PREMIUM SEARCH Search by job title, geography and build a list of executive contacts
Over the years, the hacker magazine 2600 and its editor Eric Corley have angered lots of big companies. In the little known quarterly with a circulation of 60,000, Corley, under the pen name Emmanuel Goldstein, has published treatises covering germane hacker topics such as how to crack the Federal Express computer system and how to snag free phone time from Bell South. Past feature articles tweaked the U.S. Secret Service and the Defense Dept. And 2600 has tested the limits of parody and free speech by registering offensive Internet domain names such as "f_cknbc.com" and "VerizonREALLYsucks.com" (Verizon had already registered Verizonsucks.com).
Now, a court believes that Corley has finally crossed the legal threshold from free speech to encouraging piracy. U.S. Federal District Court Judge Lewis A. Kaplan on Aug. 17 ruled that Corley must stop posting hyperlinks to Web sites that display computer code for a program called DeCSS. This program allows computer users to disable the film studios' DVD encryption system and store movies as video files on their desktop computers. The ruling comes in response to a lawsuit filed in December, 1999, against 2600 by the Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA) and eight major film studios.
To many observers, Corley had it coming. Prior to this ruling, Kaplan had ordered the hacker scribe to remove a posting of the DeCSS code on 2600.com, the magazine's Web site. Corley defiantly responded by replacing the code with hyperlinks to other Web sites that had posted the DeCSS code. He further urged the hacker community to proliferate the code throughout the Internet.
RED FLAG. Of course, the MPAA doesn't look much like a victim. Lawyers for the studios tried to exclude the media from portions of the trial and to disqualify Corley's lead attorney on flimsy conflict-of-interest allegations. This was particularly ironic considering that the co-counsel for the MPAA had once served as lead counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.
Regardless of the two sides' questionable tactics, Kaplan's ruling raised a red flag with some journalists and legal scholars, who fear a creeping digital censorship from the bench. "It's a slippery slope," says Sreenath Sreenivasan, a professor at Columbia University's School of Journalism. "It could be a hacker site now, but where does it stop?"
That question is of great concern to free-speech advocates. "Suppose on my class Web site I link to sites that have DeCSS code on them. I don't do that because I want my students to start ripping off DVDs but because I think it is important that they are aware of what's out there. Am I off the hook because my purpose for setting up that link is not to facilitate unauthorized access?" asks Columbia University Law School professor and copyright expert Jane Ginsburg.
DISNEY THE PIRATE? According to Corley, the ruling and others like it could spread hyperlink responsibility beyond publications to search engines and throughout the Internet. That, Corley claims, could have a chilling affect on the Net's freewheeling discourse. Sound extreme? To prove his point, Corley asks visitors to 2600.com who wish to view DeCSS to search through Go.com, a search engine owned by Walt Disney Co., whose studio arm participated in the MPAA's lawsuit. A search this week on Go.com turned up 1,400 links to DeCSS.
Of course, the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) has specific provisions to provide safe harbors to Internet service providers and search engines to protect them from copyright-violation charges. In his ruling, Judge Kaplan took pains to explicitly state that a mainstream publication writing about a topic such as DeCSS and posting a hyperlink to one of the code sites should not face legal retribution.
In this regard, Kaplan contended that 2600's efforts aimed more at proliferating the code than in covering the topic. And the judge agreed with the MPAA that DeCSS constitutes a technology created to violate copyrights. What Corley termed "an act of electronic civil disobedience," the courts viewed as nothing more than a blatant promotion of piracy. "2600 is a group of hackers. It is in no way akin to the New York Times," says Charles S. Sims, a partner with New York law firm Proskauer Rose, which represented the MPAA in the case.
Sims has a point. 2600 in the past has reported on illegal activities and often provided tutorials on how to carry them out. And the publication clearly advocates a hacker ethos that, at times, appears to transgress legal boundaries.
TWO STANDARDS? To try to ensure that his ruling does not diminish free speech, Judge Kaplan took great care to use narrow wording. Nor is the case finished -- defense attorney Martin Garbus intends to appeal and expects the case will land eventually before the Supreme Court, where Garbus has a 20-0 record in his favor.
But should he not prevail, the reality is that this precedent could set the stage for more restrictions on Internet media. Any ruling that sets a different standard for "responsible" media than for the myriad new-media voices emerging seems particularly troubling in an era when the objectivity of big media companies owned by multinational conglomerates, such as Disney, is being questioned.
By posting the code, Corley cried "Fire!" in a crowded theater. But by hyperlinking to DeCSS sites, he merely acknowledged information already on the Internet. That's a subtle but important difference. Perhaps Corley lacks good judgment. But allowing media outlets to make those judgments is an essential part of freedom of the press. Any stripping of that right isn't just bad for hackers, it's bad for society.
Salkever is a staff reporter for Business Week Online in New York Edited by Beth Belton
Copyright 2000, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
Printer-Friendly Version
