ok what is "Excryption"

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Calif. Court Won't Take Excryption Case
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 6:45 p.m. ET



SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- California's highest court said Monday that a group
licensing DVD encryption software to the motion picture industry cannot use
the state's courts to sue a Texas man for posting on the Internet codes to
break such software.

Without addressing the merits of the case, the state Supreme Court ruled 4-3
that the California-based DVD Copy Control Association must sue Matthew
Pavlovich for trade secret infringement in his home state of Texas, or
Indiana, where he was when he posted the codes.

The DVD Copy Control Association licenses its software to film studios to
block the illegal copying of DVD movies. Pavlovich, co-founder of
Dallas-based Media Driver LLC, posted codes in 1999 that would allow for the
copying of DVDs.

Justice Janice Rogers Brown said that the association's allegation is that
Pavlovich ``should have known'' that his conduct may harm any industry
associated with the motion picture industry, which is largely based in
California. But those allegations alone don't require out-of-state residents
to answer suits in California, the court said.

The three-judge minority said that, under the majority's decision, the
association may have to litigate its case in several states with conceivably
different outcomes because 21 defendants from various states are being sued.

Robert Sugarman, an attorney for the Morgan Hill-based association, said the
group was exploring its options, including suing Pavlovich in Texas or
another state in which all the defendants can be sued in one court.

Still, the justices have not answered the key question of whether the same
charges in the same case against a California man can withstand a free
speech defense.

A San Jose-based state appeals court ruled last year that it was a ``prior
restraint'' to prohibit the posting of the encryption-breaking code on the
Internet. The 6th District Court of Appeal, in overturning a judge's order
forbidding Andrew Bunner of San Francisco from posting the code, ruled that
protecting trade secrets is not as important as ``the First Amendment right
to freedom of speech.''

``At the end of the day, this is code posted on a Web site,'' said
Pavlovich's attorney, Allonn Levy. ``There is nothing illegal about that.''

-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com
To unsubscribe or update your address, click
  http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/