Followup on digg.com, AACS, and "laws for bloggers"

In an inter­est­ing arti­cle enti­tled “Digg This?: What Laws Must We Obey?” at “The Faculty Blog” from the University of Chicago, a law pro­fes­sor not inti­mately involved with the DMCA and Web 2.0 writes:

As to law, as Digg’s attor­neys undoubt­edly told it yes­ter­day, the lead­ing deci­sion address­ing the legit­i­macy of link­ing to decryp­tion tools is Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Corley, 273 F.3d 429 (2nd Cir. 2001). That case deals with the prior iter­a­tion of this situation—the ordi­nary DVD—and the pro­gram for decrypt­ing it, DeCSS. In that case, the Second Circuit val­i­dated an anti-​​linking injunc­tion (“under the cir­cum­stances amply shown by the record, the injunction’s link­ing pro­hi­bi­tion validly reg­u­lates Appellants’ oppor­tu­nity instantly to enable any­one any­where to gain unau­tho­rized access to copy­righted movies on DVDs”).

The author por­trays Digg’s response as “a busi­ness deci­sion: it can lit­i­gate tomor­row but it was going to lose cus­tomers today. I doubt that it made a deci­sion about the need for civil dis­obe­di­ence.” He con­tin­ues, “I wouldn’t think that not being able to play an encrypted high-​​definition DVD on your plat­form of choice would fall into that cat­e­gory [of laws neces­si­tat­ing civil disobedience].”

A com­men­ta­tor named Ed Felten responds to this view:

I think this sums up a part of the divide between those who may dis­agree with the DMCA, but who do not see the extent of the prob­lems envi­sioned by the EFF and those many, many Digg read­ers who protested what they viewed as censorship.