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Piracy and Free Speech Issues In California Case

DVD-CCA v. Bunner, on appeal before the California Supreme Court, involves the posting of free software for the DeCSS code (to decrypt DVDs) by Andrew Bunner on his website. Prior to the beginning of this case in 2000, the DeCSS code had been published widely on sites around the world. According to SFGate.com, “California Attorney General Bill Lockyer joined the movie industry in contending that the DeCSS code was simply a burglary tool designed for breaking, entering and stealing a trade secret — the industry-owned code designed to prevent unauthorized playback of movies recorded on digital versatile discs, or DVDs.” See also this posting on the case from Freedom to Tinker.

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