DVD Update: EFF Detonates Mind Bomb in Court on Final Day of DVD Trial (July 25, 2000) DVD & DeCSS7/26/2000; 2:05:04 PM

'EFF's DVD defense team rested its case on Tuesday in litigation over the movie studios' attempt to ban DeCSS software that enables people to play DVDs on their computers. David Touretzky, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University testified for the defense explaining the inherently expressive nature of computer code. Touretzky created a ''Gallery of CSS Descramblers'' his university Web site illustrating a multitude of ways that the idea of DeCSS can be expressed using various languages - from plain English to source code to assembly language, etc. He walked the court through a step by step illustration, demonstrating how a series of 1's and 0's taken from one rendition of the code actually communicate a specific idea expressed in the English or C-source code versions of the software.' Lots of meat in this story today. The judge was quite affected by the testimony, apparently, which may bode well in the long-term even if it doesn't change the short-term. David Touretzky also wrote a paper called ''Source vs. Object Code: A False Dichotomy'' Also, see the transcript for the day. (Search for the words "David Touretzky" to jump to his testimony... it's about halfway down.) I strongly recommend reading the transcript and visiting the gallery if you are not an expert in computer science; Prof. Touretzky lays out the case very, very clearly.

Fun quote: Dr. Touretzky: ''This [in reference to a court exhibit] is a copy of the file plain-english.html.'' Judge: ''I'm delighted, Doctor, that this is plain English to someone.''

Another fun quote for the more technically inclined: Dr. Touretzky: ''So, when you feed the C source code to a C compiler, let's say GCC, the new C compiler, it's a very commonly-used C compiler. What the C compiler does it translates that source code into a language called RTL, which is an abstract machine language. Then it translates the RTL into assembly language for whatever processor you're compiling for. In this case, I was compiling for a spark [sic] processor for the sun work station in my office.'' Poor court transcriber dealing with all these technical terms! (It's SPARC, not "spark" ) Page 1087, lines 8-15. Also see "4 loop" (page 1091, line 22).