Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Corley

273 F.3d 429 (2nd Cir. 2001)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

The DMCA backed with legal sanctions the efforts of copyright owners to protect their works from piracy behind digital walls such as encryption codes or password protections. Congress targeted not only those pirates who would circumvent these digital walls (the 'anti-circumvention provisions,' contained in 17 U.S.C. § 1201 (a)(1)) but also anyone who would traffic in a technology primarily designed to circumvent a digital wall (the 'anti-trafficking provisions,' contained in 17 U.S.C. § 1201 (a)(2), (b)(1)). D published a print magazine and maintains an affiliated website geared towards 'hackers.' The hacker community includes serious computer-science scholars conducting research on protection techniques, computer buffs intrigued by the challenge of trying to circumvent access-limiting devices or perhaps hoping to promote security by exposing flaws in protection techniques, mischief-makers interested in disrupting computer operations, and thieves, including copyright infringers who want to acquire copyrighted material (for personal use or resale) without paying for it. CSS is an encryption scheme that employs an algorithm configured by a set of 'keys' to encrypt a DVD's contents. Motion picture studios placed CSS on DVDs to prevent the unauthorized viewing and copying of motion pictures. In September 1999, Jon Johansen, a Norwegian teenager, collaborating with two unidentified individuals he met on the Internet, reverse-engineered a licensed DVD player designed to operate on the Microsoft operating system, and culled from it the player keys and other information necessary to decrypt CSS. Johansen was trying to develop a DVD player operable on Linux, an alternative operating system that did not support any licensed DVD players at that time. Johansen wrote a decryption program executable on Microsoft's operating system. That program was called, appropriately enough, 'DeCSS.' DeCSS will decrypt the DVD's CSS protection, allowing the user to copy the DVD's files and place the copy on the user's hard drive. Johansen posted the executable object code, but not the source code, for DeCSS on his website. In November 1999, D posted a copy of the decryption computer program 'DeCSS' on his website. D also posted on his website links to other websites where DeCSS could be found. D's article about DeCSS detailed how CSS was cracked and described the movie industry's efforts to shut down websites posting DeCSS. D's website was only one of hundreds of websites that began posting DeCSS near the end of 1999. Ps filed this lawsuit. Ps sought an injunction against D, alleging violations of the anti-trafficking provisions of the statute. The District Court issued a preliminary injunction. Ps then sought a permanent injunction barring D from both posting DeCSS and linking to sites containing DeCSS. The Court first held that computer code like DeCSS is 'speech' that is 'protected' by the First Amendment but that because the DMCA is targeting the 'functional' aspect of that speech it is 'content-neutral' meaning intermediate scrutiny applies. The Court concluded that the DMCA survives this scrutiny, and also rejected prior restraint, overbreadth, and vagueness challenges. The Court upheld the constitutionality of the DMCA's application to linking on similar grounds. D appealed.