Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Reimerdes
United States Court of Appeals for the Southern District of New York
111 F. Supp. 2d 294 (2000)
After Norwegian teenager Jon Johansen reverse-engineered the Content Scramble System (CSS) encryption Universal City Studios (Universal) and other studios (plaintiffs) used to protect DVDs, creating the circumvention program DeCSS, Eric Corley (defendant), publisher of the hacker magazine 2600, posted DeCSS for download on his website, listed other sites offering it, and after a preliminary injunction removed the direct download but kept links to other sites while actively encouraging readers to spread the code. Universal sued under Section 1201 of the Copyright Act, and Corley argued the anti-trafficking provisions violated his First Amendment free-speech rights; the district court ruled for Universal and issued a permanent injunction, and Corley appealed.
Whether, under the Copyright Act, creating or distributing technologies designed to circumvent technologies that limit access to copyrighted material is prohibited.