Superior Court Judge William Elfving has rejected the DVD Copy Control Association's bid for a temporary restraining order forcing 72 Web site owners to remove DVD software cracking code or links to it until a suit against the 72 is resolved.
Elfving made the ruling Wednesday, after attorneys for both sides argued in a preliminary hearing. "We think he made the right decision about not having the temporary restraining order," Electronic Frontier Foundation executive director Tara Lemmey tells Wired. EFF provided stopgap legal defense to keep the individuals targeted in the suit from going without representation at the hearing.
The allegedly illicit DVD cracking code is put into the software utility DeCSS. Programmers insist it was created because of the lack of DVD playback software for Linux operating systems. A group of Norwegian programmers were said to have reverse-engineered Windows software to provide DVD playback for Linux.
The DVD industry suit says DVD protection was broken by hacking software created by CSS licensee Xing Technology. Wired says the next step in the case is a January hearing.
