Despite being used for piracy, some claim DeCSS should be protected under the fair use doctrine of U.S. copyright law that allows some copyrighted materials to be disseminated under certain circumstances without permission of the author. D.C. At the same time, Congress made it impossible to exercise that aspect of fair use by making access to such technology illegal, she said. Cohen agreed, but with slight reservation. That issue is particularly troubling, said Georgetown's Cohen, because a link is essentially an online version of speaking. Rather, the MPAA agrees with the judge's ruling that some links, by their nature and purpose, are illegal.
Free speech is at the heart of the case.
The defense claimed that publishing source code was a free speech issue, and that has been one of the burning issues discussed online in the wake of the ruling. Litvack said that code, like speech, shouldn't always be protected. Feeling that their right to free speech has been abridged by the ruling, many online have called for campaigns of civil disobedience to protest the ruling. And as of this ruling, the United States copyright laws contravene the Constitution and are therefore null and void. DeCSS is still available all over the Internet.