EFF DVD Update: July 17, 2000
Universal City Studios v. 2600 Magazine
DMCA Trial Begins with a Bang
EFF's motion to recuse the judge because he had advised plaintiff Time Warner on DVD antitrust issues while at the law firm Paul Weiss was denied without allowing argument at the opening of trial on July 17 in NY federal court. After refusing to allow the defense team to stay the trial so it could appeal the disqualification ruling to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Kaplan then ordered the defense team to proceed to trial immediately.
The movie studios' first witness was Michael Shamos a Carnegie Melon faculty member who claimed to make and trade a DiVX DVD by using the DeCSS software. On cross-examination by EFF's defense team, Shamos testified that it took 20 hours over a 4-day period to conduct the experiment including 10 hours devoted solely to the synchronization of the film's audio and video. Shamos, who admitted to being paid $30,000 by MPAA for his participation in this case, stated the law firm Proskaur & Rose designed the test and provided him with detailed instructions on precisely what to do. The "technology expert" was also forced to disclose that an assistant Eric Burns conducted most of the experiment and that Shamos has no knowledge of a single incident of illegal copying attributable to DeCSS.
Shamos also testified that the studios' lawyers asked him to remove references to the First Amendment and the NY Times (who linked to the software) in early drafts of his court declaration because it would "cloud the case with First Amendment issues." While the courtroom was packed with journalists and concerned Netizens alike, dozens of protesters demonstrated against the studios' broad interpretation of the DMCA outside the courthouse during the trial.
Tuesday's testimony is expected to include EFF's technology expert Frank Andrew Stevenson the Norwegian cryptographer who first analyzed the CSS algorithm and published his results.
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EFF's archive of MPAA v 2600 litigation: http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/MPAA_DVD_cases/
