Source: https://cyber.harvard.edu/openlaw/DVD/NY/appeals/010530-mpaa-supp-brief.html
Timestamp: 2017-03-27 14:30:13
Document Index: 237364215

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 8', '§8', '§ 1002', '§ 1201', '§ 1201', '§ 501', '§ 501']

ansmitting decrypted digital copies of the copyrighted content. (Tr. 409:20-24; 505:4-6). The trial testimony focused extensively on how DeCSS circumvents CSS — a technological measure that provides security against making infringing copies — and thereby facilitates infringement, and Judge Kaplan found that "the application of DeCSS to copy and distribute motion pictures . . . threatens" the Studios with substantial harm. Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Reimerdes, 111 F. Supp. 2d 294, 315 (S.D.N.Y. 2000).
The "least restrictive alternative" test that appellants invoke applies only to content-based laws. Under intermediate scrutiny, the requirement of narrow tailoring is satisfied "‘so long as the . . . regulation promotes a substantial government interest that would be achieved less effectively absent the regulation.'" Turner Broadcasting Sys., Inc. v. F.C.C., 512 U.S. 622, 662 (1994) (emphasis added, quoting Ward v. Rock Against Racism, 491 U.S. 781, 799 (1989)); see City of Erie v. Paps A.M., 529 U.S. 277, 301 (1999) ("since this is a content-neutral restriction, least restrictive means analysis is not required."); Studio Br. 40-44. As Dean Sullivan has written,
The AHRA was enacted in 1992, well before Congress undertook to address the problem of instantaneous, widespread proliferation of infringing copies made possible through the Internet. It was compromise legislation (to settle a lawsuit that had prevented importation of digital audio tape players) proposed by the music industry and digital audio tape ("DAT") device manufacturers, which (a) imposed upon device manufacturers a technological mandate to adhere to a specified copy control system (the "Serial Copy Management System") for digital music works, and (b) imposed a royalty on manufacturers and importers of DAT recorders and tapes as some compensation to the copyright holders of those musical works for any loss of revenues occasioned by consumer copying. See generally Nimmer on Copyright, § 8B.01[C]. The AHRA expressly exempts computers from its definition of "digital audio recording devices" and was not designed, intended, or suited to regulate computers or copying by computer. Id., §8B.02[A][1][a][ii], at 8B-26 - 29 (2000) (discussing exclusion of computers from the A
Unlike the AHRA, the DMCA was enacted to address the risks to creators presented by the Internet, and to provide "the legal platform for launching the global digital on-line marketplace for copyrighted works." S. Rep. No. 105-190, at 2, 5 (1998) (Add-9, 12). As the United States correctly noted at argument, Congress's findings concerning the increasing risks of copyright infringement on a massive scale because of increasing Internet bandwidth, computer storage capacity, and network capabilities, and its acknowledgment of the need for increased protection in order to induce the wider release of copyrighted works in digital form, provide an overwhelming distinction between the DMCA and the AHRA. (Moreover, the AHRA has a prohibition on circumvention, 17 U.S.C. § 1002(c), and Corley's conduct would have violated that too.) In sum, aimed at a different problem, inapplicable to computer copying (and therefore to an installed base of millions of computers that can be used for unlimited copying in the absence of the DMCA), and premised on an approach (mandating hardware manufacturers to incorporate particular technological measures) that Congress expressly rejected in the DMCA at the urging of the computer industry, the AHRA is irrelevant to the O'Brien-Ward-Turner narrow tailoring assessment undertaken by the district court and challenged on appeal, and in any event would advance the interests underlying the DMCA less effectively than the DMCA itself. III.	Appellants' Overbreadth Argument Ignores The Basis Upon Which The Injunction Against Their Linking Activities Was Sought And Entered.
