Legal Assault on Internet Free Speech Successful
Freedom to Link Dead

Court Suits Knock Out Freedom to Link

The One Group Who Needs Free Speech the Most
Succeeds in Killing It on the Internet

STRIKE ONE: In May, Microsoft demanded that links to a copy of its Kerberos source code be removed from a discussion forum.

STRIKE TWO: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints successfully sued to bar a critic from linking to copyrighted church handbooks.

STRIKE THREE: U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan sided with the motion picture industry and ordered 2600 Magazine to delete the deCSS DVD-descrambling program from its website. But Kaplan didn't stop there. He also ordered 2600 Magazine to cease linking to web sites that had the DeCSS utility.

Kaplan's ruling, legal experts say, continues a recent trend to expand copyright law. And it is being done in a way that applies solely to the Internet. Every other media format in the United States can tell their readers (listeners, viewers) the location of the illegal material. But an Internet News Magazine cannot provide a hyperlink to the same location.

That will cause massive legal problems for reporters and editors at sites like the WIZARD, fkap, CNN, MSNBC, Wired News, Slashdot, and every other Internet web site. Almost every link on the internet today leads to copyrighted material.

Will prior written permission be required before a link is offered? Napster is nothing more than links to copyrighted material.

Hooray for Hollywood! You can bet this ruling will be immediately used by every lawyer in every lawsuit the RIAA and MPAA is using to slap down Fan Websites, mp3 trading locations, and consumer advocate web sites!! If Kaplan had been a judge in the 1960's, Ralph Nadar would be in jail today, instead of running for President.

"I think that Judge Kaplan does not know his head from his ass," says Adrian Bacon, owner of Linux News Online. "Outlawing a site from linking to another site that has DeCSS is just plain wrong."

The Motion Picture Association of America did not respond to requests for comments from the press. The WIZARD believes they are too busy filing new lawsuits and briefs.

So the current impact of this ruling is.....? 2600 Magazine removed the links to copies of DeCSS. But they left the non-HTML versions of the addresses intact. the WIZARD can only guess that the judge knows so little about the Internet he didn't realize that users could simply copy and paste the addresses into a browser window.