Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-23-05159/USCOURTS-caDC-23-05159-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued May 6, 2024 Decided August 2, 2024

No. 23-5159

MATTHEW D. GREEN, ET AL.,

APPELLANTS

v.

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, ET AL.,

APPELLEES

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:16-cv-01492)

Benjamin D. Margo argued the cause for appellants. On 

the briefs were Corynne McSherry, Mitchell L. Stoltz, Brian M. 

Willen, and Lauren Gallo White.

John W. Crittenden was on the brief for amicus curiae 

Legal Scholars in support of appellants.

Charles Duan was on the brief for amici curiae Public 

Knowledge, et al. in support of appellants.

Jack I. Lerner was on the brief for amicus curiae

Kartemquin Educational Films and International Documentary 

Association in support of appellants.

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Vivek Krishnamurthy was on the brief for amicus curiae

Accessibility, Archival, and Security Fair Users in support of 

appellants.

Brian J. Springer, Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, 

argued the cause for appellees. With him on the brief were 

Brian M. Boynton, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney 

General, and Daniel Tenny, Attorney.

John Matthew DeWeese Williams and Lucy Holmes 

Plovnick were on the brief for amici curiae Association of 

American Publishers, Inc., et al. in support of appellees.

David Jonathan Taylor was on the brief for amici curiae

DVD Copy Control Association, Inc. and Advanced Access 

Content System Licensing Administrator, LLC in support of 

appellees.

Before: HENDERSON, MILLETT and PILLARD, Circuit 

Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge PILLARD.

PILLARD, Circuit Judge: Twenty-six years ago, Congress 

enacted the Digital Millenium Copyright Act to protect 

copyrighted works made available online from digital piracy 

and unauthorized access. Plaintiffs-Appellants, a computer 

science professor and a tech inventor, say the Act is so plainly 

unconstitutional that it cannot be applied to anyone. They 

challenge the law’s prohibitions against circumvention of

technological protections on copyrighted works and 

distribution of the means to circumvent. In their view, those 

provisions violate the First Amendment’s free speech 

protections by unduly stifling the fair use of copyrighted works. 

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Having abandoned their as-applied challenges, plaintiffs seek 

outright invalidation of a central pillar of the Act as overbroad 

and a prior restraint on speech in violation of the First 

Amendment. We reject both facial challenges. 

I.

A.

The First Amendment and Copyright Clause appear, at 

first glance, to be in tension. The First Amendment guarantees 

freedom of speech, see U.S. Const. amend. I, but the Copyright 

Clause, by “securing for limited Times to Authors . . . the 

exclusive right to their respective writings . . . ,” id. art. I, § 8, 

cl. 8, has the “inherent and intended effect” of restricting some 

expression by others, Golan v. Holder, 565 U.S. 302, 327-28 

(2012). The tension is more apparent than real, however, 

insofar as the Copyright Clause bolsters the First Amendment

by acting as an “engine of free expression.” Id. at 328 (quoting 

Harper & Row Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enters., 471 U.S. 539, 

558 (1985)). By creating a “marketable right to the use of one’s 

expression, copyright supplies the economic incentive to create 

and disseminate ideas.” Id. (quoting Harper & Row, 471 U.S. 

at 558). Consistent with the Copyright Clause, the First 

Amendment “securely protects the freedom to make—or 

decline to make—one’s own speech,” but it “bears less heavily 

when speakers assert the right to make other people’s 

speeches.” Eldred v. Ashcroft, 537 U.S. 186, 221 (2003). The 

purpose of Copyright law to “promote the Progress of Science 

and useful Arts,” U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 8—in other words, 

to “promote the creation and publication of free expression,” 

Eldred, 537 U.S. at 219—generally accords with the First 

Amendment’s aims. 

 That said, to avoid impeding robust expression, courts 

have long recognized a common-law doctrine of “fair use” that 

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implies an “author’s consent to a reasonable use of his 

copyrighted works” by other speakers. Harper & Row, 471 

U.S. at 549 (quoting Horace G. Ball, Law of Copyright and 

Literary Property 260 (1944)). Fair use has historically limited

copyright owners’ exclusive rights in order to facilitate certain 

uses of information by nonowners. In the Copyright Act of 

1976, which gave copyright holders “a bundle of exclusive 

rights” to their copyrighted work, Congress codified fair use as 

an affirmative defense to a claim of copyright infringement. 

Andy Warhol Found. for the Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith, 598 

U.S. 508, 526-27 (2023) (quoting Harper & Row, 471 U.S. at 

546). The fair use doctrine permits the use of copyrighted work 

“for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, 

teaching, . . . scholarship, or research,” 17 U.S.C. § 107, and 

enables “courts to avoid rigid application of the copyright 

statute when, on occasion, it would stifle the very creativity 

which that law is designed to foster,” Andy Warhol Found., 598 

U.S. at 527 (quoting Stewart v. Abend, 495 U.S. 207, 236 

(1990)). 

Faced with First Amendment challenges to statutes that 

regulate copyright, the Supreme Court has described fair use as 

one of two “traditional First Amendment safeguards” designed 

to strike a balance in copyright law. Eldred, 537 U.S. at 220. 

The other referenced safeguard is copyright’s distinction 

between uncopyrightable ideas and copyrightable expression, 

codified at 17 U.S.C. § 102(b). That distinction ensures that 

“every idea, theory, and fact in a copyrighted work becomes 

instantly available for public exploitation” even though 

particular means of expressing it do not. Eldred, 537 U.S. at 

219. Copyright laws are not categorically invulnerable to First 

Amendment challenge, but where “Congress has not altered the 

traditional contours of copyright protection”—as where it aptly 

respects the idea/expression dichotomy and fair use—the 

Supreme Court has opined that “further First Amendment 

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scrutiny is unnecessary.” Id. at 221. Thus, fair use is a “builtin First Amendment accommodation[]” in copyright law—

endowing fair use with some constitutional pedigree. Id. at 

219.

In acknowledging that the fair use defense serves 

constitutional values, we do not mean to suggest that Congress 

lacks freedom to alter the contours of that defense. To the 

contrary, the Supreme Court has consistently acknowledged 

Congress’s power to “take a fresh look” should it disagree with 

judicial application of fair use doctrine. Sony Corp. of America 

v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417, 456 (1984). And 

Congress has in fact done so at various points throughout the 

nation’s history. For instance, while Justice Story once 

recognized abridgment as one type of non-infringing fair use, 

Folsom v. Marsh, 9 F. Cas. 342, 344-45 (C.C.D. Mass. 1841), 

Congress later extended copyright’s protection to exclusive 

abridgement rights, see Copyright Act of 1909 § 1(b), Pub. L. 

60–349, 35 Stat. 1075 (1909); see also Paul Goldstein, 

Derivative Rights and Derivative Works in Copyright, 30 J. 

Copyright Soc’y U.S.A. 209, 214 (1982). 

Fair use plays a key role in striking a balance between 

expression and prohibition in copyright law. But because the 

line between uses that are fair and those that are infringing 

eludes crisp definition, creators relying on fair use as a defense 

against claims of copyright infringement inevitably face some 

uncertainty. Courts determine case by case whether use of a 

copyrighted work constitutes fair use, sometimes based on 

subsidiary factual determinations made by juries. See Google 

LLC v. Oracle Am., Inc., 593 U.S. 1, 23-26 (2021). Indeed, the 

Supreme Court has described reliance on a “potential fair use 

defense” as a “roll [of] the dice,” subjecting the user of 

copyrighted material to a “notoriously fact sensitive” analysis 

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that typically cannot be resolved “without a trial.” Georgia v. 

Public.Resource.Org, Inc., 590 U.S. 255, 275 (2020). 

That uncertainty risks chilling some privileged speech, but 

it inheres in the contextual character of the fair use defense. 

