Stardate 20011129.0442 (On Screen): Professor Felten's
suit against the RIAA has been tossed out of court on the grounds that it was moot. Despite what I think about the DMCA, I think this decision by the court was correct. It's going to take someone actually being prosecuted under DMCA before we can get a good court test of it.
Unfortunately, we have one, and a decision on it also went in favor of DMCA yesterday, and it's really scary. But the reports about it are unclear. This concerns the 2600 Magazine suit, where RIAA was suing to prevent publishing the source for DeCSS. But I don't think that this was actually a court decision. I think what happened is that the judge issued a court order preventing 2600 from lilnking to the source for DeCSS and yesterday the appeals court upheld that order. But I think that order was pre-trial and not permanent. Still, the legal consideration that says that linking something can be legally actionable is very, very bad. One problem with it is that it could be a trap. Suppose that I link Violetta's site over there, and then a few months later she decides to post DeCSS on her site without my knowledge. Am I then in violation of the law? Am I legally required to repeatedly monitor all the sites I've ever linked to to make sure none of them have then posted something illegal? In any case, I'm going to keep track of other sites which might have more savvy coverage who may make it more clear just what yesterday's decision really meant. (discuss)
