that those opposed to the MPAA's actions are "certainly within their rights to protest." "There's been a small segment that has resisted our right to defend our property." Taylor said. "We've heard any number of defenses from reverse engineering to First Amendment to any number of chameleon-like defenses, but the DeCSS code has one purpose -- decoding encrypted DVDs." (Craig Linder is a reporter for States News Service.) More entertainment industry news at The Hollywood Reporter Online
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