The Copyright Act directs courts determining whether a work 

constitutes fair use to consider a non-exhaustive list of factors, 

including:

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including 

whether such use is of a commercial nature or is 

for nonprofit educational purposes;

(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;

(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion 

used in relation to the copyrighted work as a 

whole; and

(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market 

for or value of the copyrighted work.

17 U.S.C. § 107. When those factors favor a finding of fair 

use, that use is “not an infringement of copyright.” 17 U.S.C. 

§ 107. 

B.

With the rise of streaming services and electronic readers, 

the public enjoys unprecedented access to copyrighted 

materials. Billions of people worldwide can stream 

copyrighted TV shows into their homes, listen to copyrighted 

music through the smartphones in their pockets, or 

instantaneously download copyrighted novels onto an e-reader. 

In the 1990s, Congress anticipated that “the movies, music, 

software, and literary works that are the fruit of American 

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creative genius” could soon be accessed “quickly and 

conveniently via the Internet.” S. Rep. No. 105-190, at 8 

(1998). Spurred by that accurate forecast and obligated to 

implement two World Intellectual Property Organization 

treaties, Congress erected new legal guardrails to facilitate 

those advances. After all, “without reasonable assurance that 

they will be protected against massive piracy,” copyright 

owners could hardly be expected to make their works readily 

available on the internet or in digital form. Id. 

Enter the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), 17 

U.S.C. § 1201 et. seq. The Act “backed with legal sanctions” 

copyright owners’ use of “digital walls” to protect their 

copyrighted works from piracy. Microsoft Corp. v. AT&T 

Corp., 550 U.S. 437, 458 (2007) (quoting Universal City 

Studios, Inc. v. Corley, 273 F.3d 429, 435 (2d Cir. 2001)). 

Those walls, also called technological protection measures, 

limit access to and use of copyrighted work. For example, 

many subscription-based video or music streaming services

protect their copyrighted TV shows, movies, and music from 

unauthorized access by requiring users to subscribe and log in, 

and by encrypting the accessed media to prevent unauthorized 

copying. As technology has become omnipresent in modern 

life, an increasing number of consumer devices—including 

smartphones, automobiles, insulin pumps, and smart home 

appliances—contain copyrighted software shielded by

technological protection measures to prevent consumers from 

accessing and manipulating it. See U.S. Copyright Office, 

Section 1201 of Title 17: A Report of the Register of 

Copyrights, at 88 (June 2017), https://perma.cc/D7EK-KAEJ.

The DMCA protects all those technological locks through two 

main provisions at issue in this appeal.

The first provision is the Act’s anticircumvention 

provision, which forbids “circumvent[ing] a technological 

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measure that effectively controls access to a work protected” 

by copyright law. 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1)(A). It prohibits 

individuals from overcoming technological access controls on 

copyrighted material, including by “descrambl[ing] a 

scrambled work” or “decrypt[ing] an encrypted work” absent 

“the authority of the copyright owner.” Id. § 1201(a)(3)(A). 

Congress noted that “the conduct of circumvention was never 

before made unlawful,” S. Rep. 105-190, at 12, but explained 

the need for the new protection as akin to “making it illegal to 

break into a house using a tool, the primary purpose of which 

is to break into houses,” id. at 11. In other words, the 

anticircumvention provision is designed to operate as a 

prohibition against digital trespass.

The anticircumvention provision is subject to statutory and 

regulatory exemptions. Section 1201 itself provides some 

exemptions. For example, nonprofit libraries may overcome 

technological controls to gain access to copyrighted work if 

they do so “solely in order to make a good faith determination 

of whether to acquire a copy of th[e] work” that is otherwise 

not reasonably available. 17 U.S.C. § 1201(d). Other 

exemptions apply to law enforcement and governmental 

activities, encryption research, security testing, and 

circumvention done for the sole purpose of preventing 

collection of a user’s personally identifying information. Id. 

§ 1201(e), (g)-(j).

Congress also created a rulemaking process to more 

dynamically exempt categories of circumvention activity from 

the DCMA. Under 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1)(C), the Librarian of 

Congress conducts a triennial rulemaking proceeding to grant 

exemptions to people who are or are likely to be “adversely 

affected” by the anticircumvention provision in their ability to 

make noninfringing uses of copyrighted materials. In deciding 

whether to propose exemptions, the Librarian of Congress acts 

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on the recommendation of the Register of Copyrights, who 

must consult with the Assistant Secretary for Communications 

and Information of the Department of Commerce. See id. 

The culmination of each triennial rulemaking cycle is a 

final rule that exempts identified types of uses of copyrighted 

work from the anticircumvention provision. For example, in 

the most recent final rule issued in 2021, the Librarian 

exempted certain researchers’ use of “literary 

works . . . distributed electronically” insofar as their use is 

“solely to deploy text and data mining techniques on a corpus 

of literary works for the purpose of scholarly research and 

teaching.” Exemption to Prohibition on Circumvention of 

Copyright Protection Systems for Access Control 

Technologies (2021 Final Rule), 86 Fed. Reg. 59,627, 59,639/1 

(Oct. 28, 2021) (codified at 37 C.F.R. § 201.40(b)(5)). Specific 

uses of motion pictures are also exempted, including “in order 

to make use of short portions of the motion pictures . . . for the 

purpose of criticism or comment . . . for use in documentary 

filmmaking” or where a film of any type makes use of the clip 

for parody or for its biographical or historical significance. Id. 

at 59,637/3 (codified at 37 C.F.R. § 201.40(b)(1)).

Congress envisioned this rulemaking process as a “failsafe” to ensure that the anticircumvention provision leaves 

breathing room for noninfringing uses, including fair use, of 

copyrighted content. See H.R. Rep. No. 105-551, pt. 2, at 36 

(1998). Indeed, the triennial rulemaking scheme was 

Congress’s response to concerns widely voiced during the 

drafting of the DMCA that, if not carefully crafted, it might 

“create a ‘pay-per-use’ society” without adequate protection 

for noninfringing expression. Id. at 26; see also David 

Nimmer, A Riff on Fair Use in the Digital Millenium Copyright 

Act, 148 U. Penn. L. Rev. 673, 716-26 (2000) (explaining the 

emergence of this “fail-safe” after legislative backlash to an 

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earlier draft of the DMCA that did not include explicit 

protections for fair use). If the Act entitled owners of 

information to “lock up” all access—as it might in a fully 

digitized environment—would-be fair users of information 

could be relegated to negotiating access on terms set by the 

monopoly rights-holders. Nimmer, supra, at 717-19. The 

Act’s drafters sought to avoid such threat to fair uses by 

balancing the right against circumvention with access 

protections for certain non-infringing uses. 

The second provision of Section 1201 at issue in this 

appeal—the antitrafficking provision—is not subject to the 

triennial rulemaking cycle’s exemptions. That provision is, in 

effect, a ban on trafficking in digital lock picks. It prohibits 

“manufactur[ing], import[ing], offer[ing] to the public, 

provid[ing], or otherwise traffic[king] in any technology, 

product, service, device, [or] component” that: (1) is “primarily 

designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a 

technological measure that effectively controls access to a

[copyrighted] work,” (2) “has only limited commercially 

significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a 

technological measure that effectively controls access to a

[copyrighted] work,” or (3) is “marketed . . . for use in 

circumventing a technological measure that effectively 

controls access to a [copyrighted] work.” 17 U.S.C. 

§ 1201(a)(2)(A)-(C). This provision has been used, for 

example, to prevent hackers from publicly circulating a 

computer program that breaks the encryption controlling 

unauthorized access to or copying of DVDs. See Universal 

City Studios, 273 F.3d at 435-36, 459-60.

