One piece of advice: Don’t even try to find any logic or reasoning behind the rulings of these courts in such cases. All judges in IT-related cases are either completely ignorant on the matter, easily svayed by pressure from “above”/lobbyism or a mixture of both. Now in the beginning of the DeCSS case it actually seemed as if Kaplan put forth the effort to get aquainted with the issues in the suit involving Code & free spech(eventhough his questions into the techie nature of the case displayed an amazing lack of knowledge/understanding on the matter). However, the rather small hope for us following the case that for once this might not be an ordered sentence didn’t last long. Somehow(who knows how, maybe a few $$ helped) Kaplan got to the conclusion stated above(eventhough the defense presented their case very strongly). Sadly it seems that by now all judges presented with an IT case seem to take the approach in the end that “Ooh this is a complex case that I’ll never understand fully, so I better take sides with the Industry who knows what to do, and not some suspecious hacker or free speech organization”. ALL judges wo are given these cases really should be required to have at least a basic knowledge on the matter. Luckily I don’t see the many “weird” rulings these days affecting the world too much. In the end technical ingenuity fueled by personal curiosity/thirst for knowledge will always prevail over $$-driven forces. Besides “Ho$$ywood” NEEDS us more than we NEED them. And who knows one day we might actually get judges who know a bit from a byte(Not holding my breath though :d )
