Monday, April 30, 2001

MPAA v. 2600 - Brief of Amici Curiae in Support of Appellants and Reversal of the Judgment Below
SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT

It cannot seriously be argued that any form of computer code may be regulated without reference to First Amendment doctrine. The path from idea to human language to source code to object code is a continuum. As one moves from one to the other, the levels of precision and, arguably, abstraction increase, as does the level of training necessary to discern the idea from the expression. Not everyone can understand each of these forms. Only English speakers will understand English formulations. Principally those familiar with the particular programming language will understand the source code expression. And only a relatively small number of skilled programmers and computer scientists will understand the machine readable object code. But each form expresses the same idea, albeit in different ways.
http://cryptome.org/mpaa-v-2600-bac.htm

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