Section 1201(c) clarifies that “[n]othing in this section 

shall affect rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to 

copyright infringement, including fair use, under this title.” 17 

U.S.C. § 1201(c)(1). The DMCA thus leaves fair use 

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undiminished as a defense against copyright liability. Defenses 

against liability under the DMCA deploy fair use concepts, but 

do not directly incorporate copyright law’s fair use standards. 

Plaintiffs’ challenge depends on that gap: They claim that a 

substantial amount of what the DMCA prohibits as 

circumvention or trafficking facilitates expression that 

copyright law privileges as fair use. 

C.

Plaintiff Matthew Green, a computer science professor at 

Johns Hopkins University, conducts research on security flaws 

in widely used electronic systems and notifies manufacturers 

of his findings. For example, he previously identified security 

flaws in automotive anti-theft systems, website encryption, and 

Apple’s iMessage system. Although section 1201(j) provides 

an exemption for certain forms of “security testing,” Green 

believed that exemption was “both overly narrow and vague,” 

Compl. ¶ 79 (J.A. 30). So Green requested in the 2015 

rulemaking cycle a broader exemption from the Librarian of 

Congress to cover his research. But the 2015 final rule’s 

security research exemption was, in Green’s view, likewise too 

narrowly drawn. 

Because he could not rely on the statutory or regulatory

exemptions, Green claimed, his fear of liability under section 

1201(a) caused him to “decline to investigate certain devices,” 

“chilled [him] from informing others of vulnerabilities,” and 

“prevent[ed] Green from selling a book that might garner 

significant commercial sales discussing how to circumvent 

access controls.” Id. ¶¶ 80-87 (J.A. 30-31). Green claimed that 

both his circumvention of access controls to conduct security 

research and his publication of information about his work are 

protected by the First Amendment, and that the DMCA is thus 

unconstitutional as applied to those planned activities. 

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Plaintiffs Andrew “bunnie” Huang and his audiovisual 

media company, Alphamax (collectively, Huang), also alleged

that section 1201(a) chills their constitutionally protected 

expression. Huang seeks to create and commercially sell a 

device he calls “NeTVCR,” which would allow users to save, 

manipulate, convert, and edit high-definition digital video 

streams. Id. ¶¶ 89-91 (J.A. 32). Those video streams—like 

shows on Netflix, for example—are generally protected by a 

technology called High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection 

(HDCP), which prevents unauthorized copying or capturing of 

copyrighted content by people lawfully streaming it on their 

devices. The NeTVCR device operates by circumventing that 

protection technology. 

Huang claimed that his NeTVCR device would permit 

users to “engage in new forms of protected and noninfringing 

expression.” Id. ¶ 100 (J.A. 34). He identified hypothetical 

expressive uses of the device such as using “a single TV screen 

[to] display a live presidential debate and the text of a 

commentator’s live blog,” creating a “side-by-side comparison 

between two films . . . for media literacy education,” or using 

a “single TV screen that simultaneously displays the coverage 

of a live event by more than one news source.” Id. ¶ 100 (J.A. 

34). Like Green, Huang unsuccessfully sought exemptions 

from the Library of Congress. Id. ¶¶ 107-08 (J.A. 35). Without 

those exemptions, Huang alleged, he is unconstitutionally 

deterred by section 1201(a) from using or distributing the 

NeTVCR device. 

The plaintiffs sued to invalidate section 1201, urging that 

the anticircumvention and antitrafficking provisions are 

facially overbroad and that the Librarian of Congress’s 

triennial rulemaking process is an invalid speech-licensing 

regime—all in violation of the First Amendment. Id. ¶¶ 111-

28 (J.A. 36-38). They also brought as-applied challenges to the 

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anticircumvention and antitrafficking provisions, contending 

that those prohibitions unconstitutionally burden their specific 

expressive activities. Id. ¶¶ 129-49 (J.A. 38-41). And they 

argued that the Librarian of Congress’s denial of their 

requested exemptions in the 2015 rulemaking cycle violated 

the First Amendment and Administrative Procedure Act. Id.

¶¶ 150-62 (J.A. 41-42). 

The government moved to dismiss the complaint and 

plaintiffs cross-moved for a preliminary injunction. The 

district court stayed the preliminary injunction motion pending 

its decision on the motion to dismiss. The court later granted 

in part and denied in part the government’s motion to dismiss, 

dismissing plaintiffs’ facial First Amendment challenges and 

APA claims, but denying the motion to dismiss as to their asapplied claims. Green v. U.S. Dep’t of Justice, 392 F. Supp. 3d 

68, 85-100 (D.D.C. 2019). 

The court dismissed the facial overbreadth challenge on 

the basis of plaintiffs’ failure to allege that the DMCA would 

“‘have any different impact on third parties’ interests in free 

speech than it has on’ their own.” Id. at 88 (quoting Members 

of City Council v. Taxpayers for Vincent, 466 U.S. 789, 802 

(1984)). And it rejected plaintiffs’ contention that the triennial 

rulemaking constituted a prior restraint, holding that it did not 

effect any content-based censorship. Id. at 89-90. The court 

concluded that plaintiffs failed to allege “facts indicating that 

the rulemaking defendants’ decision of whether to grant 

exemptions in the 2015 rulemaking process was based on the 

content of what those who sought exemptions wanted to say, 

their viewpoint, or who they are.” Id. at 90. The court also 

dismissed plaintiffs’ APA claims, holding that the triennial 

rulemaking process is not subject to the APA. Id. at 96-100. 

(We later rejected that proposition in Medical Imaging & 

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Technology Alliance v. Library of Congress, 103 F.4th 830, 

836 (D.C. Cir. 2024)). 

But the district court denied the government’s motion to 

dismiss plaintiffs’ as-applied First Amendment claims. The 

court held that the government failed to meet its burden to show 

that section 1201(a) does not encumber substantially more of 

plaintiffs’ speech than necessary to further its interest—the test 

required under intermediate scrutiny. Green, 392 F. Supp. 3d

at 94-95.

Plaintiffs then renewed their motion for a preliminary 

injunction on their as-applied claims, which the district court 

denied. Green v. U.S. Dep’t of Justice, No. 16-1492, 2021 WL 

11637039 (D.D.C. July 15, 2021). By this time, the Librarian 

of Congress in the 2018 rulemaking cycle had granted Green’s 

request for an exemption allowing him to circumvent in 

furtherance of his security research, so he no longer pressed his

as-applied challenge to the anticircumvention prohibition. And 

the court concluded that sale of Green’s academic book would 

not run afoul of the antitrafficking provision because it fell 

outside of the definition of banned trafficking products as those 

with “only limited commercially significant purpose or use 

other than to circumvent” or that are marketed for the purpose 

of circumvention. 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(2). With that provision 

inapplicable to Green’s book, he was not likely to succeed on 

the merits of his as-applied claim against the antitrafficking 

provision. Green, 2021 WL 1167039, at *5-6. 

As to Huang, assuming without deciding that his proposed 

use and sale of his circumvention device counted as speech, the 

district court held that the government satisfied its burden 

under intermediate scrutiny to justify application of section 

1201(a)’s anticircumvention and antitrafficking provisions to 

his proposed conduct. Id. at *7-10. The court noted that 

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Huang’s technology, as described, would “eviscerate virtually 

every single video content delivery protection system,” and 

thus would expose anything displayable on a modern TV 

screen or laptop to widespread piracy. Id. at *8. The court 

accordingly held that, as applied to Huang, Section 1201(a) 

does not burden substantially more speech than necessary.

