The following press release is being issued Monday concerning the future of the DeCSS case:

Electronic Frontier Foundation Media Release

For Immediate Release: January 14, 2001


Contact:

Cindy Cohn
 Legal Director
 Electronic Frontier Foundation
 cindy@eff.org
 +1 415 436-9333 x108 (office), +1 415 823-2148 (cell)

Lee Tien
 Senior Staff Attorney
 Electronic Frontier Foundation
 tien@eff.org
 +1 415 436-9333 x102 (office), +1 510 290-7131 (cell)


Magazine Seeks Relief from Court-Ordered Censorship

Urges Decision to Permit Publication of DVD Decoder Software

New York - 2600 Magazine today requested that a U.S. court
reverse an earlier ruling prohibiting publication of the
software code called DeCSS which permits DVD owners to view
DVDs on players that are not approved by the entertainment
industry.

Stating that "free speech principles should turn not upon
newly minted distinctions between pen-and-ink and
point-and-click," the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
and lead counsel Kathleen M. Sullivan today asked the full
Second Circuit Court of Appeals to hear Universal v.
Corley.

"By permitting publication of code in an online magazine,
the Second Circuit would recognize that Internet speech is
fully protected by the First Amendment as established by
the U.S. Supreme Court in ACLU v. Reno," noted EFF Legal
Director Cindy Cohn. "The most egregious part of the
previous decision prevented even linking, the lifeblood of
the Internet."

In November, a three-judge panel held that the magazine
could be banned from publishing or linking to DeCSS.
That panel rejected pleas from 46 intellectual property
professors, 17 top computer scientists, 8 top computer
security experts, the Association for Computing Machinery,
the American Library Association, the ACLU, and the
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, among many
others.

A court decision on the request is expected later this
spring.

More information and legal filings in the 2600 case:
http://www.eff.org/Cases/MPAA_DVD_cases/

2600 Magazine:
http://www.2600.com/


About EFF:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading civil
liberties organization working to protect rights in the
digital world. Founded in 1990, EFF actively encourages and
challenges industry and government to support free
expression, privacy, and openness in the information
society. EFF is a member-supported organization and
maintains one of the most-linked-to websites in the world at
http://www.eff.org/

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