Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Corley (originally known as Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Reimerdes), 273 F.3d 429 (2nd Cir., 2001), was a court ruling at the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. This ruling was the first circuit-level test of the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Background
Eight plaintiffs, all movie studios, sought an injunction against the distribution of DeCSS, a program capable of decrypting video content that had been encrypted by the Content Scramble System, which was commonly used to protect DVDs from unauthorized copying. DeCSS was developed by Norwegian teenager Jon Johansen and released in October 1999 via LiViD, a mailing list focused on producing programming tools and software libraries relevant to DVD use on the Linux operating system. DeCSS was distributed by LiViD and other Internet communities without authorization from the DVD Copy Control Association, the trade organization responsible for DVD copy protection.
District court proceedings
In January 2000, the movie studios filed suit under the title Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Reimerdes at the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. The defendants were Eric Corley (publisher of 2600: The Hacker Quarterly magazine, which copied the DeCSS code for its readers), Shawn Reimerdes (who had posted the code on dvd-copy.com, a personal website), Roman Kazan (who ran an Internet hosting service that provided access to DeCSS), and 2600 Enterprises, Inc. The studios claimed that the defendants, by making DeCSS available, were trafficking in circumvention devices, an illegal act under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The studios sought an injunction that would prohibit the distribution and use of the DeCSS program, as well as monetary damages. The court felt this precaution was necessary given that the movie studios made a reasonable argument that widespread dissemination of DeCSS would cause irreparable harm to their interests. Reimerdes and Kazan then entered into consent decrees with the plaintiffs and were subsequently dropped from the suit. Both were then barred from posting the DeCSS code or providing links to sites where the code could be found.
Corley removed the DeCSS code from 2600.com after the preliminary injunction was issued, but did not reach a settlement of his own with the plaintiffs and remained a defendant in the suit. In what Corley termed an act of "electronic civil disobedience," 2600.com continued to host links to other websites that themselves provided the source code for DeCSS. Corley also moved for the court to overturn the Digital Millennium Copyright Act altogether as a violation of the First Amendment, because it restricted citizens from distributing and discussing programming code, which in turn is an item of expression.
In August 2000, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. Kaplan acknowledged the tension in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act between copyright holders and those who wish to use new technologies, but concluded that the language of the act provided relief for the plaintiffs against unauthorized copying of their copyrighted works. The circuit court opined that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act could be subjected to intermediate scrutiny as a partial restriction on free speech. the circuit court held that some laws can restrict speech for reasons that are "justified without reference to the content" if there are larger public benefits from the speech restrictions. Hence, due to the conflict with the DMCA in the present case, DeCSS was held to be a form of speech but it could be restricted due to its functionality (circumvention that is prohibited per the DMCA) and not its content. and others, due to upholding legal restrictions on expressive programming code. On the other hand, some media and content-owning organizations, such as the National Football League and Major League Baseball, supported the decisions.
Corley initially planned to appeal the circuit court decision to the Supreme Court, but decided not to after consultation with his lawyers. Despite the courts' rulings, the DeCSS code is still widely available on the Internet and has been used in many subsequent video ripping products.