We affirmed the district court’s denial of preliminary 

injunctive relief in Green v. U.S. Dep’t of Justice, 54 F.4th 738 

(D.C. Cir. 2022). We declined on that appeal to exercise 

jurisdiction over the court’s earlier dismissal of the facial 

claims because the court had not entered judgment on 

plaintiffs’ still pending as-applied claims, so the order granting 

in part the government’s motion to dismiss was not yet final 

and appealable under 28 U.S.C. § 1291. Only the denial of the 

preliminary injunction on the as-applied claims was appealable

on an interlocutory basis under 28 U.S.C. § 1292(a)(1). Green, 

54 F.4th at 743-44. We affirmed as to Green on the ground that 

he failed to establish a substantial likelihood of standing 

because the publication and sale of his book would not violate 

the antitrafficking provision. Id. at 744. And we held that 

Huang’s as-applied claim was not likely to succeed on the 

merits. The anticircumvention and antitrafficking provisions 

“target not the expressive content of computer code, but rather 

the act of circumvention and the provision of circumventionenabling tools,” so they are subject to intermediate scrutiny—

a test we held they “easily survive[].” Id. at 745-46.

On remand, plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed their asapplied claims. Once the district court entered final judgment, 

plaintiffs appealed the district court’s earlier order dismissing

their facial First Amendment challenges to section 1201(a) for 

failure to state legally viable claims under Federal Rule of Civil 

Procedure 12(b)(6). Those facial challenges are now before us

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on de novo review. See, e.g., Rudder v. Williams, 666 F.3d 790, 

794 (D.C. Cir. 2012).

II.

At the core of plaintiffs’ challenge to section 1201(a) of 

the DMCA is its asserted incongruence with the fair use 

exception to copyright infringement liability. An individual 

who circumvents technological protection measures on a 

copyrighted work to make fair use of the work is immunized 

by the fair use defense from liability for infringing the 

copyright. But, unless an anticircumvention exemption 

applies, her conduct may nonetheless violate the DMCA’s 

anticircumvention provision. What good is the fair use 

defense, the plaintiffs ask, if the DMCA prohibits them from 

accessing the copyrighted works in the first place? 

Consider a filmmaker making a fictionalized drama about 

emergency responders to the September 11th attacks who 

wants to stage a scene in which the responders’ families watch 

real-life footage of the immediate aftermath of the attacks on a 

television set. If use of copyrighted footage for that purpose 

constitutes fair use, the filmmaker would not be liable for 

infringement. See, e.g., Fioranelli v. CBS Broadcasting Inc., 

551 F. Supp. 3d 199, 240-41 (S.D.N.Y. 2021). But if the 

filmmaker circumvented technological controls in order to 

obtain the footage, the court’s fair use determination would not 

shield against liability under the DCMA, unless her use of the 

clip fell within one of the anticircumvention provision’s 

statutory or regulatory exemptions. (As it happens, the use 

would likely qualify under the 2021 Final Rule’s exemption 

permitting circumvention to use clips for their “historically 

significant nature,” 86 Fed. Reg. at 59,637/3 (codified at 37 

C.F.R. § 201.40(b)(1)), but at the time of plaintiffs’ complaint, 

that exemption only accommodated circumvention by 

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documentary filmmakers using those clips—not creators of 

fictional films.) In other words, some individuals who seek to 

make fair use of copyrighted work may find themselves 

stymied, not by copyright infringement laws, but by the 

DMCA’s prohibition on circumventing technological controls 

in order to freely obtain high-quality and manipulable versions 

of clips of copyrighted works.

In plaintiffs’ view, a mismatch in protection for fair use

under traditional copyright law and under the DMCA renders 

the latter unconstitutional. They assert that all fair use is 

protected by the First Amendment, so section 1201(a) cannot

validly prohibit circumvention by individuals for the purpose 

of making fair use of copyrighted works. And they argue that 

Congress’s explicit attempt to build fair-use accommodations 

into section 1201(a) via the triennial rulemaking process 

merely compounded the First Amendment injury: In its effort 

to alleviate the Act’s burden on fair users, plaintiffs contend, 

Congress transformed the Librarian of Congress into a censor 

who wields broad discretion to grant exemptions to favored 

messages and speakers.

Key to plaintiffs’ theory is their view that fair use of 

copyrighted work is necessarily protected by the First 

Amendment. We later explain why that assumption is 

erroneous, but it is worth considering at the outset what it 

would mean for plaintiffs’ theory if true. 

If plaintiffs were right that would-be speakers have a 

blanket First Amendment right to circumvent in the service of 

uses that would be fair under copyright law, the triennial 

rulemaking’s exemption scheme would be essentially

redundant: With or without a regulatory exemption, fair users 

could circumvent technological protections of copyrighted 

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18

works and claim a First Amendment defense to liability under 

the DMCA. 

An irony of appellants’ challenge to the DMCA is that the 

triennial rulemaking exemption scheme—which identifies in 

advance and immunizes categories of likely fair uses—may be 

less chilling of the fair uses to which it applies than the afterthe-fact operation of the fair use defense itself. Recall that the 

Supreme Court has referred to the use of copyrighted materials 

under the protection of a “potential fair use defense” as a “roll 

[of] the dice.” Public.Resource.Org., 590 U.S. at 275. The 

9/11 drama’s creator, for example, may not be able to anticipate 

with certitude that her use of archival footage would be 

noninfringing, given that fair use turns on a “notoriously fact 

sensitive” analysis. Id. A decision to include the archival 

footage carries legal risk. In contrast, by promulgating general 

rules in advance, the anticircumvention exemption scheme 

gives the filmmaker clearer notice of the legality of specific 

forms of circumvention, thus reducing the chill of legal 

uncertainty under the DMCA relative to the chill inherent in 

copyright law’s fair use doctrine.

More fundamentally, if appellants were correct that the 

First Amendment protected circumvention undertaken for fair 

use ends, then section 1201(a)’s regulatory exemptions would 

simply serve as an additional layer of protection for fair users, 

providing up-front confirmation to those fair users who fall 

within the scope of the exemptions that their circumvention is 

permitted. What is more, even as to actions not covered by a 

DMCA statutory or regulatory exemption, under plaintiffs’

view, the filmmaker would have a First Amendment right to 

circumvent: She would be free to take her chances by 

circumventing and proving that her use of the clip is fair use 

and thus constitutionally protected. So it is hard to see how, 

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under plaintiffs’ view of the law, section 1201(a) operates to 

chill speech. 

But we disagree that the First Amendment necessarily 

shields all fair uses of copyrighted work from regulation, and, 

regardless, Congress’s objective to promote rather than chill

speech is no guarantee that its enactment survives a First 

Amendment challenge. We accordingly proceed to address

why, under each doctrinal framework plaintiffs deploy, their 

facial challenges fail. First, we explain that plaintiffs have not 

satisfied the overbreadth doctrine’s exacting requirement to 

demonstrate unconstitutional applications of section 1201(a) 

that are substantially disproportionate to its lawful sweep. 

Second, we explain why the anticircumvention provision’s 

regulatory exemption scheme is not an unconstitutional prior 

restraint on speech.

A.

Plaintiffs contend that section 1201(a) “burden[s]” 

expressive conduct that “consists substantially of 

noninfringing speech that the First Amendment protects,” 

rendering the section facially overbroad. Appellants’ Br. 47; 

see Reply Br. 3-9. They emphasize that the anticircumvention 

provision prevents non-parties such as some filmmakers and 

teachers from accessing high-quality versions of copyrighted 

works to engage in speech that would qualify as fair use—

speech that plaintiffs argue cannot be burdened without 

running afoul of the First Amendment. Because plaintiffs 

assert that section 1201(a)’s “applications to protected speech 

outweigh its legitimate sweep,” they contend the law’s 

anticircumvention and antitrafficking provisions are wholly 

invalid. Reply Br. 24.

Facial invalidation of a statute for overbreadth is 

disfavored. It “is ‘strong medicine’ that is not to be ‘casually 

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employed.’” United States v. Hansen, 599 U.S. 762, 770 

(2023) (quoting United States v. Williams, 553 U.S. 285, 293 

(2008)). Only if “a substantial number of its applications are 

unconstitutional, judged in relation to the statute’s plainly 

legitimate sweep,” will a law fail for overbreadth. United 

States v. Stevens, 559 U.S. 460, 473 (2010) (quoting Wash. 

