[Free-sklyarov-uk] a win for sanity! and free speech

[Julian T J Midgley]

On Wed, 7 Nov 2001, David Haworth wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 06, 2001 at 03:38:02PM +0000, Julian T J Midgley wrote:
> > This may be true, but Dmitry is being prosecuted under the DMCA, and not
> > trade-secret law, so the source-code is pure speech argument is less of
> > a killer (although, if his lawyers argue "academic research", or "fair
> > use", I agree with both Ian and you that Dmitry has a better chance of
> > being found innocent than he did before the DeCSS "code == pure speech"
> > finding).
>
> It seems to me that there are 2 parts to the decision:
>
>  1. Source code == speech (and is therefore granted 1st amendment
>     protections)

except when there exist exceptions to the 1st amendment protections in the
Constitution in the form of copyright laws...

>  2. 1st amendment > trade secrets
>
> 1. is relevant to Dmitry (and Goldstein). 2. isn't.

Only slightly relevant - the court in the DeCSS case isn't sufficiently
lofty to set precedents, and:

3. is v. relevant:

3. 1st amendment ! > copyright legislation (by much, anyway)./

> What this has to do with the softman v. adobe (someone posted the link)
> isn't clear. That seems to be a "software == goods" and first-sale
> decision.

Softman v. Adobe is an entirely separate case, interesting purely because
it challenges the validity of End User Licence Agreements.  Those
interested in peddling electronic text-books, time-limited non-tranferable
WMP files, and the like, have said they will do so using EULAs, to prevent
the recipient selling the product on.  The Softman v. Adobe case basically
says "you can have copyright, or you can have end-user licence agreements,
but you can't have both".  This is significant in the grander scheme of
things, (remember metatext.com?) - it's not related to Dmitry (much).

Julian


-- 
Julian T. J. Midgley                      http://www.xenoclast.org/
Cambridge, England.                          PGP Key ID: 0xBCC7863F
Beware the European Copyright Directive:  http://uk.eurorights.org/