Round one goes to the hackers.
In a lawsuit that accuses 72 Web site owners of posting -- or linking to -- illegal DVD software code, Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge William J. Elfving declined the DVD Copy Control Association's request for a temporary restraining order on Wednesday.
"We think he made the right decision about not having the temporary restraining order," Electronic Frontier Foundation executive director Tara Lemmey said.
EFF attorneys provided stop-gap legal defense to prevent the many individuals targeted in the suit from going unrepresented at the hearing.
DVD industry attorneys could not be reached to comment on the judge's decision, nor have they ever publicly commented on the suit.
The judge's decision came after attorneys for both sides argued in a packed courtroom over the temporary restraining order, which would have forced individuals and Web sites named in the suit to remove the code from the sites.
The allegedly illicit code is compiled into the software utility DeCSS. Programmers say the software was first created because of the lack of DVD playback software for the Linux computer operating system.
Although the software's exact origin has not been legally established by either party in the case, a group of Norwegian programmers are said to have reverse-engineered Windows player software to provide DVD playback for Linux-based computers.
The industry's suit said the DVD protection scheme was unlocked by "hacking" and/or improperly reverse-engineering software created by CSS licensee Xing Technology Corporation.
The case takes its next major step at a hearing for a preliminary injunction in January.
"It's important to continue to allow the speech to be open and posted while we go through this process," Lemmey said. "And I think the judge understood that importance."