State Grange v. Wash. State Repub. Party, 552 U.S. 442, 449 

n.6 (2008)). The unconstitutional applications must be 

“realistic, not fanciful,” and “substantially disproportionate” to 

the statute’s lawful applications. Hansen, 599 U.S. at 770. 

Unless the ratio between a statute’s unlawful applications and 

its lawful ones is so “lopsided” as to support an overbreadth 

challenge, “courts must handle unconstitutional applications as 

they usually do”—in as-applied challenges. Hansen, 599 U.S. 

at 770. Accordingly, facial overbreadth challenges are by 

design “hard to win.” Moody v. NetChoice, LLC, 144 S. Ct. 

2383, 2397 (2024).

Plaintiffs’ facial overbreadth challenge is especially 

disfavored because section 1201(a) expressly regulates 

conduct—the circumvention of technological locks, and 

trafficking in means of circumvention—rather than speech. 

The DMCA defines circumvention as the act of 

“descrambl[ing] a scrambled work, . . . decrypt[ing] an 

encrypted work, or otherwise . . . avoid[ing], bypass[ing], 

remov[ing], deactivat[ing], or impair[ing] a technological 

measure.” 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(3)(A). The act of 

circumvention is not inherently expressive because it does not 

“‘inten[d] to convey a particularized message’ in a manner that 

allows others to understand it.” Price v. Garland, 45 F.4th 

1059, 1076 (D.C. Cir. 2022) (Henderson, J., concurring) 

(quoting Spence v. Washington, 418 U.S. 405, 410-11 (1974)). 

The act of trafficking in circumvention technology is likewise 

not inherently expressive. As the government aptly notes, 

trafficking is no more identified with expression than is the sale 

USCA Case #23-5159 Document #2067976 Filed: 08/02/2024 Page 20 of 37
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of lock picks for breaking into bookstores identified with the 

expressive conduct of reading the stores’ books. Gov’t Br. 24. 

The overbreadth doctrine is an awkward tool with which to 

attack the DCMA, because “[r]arely, if ever, will an 

overbreadth challenge succeed against a law or regulation that 

is not specifically addressed to speech or to conduct necessarily 

associated with speech (such as picketing or demonstrating).” 

Virginia v. Hicks, 539 U.S. 113, 124 (2003).

The plainly legitimate sweep of section 1201(a) is 

extensive. Indeed, a large swath of conduct prohibited by the 

statute is not even arguably related to expression. The DMCA 

applies to circumvention, and the act of selling the technology 

to enable circumvention, of digital controls on the software 

embedded in a range of consumer goods, including 

automobiles, smart appliances, and medical devices. Plaintiffs 

note that some owners of those devices might seek to modify, 

repair, or analyze information in the devices, requiring the 

circumvention of technological protections. But regardless of 

whether the act of bypassing those technological controls 

ultimately facilitates fair or noninfringing uses, those uses are 

themselves entirely non-expressive and unprotected by the 

First Amendment. In itself, repairing a smart alarm clock is not 

expressive conduct—so circumventing access controls on its 

embedded software to do so is unprotected by the First 

Amendment.1

1 The Federal Circuit has held that the DMCA’s 

anticircumvention and antitrafficking provisions only prohibit acts 

with “a reasonable relationship between the circumvention at issue 

and a use relating to a property right for which the Copyright Act 

permits the copyright owner to withhold authorization.” 

Chamberlain Grp., Inc. v. Skylink Techs., Inc., 381 F.3d 1178, 1204 

(Fed. Cir. 2004). In other words, the court narrowly interpreted 

section 1201(a) to include a required nexus with copyright 

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The “heartland” conduct the anticircumvention and 

antitrafficking provisions criminalize is piracy of digital 

property—a modern form of theft. Hansen, 599 U.S. at 782;

see, e.g., United States v. Whitehead, 532 F.3d 991 (9th Cir. 

2008) (affirming DMCA trafficking sentence based on sales of 

counterfeit “access cards” enabling nonsubscribers to watch 

satellite television); United States v. Silvius, 559 F. App’x 490 

(6th Cir. 2014) (affirming DMCA trafficking conviction based 

on sales of microchips to enable users to bypass video game 

consoles’ digital locks against pirated video games). Even 

where the theft is in aid of constitutionally protected conduct,

such as watching a movie or reading a book, the DMCA’s 

anticircumvention provision may apply consistently with the 

First Amendment. See Oral Arg. Rec. 12:15-13:10 (plaintiffs’ 

counsel conceding that “it is permissible under the First 

Amendment to prohibit” such theft). 

Many legitimate applications of the challenged provisions 

are undisputed by the plaintiffs. The government notes and 

plaintiffs do not contest that the anticircumvention provision 

bars individuals from hacking into a music streaming service 

to access its catalogue for free. Gov’t Br. 21-22. Similarly, the 

provision forbids overriding the time restriction on a digital 

movie rental to have permanent access to it. And the 

antitrafficking provision “prevents the distribution of tools that 

would enable the sort of circumvention discussed above on a 

infringement, thus excluding fair uses—which are by definition 

noninfringing uses, see 17 U.S.C. § 107—from its scope. No other 

court of appeals has adopted that interpretation. See MDY Indus., 

LLC v. Blizzard Enter., Inc., 629 F.3d 928, 943-52 (9th Cir. 2010) 

(disagreeing with Chamberlain). Plaintiffs have not asked us to

interpret section 1201(a) as Chamberlain did, so we express no 

opinion on that question in resolving this case.

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massive scale.” Id. at 22. Plaintiffs do not argue that any of 

those applications of the statute violate the First Amendment.

In addition, we have already sustained section 1201(a) 

against Huang’s pre-enforcement First Amendment challenge 

as applied to his proposed sale of a device that circumvents 

most digital video streams’ protection technology. Green, 54 

F.4th at 746-47. That device, we observed, would “eviscerate 

virtually every single video content delivery protection 

system,” exposing copyrighted video content to widespread 

infringement and “gutting the government’s substantial 

interest” in promoting the dissemination of copyrighted works. 

Id. Additional examples abound. 

Plaintiffs nonetheless insist there are “numerous specific

categories of third-party speech impermissibly burdened by 

Section 1201(a),” which together “[o]vershadow” legitimate 

applications of the law. Appellants’ Br. 45-46. They list a few 

activities that they cast as speech burdened by the DMCA,

including: a documentary filmmaker using in her own film 

copyrighted video clips she obtained via circumvention; a 

visually impaired person enabling read-aloud functionality of 

an e-book by circumventing its technological protections; and 

a camera owner gaining access to encrypted photograph 

metadata via circumvention rather than by purchasing the 

camera manufacturer’s software containing the decryption 

keys. Appellants’ Br. 46; Reply Br. 20. Plaintiffs do not 

contend that those acts of circumvention are themselves

expressive conduct, but claim they are nonetheless entitled to 

First Amendment protection. And, even as to their many 

examples that plaintiffs concede fall within exemptions 

promulgated by the Librarian of Congress, they claim the 

rulemaking process itself is an unconstitutional burden on its 

beneficiaries’ speech. Appellants’ Br. 46.

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Plaintiffs’ insistence that their examples establish 

unconstitutional applications of the DMCA substantially 

disproportionate to the statute’s legitimate sweep is 

unpersuasive. Even assuming their putative overbreadth 

showing were adequate on its own terms, it rests on a series of 

faulty premises.

