In August, a California appeals court issued an opinion denying
Matthew Pavlovich's motion to dismiss the case against him for lack
of personal jurisdiction over him. Pavlovich, who was a college
student in Indiana and now lives in Texas, claims that postings
made to a mailing list called LiVID, which he ran from his home
computer, should not subject him to defending himself in
California.
LiVID is an open source development team working to build a DVD
player compatible with the Linux operating system that aims to
compete with the movie studios' control of DVD players.
In January 2000, a California judge issued an injunction banning
dozens of individuals, including Pavlovich, from publishing the
DeCSS software code which can be used to break the anti-copying
protection on DVDs but is also needed to view DVD movies on
Linux-based computers. The judge ruled that DeCSS breaches the US
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
The appeals court ruled that because Pavlovich knew the movie
business was in California, publishing information that might have
an effect on its profits was a sufficient connection to find
Pavlovich within the court's jurisdiction.
Pavlovich is being supported in his appeal to the California
Supreme Court by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a civil
liberties organisation that works to protect rights in the digital
world.
