Court halts DVD copying via Web

SAN FRANCISCO -- In a victory for Hollywood's major studios, a New York federal appeals court upheld a ruling against a man who posted on his Web site a program that let users copy DVDs.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York ruled Wednesday in favor of nine major Hollywood studios that sought to force Eric Corley, operator of the 2600 Magazine Web site, to remove links to the program that unscrambles DVD encryption.

Corley's attorneys had argued at trial that publishing the program, called DeCSS, was protected as free speech and that their client merely was covering the news value of the technological development by posting the code.

The initial use of DeCSS to access DVD movies does not cost movie producers money because the user must first buy the DVD, the court found.

"However, once the DVD is purchased, DeCSS enables the initial user to copy the movie in digital form and transmit it instantly in virtually limitless quantity, thereby depriving the movie producer of sales," the court wrote in its opinion.