Publisher Eric Corley asked the full Second Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider a recent ruling against him in an action brought by movie studios over a link included in his web site, 2600.com, to the software code. The code has been the subject of a number of other cases. Last week, Jon Johansen of Norway, who co-wrote the code when aged 15, was charged under his country's anti-hacking laws.
"By permitting publication of code in an on-line magazine, the Second Circuit would recognise that internet speech is fully protected by the First Amendment," said Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is supporting Corley's action. "The most egregious part of the previous decision prevented even linking, the lifeblood of the internet."
In November, a three-judge panel held that the magazine could be banned from publishing or linking to DeCSS. Corley and his supporters point out that that panel rejected pleas from 46 intellectual property professors, 17 computer scientists, 8 computer security experts, the Association for Computing Machinery, the American Library Association, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, among others.
A court decision on the request is expected later this spring.
