DeCSS is evidently, illegal to publish.

In a case that pitted the U.S. and California constitutions against the state’s trade secret law, the California Supreme Court ruled Monday that it is not a violation of free speech rights to ban the publication of computer code that can be used to copy DVDs.

Read the story here.

The issue with all of this, and it started with the DMCA, is that encryption, even as a field of academic study, cannot progress if one is forbidden to discuss case studies, and bad implementations. Furthermore, bad encryption will continue to be used and sold and broken overseas, while legitimate practitioners of the craft are not allowed to tell customers in America, business or otherwise, about how bad the encryption really is.

Imagine for a moment you tried to apply the same logic to door locks. And some huckster comes up to you and says he has this magic tape, and if you place it across your door jam, it will stop criminals from entering. Under the current law, as a locksmith you’d be forbidden from showing a customer how the tape doesn’t really provide protection, because it can so easily be removed. This is not a helpful means of providing better data security. In the end, it makes us all weaker.

And that’s not even discussing the fact that the law is a blatant first amendment violation. Remember that phraseology, “Congress shall pass no law…”?

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 28th, 2003 at 8:42 am and is filed under technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.