WPI will be badly affected by the DMCA

The DeCSS case affects the rights of every student at WPI. As future technology professionals, we expect certain rights, such as the right to reverse engineer existing technology and the right to share our findings about these technologies with others. As consumers, we expect the right to fair use of copyrighted material. As internet users, we expect the right to be able to link. Most importantly, as human beings, we expect the right to freedom of speech. If the DMCA holds up in court and DeCSS is declared illegal, we will have lost these rights, in part or in whole.

Many of us would like to show our support for the defendants, but don't know how. Posting DeCSS or possibly even a link to DeCSS on a WPI computer is prohibited and will cause your account to be shut down. Understandably, the school isn't going to risk a lawsuit. However, there are still many legal ways to spread the word, even on your web

site. It is still legal to post a list of sites containing DeCSS. No one has been sued for creative interpretations of DeCSS, such as Xader Vartec's dramatic reading of the code or Joe Wecker's musical version. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery/index.html has an entire gallery of different forms of the program. It's still legal to buy a T-shirt from http://www.copyleft.net or http://www.2600.com, and a percentage of your money goes to the defense fund.

Make sure that you read up on the case, so that when people ask you about your web site or your T-shirt you can explain what's happening and why it's so important to you. The most effective way of getting our view across is direct person to person conversation.

Nick Nassar

Class of '03