Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Eric Corley
273 F.3d 429 (2001)
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Rule of Law:
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act's (DMCA) anti-trafficking provisions, which ban the distribution of technology designed to circumvent copyright protection measures, do not violate the First Amendment. Such regulations are content-neutral restrictions on speech that are justified by the government's substantial interest in preventing copyright piracy and are narrowly tailored to that end.
Facts:
- Motion picture studios began distributing movies on digital versatile disks (DVDs) protected by an encryption technology called Content Scramble System (CSS) to prevent unauthorized viewing and copying.
- In September 1999, Jon Johansen, a Norwegian teenager, reverse-engineered CSS and created a computer program named DeCSS, which could decrypt CSS-protected DVDs.
- DeCSS allows a user to decrypt a DVD's files and copy them onto a computer's hard drive, creating a perfect digital copy that can be easily distributed over the Internet.
- Eric C. Corley operates 2600 Enterprises, Inc., which publishes a magazine and maintains a website, 2600.com, for the 'hacker' community.
- In November 1999, Corley posted an article on 2600.com about the creation of DeCSS.
- Within this article, Corley published the full object and source code of the DeCSS program.
- Corley also included hyperlinks in the article that directed users to other websites where the DeCSS program could be downloaded.
Procedural Posture:
- Universal City Studios, Inc. and seven other motion picture studios sued Eric C. Corley and 2600 Enterprises, Inc. in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
- The plaintiffs alleged that the defendants' posting of the DeCSS program violated the anti-trafficking provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
- The District Court granted the plaintiffs' request for a preliminary injunction, ordering the defendants to remove DeCSS from their website.
- After the defendants complied but began linking to other websites hosting DeCSS, the plaintiffs sought a permanent injunction against both posting and linking.
- Following a full non-jury trial, the District Court found for the plaintiffs and issued a permanent injunction barring the defendants from posting DeCSS and from knowingly linking to any website containing it.
- Corley, as appellant, appealed the permanent injunction to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
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Issue:
Does the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's prohibition on trafficking in technology designed to circumvent copyright protection measures, as applied to enjoin a website from posting and linking to a decryption program for DVDs, violate the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech?
Opinions:
Majority - Newman, J.
No. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act's prohibition on trafficking in circumvention technology does not violate the First Amendment. While computer code is a form of speech, the DMCA is a content-neutral regulation targeting the code's functional, non-speech capacity to circumvent access controls, not its expressive content. The court determined that computer code has both expressive elements (conveying information to humans) and functional elements (instructing a computer). The DMCA and the resulting injunction target DeCSS solely for its functional capability to decrypt CSS. This makes the regulation content-neutral, subject to intermediate scrutiny under the O'Brien test. The government has a substantial interest in preventing widespread copyright infringement and protecting intellectual property, an interest unrelated to suppressing expression. The injunction against posting DeCSS is narrowly tailored because it is the most effective way to prevent its instantaneous, worldwide distribution. Similarly, the prohibition on linking to sites with DeCSS is valid; the injunction was narrowly crafted by the district court to apply only when Corley knew the linked site contained DeCSS and linked for the purpose of disseminating it, thus preventing the injunction from chilling legitimate speech.
Analysis:
This landmark decision established that computer code, while qualifying as First Amendment speech, possesses a 'functional' component that can be regulated. By classifying the DMCA's anti-trafficking provisions as content-neutral, the court applied intermediate scrutiny, setting a precedent that makes it significantly easier for the government to regulate software that has potentially unlawful uses. This ruling provided a strong legal foundation for digital rights management (DRM) technologies and the DMCA's enforcement, shaping the legal landscape of digital copyright, fair use, and online speech for decades. The case's treatment of code as a speech/function hybrid has become a cornerstone of First Amendment analysis in the digital age.