First, plaintiffs posit that the First Amendment protects the 

“right to access and learn from digital works,” not just the right 

to make fair use of work via legitimate rights of access, and 

they rely on that premise to argue that statutory protection of 

barriers to access violates the First Amendment. Appellants’ 

Br. 24-25. The First Amendment protects a right to read, but it 

does not grant unimpeded access to every reading material a 

reader might wish for. Similarly, the First Amendment does 

not guarantee potential fair users unfettered or privileged 

access to copyrighted works they seek to use in their own 

expression. To hold otherwise would defy the First 

Amendment’s solicitude of speakers’ control over their own 

speech. See Harper & Row, 471 U.S. at 559 (noting that 

copyright serves the First Amendment value of the “right not 

to speak”). 

If every work that the public might wish to access “could 

be pirated away” via circumvention, soon nothing worth 

reading would be published electronically. Id. Plaintiffs’ 

premise that fair users are entitled to make unauthorized use of 

copyrighted works assumes away the very entitlements 

copyright law validly protects. Consumers’ access to 

copyrighted work routinely requires consent from the

copyright owner—typically obtained by paying for access 

subject to certain limitations on use. 

Plaintiffs’ argument to the contrary proves too much. On 

their logic, a theatre critic wishing to run a photograph with his 

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review would be exempted from the theater’s nophotographing rule. That would be a significant extension of 

the First Amendment. See generally Gideon Parchomovsky & 

Kevin A. Goldman, Fair Use Harbors, 93 Va. L. Rev. 1483, 

1522 (2007) (invoking such an example in support of 

conclusion that “rightsholders owe no affirmative ‘duty’ to 

make their works available for” fair use). Fair use “has never 

been held to be a guarantee of access to copyrighted material 

in order to copy it by the fair user’s preferred technique or in 

the format of the original. Universal City Studios, 273 F.3d at 

459; see Houchins v. KQED, Inc., 438 U.S. 1, 12 (1978) 

(holding that “[t]he right to speak and publish does not carry 

with it the unrestrained right to gather information” (emphasis 

omitted) (quoting Zemel v. Rusk, 381 U.S. 1, 16-17 (1965))).

Second, plaintiffs alternatively assert that when an 

individual circumvents to obtain copyrighted work for use in 

her own expression, that circumvention is constitutionally 

protected as a “step in the creation of speech,” akin to filming 

or newsgathering. Price, 45 F.4th at 1070. Even assuming that 

some circumvention is constitutionally privileged because 

necessary to constitutionally protected expression using the 

copyrighted work, section 1201(a)’s provisions are not 

automatically unconstitutional in those instances. After all, 

even political speech may be subject to certain regulatory 

constraints. See, e.g., Williams-Yulee v. Florida Bar, 575 U.S. 

433, 444 (2015); United States v. O’Brien, 391 U.S. 367, 377 

(1968). Identification of relevant conduct as First Amendmentprotected “merely launches our inquiry.” Price, 45 F.4th at 

1067.

Plaintiffs have not made the showing needed to survive 

that First Amendment inquiry. They largely concede that the 

constitutionality of section 1201(a) as applied to their 

hypothetical DMCA applications is controlled by intermediate 

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scrutiny. See Appellants’ Br. 49-51. They briefly suggest 

application of strict scrutiny—that certain applications of 

section 1201(a) would “interfere with third-party commentary 

on political debates, which is at the heart of democratic 

governance and thus . . . would demand (and fail) . . . strict 

scrutiny,” id. at 42—but they are wrong that a content-neutral 

failure to facilitate political commentary triggers strict First 

Amendment scrutiny. Strict scrutiny applies to provisions that 

are facially content-based or otherwise turn on the message 

conveyed, which plaintiffs do not contend is the case here. See 

City of Austin v. Reagan Nat’l Advert. of Austin, LLC, 596 U.S. 

61, 69 (2022); Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, 561 U.S. 

1, 28 (2010). Plaintiffs briefly suggest that “certain exemptions 

granted to third parties under Section 1201 engage in contentand speaker-based discrimination” in distinguishing between 

types of speakers (they mention exemption of documentary but 

not narrative filmmakers). Appellants’ Br. 42. But they do not 

base any argument for strict scrutiny on that characterization. 

As alleged, none of plaintiffs’ potential applications of 

section 1201(a) to third-party fair users would fail intermediate 

scrutiny. For example, at oral argument they highlighted their 

assertion that section 1201(a) would impermissibly burden the 

speech of a fifth-grade teacher who wished to circumvent a 

DVD’s encryption and extract a clip to screen during a lesson. 

See Oral Arg. Rec. 29:01-30:02. Application of section 

1201(a) to bar that circumvention would survive intermediate 

scrutiny so long as “it furthers an important or substantial 

governmental interest; . . . the governmental interest is 

unrelated to the suppression of free expression; and . . . the 

incidental restriction on alleged First Amendment freedoms is 

no greater than is essential to the furtherance of that interest.” 

Green, 54 F.4th at 746 (quoting Turner Broad. Sys., Inc. v. 

FCC, 512 U.S. 622, 662 (1994)). 

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As to the first two intermediate-scrutiny factors, section 

1201(a) furthers a substantial governmental interest in

fostering the widespread availability of copyrighted digital 

work on a content-neutral basis, and that interest would be 

sharply curtailed in the absence of enforceable technological 

protections. Id. As to the third factor, plaintiffs have made no 

plausible allegations that section 1201(a)’s protection against 

circumvention of digital locks somehow unnecessarily burdens 

the hypothetical teacher’s speech. Indeed, any constitutionally 

cognizable burden is slight; the posited demonstration 

presumably could proceed if the teacher inserted his DVD into 

the classroom player and fast-forwarded to the relevant scene. 

What is more, plaintiffs’ hypothetical teacher’s DVD use 

is currently facilitated by a regulatory exemption permitting

him to circumvent for the hypothesized purpose. See 2021 

Final Rule, 86 Fed. Reg. at 59,637/3 (codified at 37 C.F.R. 

§ 201.40(b)(1)). Plaintiffs argue that the exemption intensifies 

the claimed constitutional defect by burdening the teacher, or 

someone else with the same interest, with periodic participation 

in the rulemaking process. Appellants’ Br. 46. But exemptions 

are generally applicable—benefitting all who fall within the 

class, rather than only those who requested them—so as a 

practical matter the onus of renewing popular and longstanding 

exemptions may be widely shared. And consider that proof of 

fair use, too, entails some procedural burden; just as that alone 

does not render it an unconstitutional defense, the complaint

before us does not allege that the burden of seeking a regulatory 

exemption renders the DMCA constitutionally flawed. At 

bottom, as already noted, plaintiffs have not adequately 

described any adverse effect of section 1201(a) on the 

educator’s ability to teach his students that enables us to weigh 

that cost against the government’s substantial interest in 

protecting copyrighted works. 

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Section 1201(a) is constitutionally applied as to a wide 

range of non-expressive conduct that involves circumvention 

and trafficking, and its application to copyrighted expression 

readily withstands First Amendment scrutiny. We need not 

rule out the prospect that section 1201(a) might be 

unconstitutionally applied to certain speakers to conclude that 

plaintiffs have not plausibly identified a single such 

application, let alone shown that unconstitutional applications

predominate over constitutional ones. Plaintiffs’ highly 

particularized yet underdeveloped examples simply do not add 

up to the “lopsided ratio” of unconstitutional applications

required to sustain a facial challenge. Hansen, 599 U.S. at 770.

We do not purport to pass on every circumstance in which 

a speaker seeks to circumvent a copyrighted work’s 

technological controls to make fair use of the work. It could be 

that “incidental restriction[s] on alleged First Amendment 

freedoms” posed by section 1201(a) are sufficiently material in 

some situations that its application fails intermediate scrutiny. 

Edwards v. Dist. of Columbia, 755 F.3d 996, 1001-02 (D.C. 

