It hasn?t been a good week for the original Hackers Bible 2600.com. Lewis Kaplan a U.S. District Judge has ruled against them for posting of the DeCSS code, which enables the copying of DVDs, violates federal copyright law, backing the Hollywood studios in their case against Eric Corley, publisher of 2600.com.The judge rejected an argument by the defence that computer code is a form of expression entitled to free speech protection regardless of its use. “In an era in which the transmission of computer viruses can disable systems upon which the nation depends and in which other computer code also is capable of inflicting harm, society must be able to regulate the use and dissemination of code in appropriate circumstance,” Kaplan said in his ruling. “Computer code is not purely expressive any more than the assassination of a political figure is purely a political statement,” he added. Corley’s attorneys are expected to appeal the ruling, and he added from their site: ?It wasn’t completely unexpected. But news of this defeat has angered and shocked people throughout the net and its effects will be profound. In the end, all of our concerns about the First Amendment and freedom of speech went right out the window. Because DeCSS exists to bypass CSS, its very existence violates the Digitial Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). It doesn’t matter that DeCSS wasn’t created as a pirating tool whose purpose is to copy DVDs. It doesn’t matter that DeCSS was created so that people could view their own DVDs on their own computer systems including those (such as Linux) for which no “legal” player had been developed. The DMCA says that anything that bypasses access control is in violation, regardless of how unfair that access control may be. As we expected, this means we must now fight the constitutionality of the DMCA. The cost of not pursuing this would be extremely high for all of us. We would be handing a blank check to these huge corporate entities. They would be able to sue whoever they want whenever they want simply for figuring out how technology works, writing computer programs, or, as in this case, simply trying to view legally purchased material on a legally purchased machine.

But the cost of pursuing this will be great as well. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been footing the bill for the vast legal expenses we have incurred and the appeal will only bring these numbers up even higher.?They we always on dangerous territory posting the DeCSS code and this I?m sure is going to be seen as another test in the growing ?free for you, free for me? open source convergence between the underground activists and overhyped corporates. We, as we always have, will be lining ourselves up somewhere in the middle trying to stop any kicking sand and hair pulling in our coverage.www.2600.com