Three Years Later: 1st Amendment Challenge Over DMCA's Anti-Circumvention Provisions Can Move Forward

Almost exactly three years ago we wrote about how well known computer security professor Matthew Green and famed hardware hacker Bunnie Huang had teamed up with EFF and the law firm Wilson Sonsini to file a fascinating 1st Amendment challenge to the DMCA's Section 1201. 1201 is the so-called "anti-circumvention" or digital locks provision of the DMCA, that says that it's infringing to "manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof" that is designed to "circumvent" DRM or other "technological protection measures." Basically, if there's a digital lock on something -- doing anything to get around it (or to help others get around it) is potentially a copyright violation even if (and this is important) the purpose and result of circumventing the DRM has nothing to do with infringing on copyright.

Even Congress knew that this part of the law was crazy when they passed it. It knew that this would lead to all sorts of perfectly reasonable activities suddenly being declared infringing -- so it came up with a really annoying hack to deal with that. A triennial review, where every three years everyone could go beg the Copyright Office and the Librarian of Congress to grant categories of exemptions from Section 1201. Those exemptions only last for three years, so even if you get one, you need to keep applying.

The lawsuit took an interesting approach to challenging 1201. Noting that the Supreme Court has long held that fair use is a necessary safety valve to make copyright compatible with the 1st Amendment, they noted that 1201 does not allow fair use as a defense. And if it's true that fair use is necessary to make copyright compliant with the 1st Amendment, then that should mean that 1201 is not constitutional.

The lawsuit has more or less sat in lawsuit purgatory for nearly three years when the court finally ruled that the case can move forward... in part. In a detailed 61-page opinion the court allowed some claims to move forward while dismissing other ones. It's a victory that the case is moving forward, but among the dismissed claims were the general challenge to the constitutionality of 1201. That's disappointing.

Green and Huang argued that 1201 violated their 1st Amendment rights, because the very threat of violating 1201 caused them to avoid working on various projects -- and those projects were expressive in nature. The court buys that argument -- and says that they have standing to make claims that their own expression was stifled by 1201 and the whole triennial review process. The DOJ argued that they hadn't shown any actual injury, but the court points out that's ridiculous:

First, plaintiffs have sufficiently alleged that their proposed course of conduct is arguably proscribed by the DMCA. With regard to section 1201(a)(1)(A)’s circumvention prohibition, Dr. Green has alleged that he plans to circumvent TPMs for purposes of his academic research... and Mr. Huang and Alphamax have alleged that they plan to circumvent TPMs to create the NeTVCR... With regard to section 1201(a)(2)’s trafficking prohibition, Dr. Green has sufficiently alleged that he plans to include “detailed information regarding how to circumvent security systems” in a book about his research, and he has indicated that the “detailed information” will include computer code.... (“I am now writing an academic book . . . . I would like to include examples of code capable of bypassing security measures, for readers to learn from.”).... And Mr. Huang and Alphamax have alleged that they intend to disseminate “information about how to build NeTVCR,”... which permits the reasonable inference that they will disseminate the technological know-how and computer code required to circumvent the TPMs that bar access to HDMI signals.... Accordingly, plaintiffs have put forth a sufficiently “credible statement of intent to engage in violative conduct.”

So, that's good.

Also nice is that the court explicitly recognizes that "code is speech."

The Court, as do defendants... agrees with plaintiffs that the DMCA and its triennial rulemaking process burden the use and dissemination of computer code, thereby implicating the First Amendment. Although the question has not been addressed by the D.C. Circuit, as other courts have explained, code “at some level contains expression, thus implicating the First Amendment.”... Code is speech precisely because, like a recipe or a musical score