Calif. Supreme Court to hear DeCSS case

The California Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal by the motion picture industry in a closely watched case aimed at blocking distribution of DVD-cracking code on the Internet. The DVD Copy Control Association has sued hundreds of programmers who published the code, known as DeCSS, arguing that the postings violated state trade secrets law. The appeal seeks to overturn a lower court decision in favor of the defendants that found banning the code was an illegal crackdown on free speech.

In a separate federal case in New York, an appeals court has ruled that posting or linking to the code violates copyright laws.