Hollywood group drops DVD-copying case - News - Business

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This story was printed from ZDNet Australia.
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Hollywood group drops DVD-copying case

By John Borland, Special to ZDNet
January 23, 2004
URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/business/soa/Hollywood-group-drops-DVD-copying-case/0,139023166,139115796,00.htm

A high-tech group associated with Hollywood has dropped a long-running lawsuit against a California programmer accused of putting DVD-cracking code online, the programmer's attorneys said Thursday.

The DVD Copy Control Association has asked California state courts to dismiss its case against programmer Andrew Bunner. The group sued Bunner and a handful of other Web publishers four years ago, alleging that the act of posting code called DeCSS, which can help in the process of decoding and copying DVDs, violated its trade secret rights.

The trade group's decision marks the close of the last prominent legal battle over the DeCSS code. Despite the DVD-CCA's move, earlier cases have left it illegal under federal law to distribute the code online in the United States.

Nevertheless, Bunner's attorneys called the unexpected decision by the DVD-CCA to drop its case a victory for free speech.

"I think that they are sick of losing," said Allonn Levy, one of several attorneys who had worked on the case on Bunner's behalf. "I think they have finally reached the conclusion that it is not a fight that they can win."

Attorneys for the DVD-CCA could not immediately be reached. Documents filed with the California superior court and the state's Court of Appeal did not explain the group's decision to ask for dismissal of the case.

The decision follows a series of setbacks for Hollywood in attempting to control the DeCSS code, which can be used in the process of making copies of DVDs.

Written by Norwegian teenager Jon Johansen, the code was initially aimed at letting Linux-based computers play DVDs. However, the code became widely distributed as a means for breaking through the Content Scrambling System, an anticopying technology used on most DVDs.

Last month, Norwegian courts ruled for the second time that Johansen did not break that country's laws in releasing the DeCSS code.