Cir. 2014). And future litigants might plausibly argue that a 

particular regulatory exemption discriminates based on the 

content or viewpoint of speech and is therefore subject to strict 

scrutiny. But plaintiffs do not raise those arguments here. 

B.

Recognizing that section 1201(a) might impose incidental 

burdens on fair users that could be alleviated without 

undercutting the statute’s protection of copyrighted works 

distributed electronically, Congress delegated authority to the 

Librarian of Congress to craft exemptions to the 

anticircumvention provision. Plaintiffs urge that, in so doing, 

Congress enacted an unconstitutional prior restraint on speech. 

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Plaintiffs cast the Librarian of Congress’s authority to 

grant exemptions to the anticircumvention provision as akin to 

a censor’s speech-licensing power. As they see it, section 

1201(a) bars fair users from circumventing technological 

protections unless and until they obtain a licensing body’s 

approval of the content of their intended speech. And they 

claim that the Librarian of Congress’s authority to grant 

exemptions is “unbounded,” insufficiently checked by prompt 

judicial review, and invites content and viewpoint-based 

discrimination. Appellants’ Br. 30-39. For support, they point 

to the Librarian of Congress’s grant of permission in the 2015 

Final Rule for university students whose course of study 

requires close analysis of film and media excerpts to 

circumvent motion pictures’ technological controls in order to 

obtain clips for educational purposes. They argue that the 

exemption discriminates against students enrolled in massive 

open online classes by failing to include them. Id. at 35.

As explained above, the Librarian of Congress determines 

through a rulemaking proceeding whether and how the 

anticircumvention provision has, or is likely to have, an 

adverse effect on people’s ability to make noninfringing uses

of classes of copyrighted works. 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1)(C). 

The Librarian must consider existing and proposed exemptions

for such users every three years. To make exemption 

determinations, the Librarian must consider: (1) “the 

availability for use of copyrighted works,” (2) “the availability 

for use of works for nonprofit archival, preservation, and 

educational purposes,” (3) “the impact that [the 

anticircumvention provision] has on criticism, comment, news 

reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research,” (4) “the effect of 

circumvention of technological measures on the market for or 

value of copyrighted works,” and (5) “such other factors as the 

Librarian considers appropriate.” Id. § 1201(a)(1)(C)(i)-(v). 

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It is generally fair to say that what the fair use defense does 

for copyright infringement, the exemptions do for section 

1201(a). In the context of copyright infringement liability, the 

fair use defense avoids “rigid application of the copyright 

statute when, on occasion, it would stifle the very creativity 

which that law is designed to foster.” Andy Warhol Found., 

598 U.S. at 527 (quoting Stewart, 495 U.S. at 236). Similarly, 

Congress in section 1201(a) enacted some permanent 

exemptions and a dynamic regulatory exemption scheme to 

blunt the anticircumvention provision’s incidental burdens on 

noninfringing—i.e., fair—uses. The parallel is highlighted by 

the way the statutory standard for triennial rulemaking borrows 

liberally from the doctrine of fair use. Indeed, the Librarian’s 

final rules resemble a series of ex ante determinations as to 

which activities are likely to qualify as fair uses that would be 

adversely affected by the anticircumvention provision if not 

exempted.

Plaintiffs’ facial challenge to the Librarian’s exemption 

authority requires us to determine, at the threshold, whether the 

DMCA’s regulatory exemption scheme is an ex ante speechlicensing regime, which would “bear[] a heavy presumption 

against its constitutional validity.” FW/PBS, Inc. v. City of 

Dallas, 493 U.S. 215, 225 (1990) (quoting Se. Promotions, Ltd. 

v. Conrad, 420 U.S. 546, 558 (1975)). Only licensing laws 

with “a close enough nexus to expression, or to conduct 

commonly associated with expression, to pose a real and 

substantial threat” of censorship are “vulnerable to facial 

challenges.” City of Lakewood v. Plain Dealer Publ’g Co., 486 

U.S. 750, 759 (1988). If the law is a prior restraint, and thus 

amenable to a facial challenge, we must determine whether it

“condition[s] expression on a licensing body’s prior approval 

of content.” Thomas v. Chicago Park Dist., 534 U.S. 316, 321

(2002). If it does, the law is subject to strict procedural 

requirements, including prompt judicial review in which the 

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burden of going to and prevailing in court to suppress the 

speech rests on the censor. Id. Content neutral preconditions, 

in contrast, need not satisfy those procedural requirements and 

will survive a facial prior-restraint challenge so long as they 

“contain adequate standards to guide the official’s decision and 

render it subject to effective judicial review.” Boardley v. U.S. 

Dep’t of Interior, 615 F.3d 508, 517 (D.C. Cir. 2010) (quoting 

Thomas, 534 U.S. at 323). 

Plaintiffs’ speech-licensing claim fails at the threshold. 

The DMCA’s authorization of regulatory exemptions does not 

operate as a prior restraint on speech. Is it therefore not

susceptible to a facial First Amendment challenge. 

Again, not all government licensing schemes are subject

to the “extraordinary doctrine” permitting facial First 

Amendment challenges. Ward v. Rock Against Racism, 491 

U.S. 781, 794 (1989) (quoting City of Lakewood, 486 U.S. at 

772 (White, J., dissenting)). We entertain a facial speechlicensing challenge only when a statute “ha[s] a close enough 

nexus to expression, or to conduct commonly associated with 

expression, to pose a real and substantial threat” of either of 

two “identified censorship risks.” City of Lakewood, 486 U.S. 

at 759. Those risks are twofold: The first isthe chill that results 

when speakers respond to unclear licensing standards by 

attempting to conform their speech to the censor’s perceived

preferences. A second hazard of legal preconditions on 

expression is that, “without standards to fetter the licensor's 

discretion,” they invite content or viewpoint discrimination. 

Id. at 758-59. Speakers relegated to as-applied challenges 

against illegitimate enforcement may capitulate rather than 

litigate or, if they sue, “the eventual relief may be ‘too little and 

too late’” to effectively remedy opportunities for speech lost 

while litigation is pending. Id. at 758. 

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Generally applicable laws that are not aimed at expression 

or conduct commonly associated with expression do not pose 

those censorship dangers. In City of Lakewood, the Supreme 

Court explained that a law requiring building permits and an 

ordinance requiring soda vendors to obtain permits to place 

machines on public property are not vulnerable to speechlicensing challenges “prior to an allegation of actual misuse.” 

Id. at 761. The Court recognized those laws could be abused 

to censor, “such as when an unpopular newspaper seeks to 

build a new plant,” but held they are “too blunt a censorship 

instrument” to be facially subject to the prior restraint 

doctrine’s exacting review. Id. Licensing schemes that are not 

“most likely to be in fact an instrument of censorship” are better 

addressed through as-applied challenges. The Tool Box v. 

Ogden City Corp., 355 F.3d 1236, 1242 (10th Cir. 2004) (en 

banc). 

The DMCA’s regulatory exemption process is not a 

speech-licensing scheme. The law neither directly regulates 

speech nor bears a “close enough nexus to expression, or to 

conduct commonly associated with expression,” to threaten the 

sort of censorship risks against which the prior restraint 

doctrine guards. City of Lakewood, 486 U.S. at 759. 

To begin, section 1201(a) has little in common with 

paradigmatic prior restraints, which require prior governmental 

approval before a person may lawfully speak. In Near v. 

Minnesota ex rel. Olson, the foundational prior-restraint case, 

the Supreme Court struck down a state law authorizing the 

government to act in advance to “abate[]” the publication of 

any “malicious, scandalous and defamatory newspaper, 

magazine or other periodical.” 283 U.S. 697, 701-02 (1931). 

