T-Shirt Riles DVD Copyright Cops

Web site's sale of DeCSS T-Shirt draws legal wrath.

Sam Costello, IDG News Service

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Copyleft.net sells a wide variety of software, books, and clothing designed for and inspired by the open-source software movement, which holds that source code should be freely available so anyone can modify and improve it.

A T-shirt Copyleft started selling in January has landed the site and Steve Blood, its founder, in the middle of a lawsuit. The DVD Copy Control Authority claims the clothing misappropriates trade secrets.

Designed by Copyleft programmer Dominic Dellizzi, the back of the shirt bears the source code to DeCSS, a program that decrypts DVD.

The Open DVD T-shirt is intended as a fundraising tool to help the Electronic Frontier Foundation represent defendants in the lawsuit by the Motion Picture Association of America, Blood says. Copyleft has donated more than $16,000 to the EFF from sales.

The MPAA recently won its lawsuit and Copyleft ran into trouble about the same time. (See "Court Bars Hacker From Posting Code".) In early August, the DVD CCA added Copyleft to a suit against more than 500 defendants. DVD CCA contends that Copyleft misappropriated trade secrets by printing DeCSS code on the T-shirt.

Free Speech

But Blood doesn't see himself as a criminal.

"This is not about breaking the law. I wouldn't do a Napster shirt. Napster is a public forum for doing something illegal," he says, referring to the music swapping service that is under legal fire. The DeCSS T-shirt is intended as an "easy way to show support, [to] get people talking."

"Copyleft is infringing trade secrets that the DVD CCA licenses, in the same way that someone who posts it or prints it in a newspaper is," says Robert Sugarman, an attorney with Weil, Gotschal & Manges, which represents the DVD CCA. "As a result, the DVD CCA has no choice but to seek relief, just as with those who post [DeCSS]." (See "Descrambling Code Still Under Fire".)

A lawsuit for selling a T-shirt shouldn't be a surprise, according to Douglas Lichtman, an assistant professor of law at the University of Chicago.

"While it is true that the First Amendment severely restricts the government's ability to make speech illegal, it is also true that copyright and trade secret law do, in essence, make certain types of speech illegal," Lichtman says in an e-mail interview.

Rulings try to balance freedom of speech and harm from speech, Lichtman says.

Code Still Flows

Whatever the case's outcome, Blood thinks there's no going back. Bans on linking to DeCSS sites won't stop dissemination through print media, he says.

Making something illegal only increases interest in it, Blood adds, citing the recent sharp upswing in traffic on Napster. He strenuously asserts that Napster technology is not akin to DeCSS. Still, he adds, "Public sentiment is going to fall on the side of the consumer."

The DVD CCA's Sugarman is not so sure the DeCSS ruling will boost interest. Most sites the MPAA knew of removed DeCSS in January, after a preliminary injunction, he says.

"We have to believe people will comply with the courts and stop the dissemination of DeCSS," he says. The DVD CCA is pursuing a permanent injunction against posting DeCSS and a ban on linking.

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