[Infowarrior] - MPAA: Seal our courtroom, please

[Richard Forno]

Hollywood group asks judge to seal courtroom in DVD-copying case
by Greg Sandoval and Declan McCullagh
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10227195-38.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

Updated 12:55 p.m. PDT to add more background.

SAN FRANCISCO--A Hollywood trade group asked a federal judge on Friday  
to kick the public out of a courtroom, saying confidential information  
about DVD encryption would be disclosed.

An attorney for the DVD Copy Control Association, which is involved in  
a lawsuit here over DVD-backup software sold by RealNetworks, said  
details about the technology used to encrypt DVDs justified the  
unusual request.

"The MPAA is trying to seal proprietary specifications," said DVD-CCA  
attorney Reginald Steer, referring to the Motion Picture Association  
of America, another party to the case.

Steer said the trade secrets related to licensing technology and CSS,  
or Content Scrambling System, which is an algorithm used to encrypt  
DVDs. DVD-CCA once filed a lawsuit against programmer Jon Johansen,  
who wrote a DVD-descrambling utility that circumvented CSS--a suit  
that had the unintended consequence of publicizing the code widely,  
including on ties, T-shirts, and at least one haiku poem.

The MPAA, the lobbying group for the six largest film studios, alleges  
that RealDVD violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)  
because it bypasses the copy protection built into DVDs. The DMCA  
generally restricts companies from developing products that circumvent  
antipiracy protections, but Real says that its RealDVD product  
complies with the law.

It's unclear exactly what information concerns the MPAA and DVD-CCA.  
Because Johansen's DeCSS code--which was the subject of an injunction  
nine years ago by a court in New York--is so widely distributed  
including through a online gallery published by a Carnegie Mellon  
University researcher, it may be difficult for Hollywood to claim that  
anything about CSS is confidential. On the other hand, the lawyers may  
stand a better chance of arguing that specific contracts are  
confidential.

The case is taking place before U.S. District Judge Marilyn Patel, who  
said she would wait until later in the day to make a formal ruling  
about whether to close the courtroom.

Patel's initial response, though, seemed skeptical. She joked that if  
DVD-CCA and the MPAA wanted to close the courtroom, "You should have  
gotten yourself a private judge. This is an open forum."

Under long-standing U.S. law, courtrooms are open by default. The 9th  
Circuit Court of Appeals, which is binding on Patel, has said that  
judges considering closing a courtroom or sealing records "must  
provide sufficient notice to the public and press to afford them the  
opportunity to object or offer alternatives. If objections are made, a  
hearing on the objections must be held as soon as possible."

Once that hearing is held, the courtroom can only be closed if  
specific conditions are met, including that there are no alternatives  
that are practical. Also, the judge must "make specific factual  
findings," and not just claim it was necessary.

CNET News' publisher, CBS Interactive, may challenge any courtroom  
closure. CNET intervened last year in federal court in a case pitting  
Facebook against ConnectU to unseal documents, a dispute that ended up  
before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.