Other classically unconstitutional prior restraints have

“requir[ed] a permit and a fee before authorizing public 

speaking, parades, or assemblies” on a town’s public property, 

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Forsyth Cnty. v. Nationalist Movement, 505 U.S. 123, 130 

(1992), or required a government board’s prior approval of 

theatrical productions proposed to be staged at a town’s theater, 

Se. Promotions, Inc., 420 U.S. at 548. In contrast, as discussed, 

the anticircumvention provision regulates conduct—the act of 

circumventing technological locks—not expression. 

Section 1201(a) also lacks a sufficiently “close . . . nexus 

to . . . conduct commonly associated with expression” to bring 

it within the scope of the prior restraint doctrine. City of 

Lakewood, 486 U.S. at 759. Plaintiffs cast section 1201(a) as 

a speech-licensing regime because the anticircumvention 

provision applies to some individuals who circumvent

technological locks “in order to facilitate their own subsequent 

expression,” such as the Fioranelli filmmaker. Reply Br. 4. 

Plaintiffs thus again analogize circumvention to the act of 

taking photographs or making audio or video recordings—noncommunicative activities that, as “step[s] in the creation of 

speech,” may be “protected as speech under the First 

Amendment.” Price, 45 F.4th at 1070. 

But that argument fails because circumventing copyright 

works’ technological protections has no necessary or ordinary 

function as a facilitator of speech. To the contrary, plaintiffs 

do not even allege that section 1201(a) “largely targets” speech. 

Cf. FW/PBS, Inc., 493 U.S. at 224. And for good reason. As 

we have explained, the act of circumventing technological 

protection measures often has no connection to speech at all. 

Even many fair or noninfringing uses for which the Librarian 

of Congress has authorized circumvention do not qualify as 

expressive. For example, consider the Librarian of Congress’s

circumvention exemption for the repair of software-enabled 

devices. The exemption allows owners of those devices—

ranging from MRI machines to smart alarm clocks to 

vehicles—to circumvent technological protections on 

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copyrighted software in order to conduct their own repairs and 

maintenance on their devices. See 86 Fed. Reg. at 59,640/1 

(codified at 37 C.F.R. § 201.40(b)(15)). The repair of

consumer or medical devices is not expressive conduct. 

Compare the scope of section 1201(a) with the ordinance 

at issue in City of Lakewood to which plaintiffs analogize the 

DMCA’s exemption regime. That local ordinance required 

newspapers to apply annually for mayoral permission to place 

news racks on city sidewalks. 486 U.S. at 753. The Court 

concluded that the distribution of newspapers was “conduct 

commonly associated with expression” and its regulation 

therefore subject to facial challenge. Id. at 760. But using news

racks to distribute newspapers, unlike circumvention of 

technological locks, has a necessary correlation with 

expression: All newspaper racks distribute speech. They are, 

in effect, mechanical pamphleteers. Id. at 761-62. 

The DMCA’s anticircumvention provision is more akin to

a routine prohibition on trespass, which is not conduct closely

associated with expression. See S. Rep. 105-190, at 11 

(comparing circumvention to “break[ing] into a house”). A

trespass law undoubtedly affects some expressive conduct, as 

when political protestors trespass to stage a demonstration

where it might have maximal impact. Similarly, the DMCA’s 

anticircumvention provision might preclude a student from

circumventing technological measures to cut a high-quality 

clip of a copyrighted feature film to use in his class 

presentation. But trespassing is not “necessarily associated 

with speech,” because laws prohibiting trespass also “apply to 

strollers, loiterers, drug dealers, roller skaters, bird watchers, 

soccer players, and others not engaged in constitutionally 

protected conduct.” Hicks, 539 U.S. at 123-24; see also 

Thomas, 534 U.S. at 322 (upholding an ordinance requiring a 

permit for large-scale events, noting that, “unlike the classic 

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censorship scheme,” it was “not even directed to 

communicative activity as such, but rather to all activity 

conducted in a public park”). The same is true of the 

anticircumvention provision—a law that applies equally to 

would-be speakers, repair technicians, and music or movie 

pirates. 

The Fifth Circuit’s decision in Moore v. Brown, 868 F.3d 

398 (5th Cir. 2017) (per curiam), aptly illustrates the point. 

There, an evangelical Christian regularly set up a large sketch 

board in a public park in Dallas seeking to spread his message 

by engaging passersby in conversation about his religion. Id.

at 401. He received a “criminal trespass warning” for violating 

the city’s structure rule, which required a permit to erect in the 

park any structures in excess of a certain size. Id. The structure 

rule was not an unconstitutional speech-licensing law because 

it “lack[ed] a close nexus to expression.” Id. at 405. Instead, 

it simply reflected the city’s interests in keeping the small park 

with its high pedestrian traffic free of all sorts of large 

structures, including tents and tables as well as signs and sketch 

boards. The practical burden the regulation posed for Mr. 

Moore’s speech (and presumably that of many other would-be 

speakers in varied circumstances) was not sufficient to subject 

the law to facial challenge as a speech-licensing provision. Id.

Finally, we note that plaintiffs nowhere contend that the 

challenged DMCA provisions prevent would-be fair users from 

conveying their chosen messages. To the contrary, those 

speakers often have alternative ways to obtain lawful access to

the copyrighted work for their fair use. A filmmaker who 

wants to use a clip of a copyrighted news segment, for example, 

could seek a license from the copyright owner, record the 

segment with screen-capture technology, reenact it with actors, 

or communicate the newsworthy event in a different way. A 

teacher or student who wants to display a clip of a movie in his 

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class presentation could purchase the movie on a DVD and play 

the relevant segment on his classroom’s player. Plaintiffs 

themselves tellingly frame the stakes of their challenge as “who 

gets to make high quality copies for fair use in their own 

speech”—not who gets to speak, or what they may say. Oral 

Arg. Rec. 0:25-0:43 (emphasis added). 

Constitutional disapproval of prior restraints is a mismatch 

for the DMCA’s authorization of regulatory exemptions. A 

doctrine fashioned to prevent public officials from 

preemptively silencing messages or speakers finds no purchase 

where no message is disfavored and ample avenues of 

expression remain open. 

In Ward v. Rock Against Racism, for example, the 

Supreme Court upheld a New York City noise control 

regulation of concerts at a Central Park bandshell. 491 U.S. at 

784. To avoid having to shut down concerts once they became 

too loud, as it had done in the past, the city required all 

performances to use city-provided sound equipment and 

technicians. Id. at 784-88. The majority rejected the charge 

that the law was a “quintessential prior restraint,” id. at 808 

(Marshall, J., dissenting), stressing that it “grant[ed] no 

authority to forbid speech, but merely permit[ted] the city to 

regulate volume to the extent necessary to avoid excessive 

noise,” id. at 795 n.5 (majority op.). Applying the same logic, 

the Supreme Court declined to analyze as a prior restraint an 

injunction imposing a buffer zone around an abortion clinic, 

noting that the protestors were “not prevented from expressing 

their message in any one of several different ways.” Madsen 

v. Women’s Health Ctr., Inc., 512 U.S. 753, 763 n.2 (1994); see

also Hill v. Colorado, 530 U.S. 703, 734 (2000) (rejecting prior 

restraint challenge where “absolutely no channel of 

communication is foreclosed. No speaker is silenced. And no 

message is prohibited.”). The same holds true of section 

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1201(a), which might incidentally burden certain means of 

expression, but neither targets expression nor in fact prevents 

speakers from conveying their messages. 

Our holding does not insulate the Librarian’s exemption

determinations from judicial review. As-applied challenges 

remain available to plaintiffs who plausibly allege that the 

Librarian made a content- or viewpoint-based exemption 

determination. See Boardley, 615 F.3d at 517 (noting that “a 

future as-applied challenge could argue” that a denial of a 

permit was “pretext for content-based discrimination”). But 

plaintiffs’ facial challenge fails because section 1201(a) is not 

a speech licensing law.

* * * 

For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the district 

court is affirmed.

So ordered.

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