Internet Library of Law
and Court Decisions

DVD - Internet Library of Law and Court Decisions - Updated January 1, 2002

Reversing the court below, the California Court of Appeal denied plaintiff's application for a preliminary injunction, by which plaintiff sought to enjoin defendant Andrew Bunner and others from publishing on web sites the computer program DeCSS. DeCSS permits a user to evade the "content scramble system" which both encrypts DVDs and is designed to prevent their unauthorized use and duplication. Plaintiff claimed that it was entitled to such relief under California's Uniform Trade Secret Act, Civil Code Section 3426.1, et seq. The court rejected plaintiff's application on the grounds that such an injunction was an impermissible prior restraint on speech which ran afoul of the First Amendment. This decision was premised on the court's determination that defendant's publication on a web site of the source code of the DeCSS program was a form of speech subject to First Amendment protection.