On this record, the injunction is valid against Corley and threatens neither journalists nor journalism. Suffice it to say that the issue presented is the propriety of the injunction against Corley on a record which showed his abusive misconduct and admitted intent to provide DeCSS to the public in an act of "electronic civil disobedience" — not the lawfulness of linking at large. The Studios relied on such cases as United States v. Scott, 187 F.3d 282, 288-89 (2d Cir. 1999), see Studio Br. 46. There is a clear, dispositive difference between the conduct by which Corley "offered, provided . . . DeCSS, and continue[s] to do so to this day" (111 F. Supp. 2d at 325) and any reporting we have seen by The New York Times or its counterparts. Cf. 17 U.S.C § 1201(g) (among the factors to be considered in determining the availability of the encryption research exemption is "whether the information derived . . . was disseminated in a manner reasonably calcula
Even putting aside Corley's lack of standing to complain of hypothetical harms to third parties and the absence of any chilling effect, the unimpaired availability of all fair or non- infringing uses of such works except that small subset (if any) requiring perfect digital copies renders Congress's policy judgment unassailable. See Studio Br. 59-67. An incidental impact on speech affords no basis for invalidating a law aimed at conduct that is not content-based. More over, as both Judge Kaplan and the Register of Copyrights concluded, any adverse impact of the trafficking ban on fair or noninfringing uses to date is either "trivial" or non-existent. 111 F. Supp. 2d at 337 ("only to a trivial degree"); Recommendation of the Register of Copyrights, 65 Fed. Reg. 64568, Add-122 ("Thus far, no proponents of this argument . . . have come forward with any evidence of any substantial or concrete harm . . . The allegations of harm raised were generally hypothetical in nature"). The mechanism Congress provided in § 1201(a)(1)(C) for a renewed rulemaking every three years to assess whether adverse impacts on noninfringing uses have arisen or are likely makes appellants' "potential interference with noninfringing use of copyright-expired works" argument a particularly poor basis for invalidating either the DMCA or the injunction. Responses to the Questions in the May 8 Order.
Language was involved in conveying the Recurrence commands to traders, to be sure. But as Professor Kent Greenawalt has pointed out, "Language serves a variety of functions, only some of which are covered by the special reasons for freedom of speech." . . . None of the reasons for which speech is thought to require protection above and beyond that accorded to non-speech behavior — the pursuit of truth, the accommodation among interests, the achievement of social stability, the exposure and deterrence of abuses of authority, personal autonomy and personality development, or the functioning of a democracy . . . is implicated by the communications here in issue, and none counsels in favor of treating the Recurrence communications at issue as protected "speech." The case against treating DeCSS as "speech" for First Amendment purposes is considerably stronger here than in Vartuli. Running the program held to be "not speech" in Vartuli resulted in "specific buy or sell recommendations" which were provided to the user; nothing actually happened, in the real world, unless the user then took the advice produced and called his broker. Here, by contrast, Corley was enjoined from distributing a program which, when run, accomplishes precisely and immediately the result Congress prohibited: DeCSS produces not recommendations but an unlawful result (decryption and copying) that violates two provisions of copyright law, 17 U.S.C. §§ 501 and 1201(a)(1). When run, DeCSS delivers instructions to a computer's central processing unit that immediately and directly accomplish the very "breaking and entering" that Congress made unlawful. DeCSS is therefore "situation-altering," in Professor Greenawalt's useful formulation, and accordingly outside the scope of the free speech principle altogether — like blackmail, or criminal solicitation, or forgery devices, or ATM access devices, or wiretapping equipment, all of which are regulable as conduct. Vartuli, supra; see also Greenawalt, Speech, Crime, and the Uses of Language, at 57 (Oxford U. Press, 1989); RIAA Br. 15-18. As a functional, situation-altering computer program, which operates a machine to strip technological protection applied by the copyright owner, DeCSS is subject to regulation. Studio Br. 19-22; see also U.S. Br. Point IA; RIAA Br. 15-24.
4.	Does the use of DeCSS to decrypt an encrypted DVD have both speech and non-speech elements? This question is not presented on this appeal because Corley has not decrypted any DVDs, or sought to. Studio Br. 59-63; U.S. Br. Point III. But the answer is "no": the use of DeCSS to decrypt an encrypted DVD has no "speech elements," just as breaking into a museum or library — or using a computer to break an electronic lock on a library door — cannot properly be said to have "speech elements."
Moreover, when Congress enacts a measure aimed at deterring copyright infringement, analysis of whether what it has regulated or proscribed has "speech elements" is simply not a pertinent or useful inquiry. The "use of a copying machine to infringe a copyright" might perhaps be said to have "speech elements," but the constitutionality of the infringement cause of action, 17 U.S.C. § 501, on its face or as applied, does not depend on whether or not it does. Importation of books from abroad might be said to have "speech elements," but the constitutionality of the manufacturing clause of the 1909 Copyright Act did not depend on asking whether "speech elements" were present. Authors League v. Oman, 790 F.2d 220 (2d Cir. 1986). "Speech elements" are presumably always present when further copying or distribution of an infringing work is enjoined, but the constitutionality of injunctive relief to protect copyright holders from piracy has long been settled categorically