This was the issue in Reimerdes. True, if I cut through the digital fence on a DVD in order to excerpt a small portion in a critical documentary, I would not be violating your copyright, but I would be violating the anticircumvention provisions. And DeCSS seemed to be a tool for doing what the DMCA forbids. By providing links to it, Mr. Corley and 2600 were "trafficking" in a technology that allows others to circumvent a technological protection measure. DeCSS could, of course, be used for purposes that did not violate copyright—to make the DVD play on a computer running Linux, for example. It enabled various noninfringing fair uses. It could also be used to aid illicit copying. But the alleged violation of the DMCA had nothing to do with that. The alleged violation of the DMCA was making the digital wire cutters available in the first place. So one First Amendment problem with the DMCA can be stated quite simply. It appeared to make it illegal to exercise at least some of the limitations and exceptions copyright law needs in order to pass First Amendment scrutiny. Or did it just make it very, very difficult to exercise those rights legally? I could, after all, make a videotape of the DVD playing on my television, and use that grainy, blurry image in my documentary criticizing the filmmaker. The DMCA would not be violated, though my movie might be painful to watch. 50
The other possible First Amendment problem with the DMCA was that in regulating programs such as DeCSS, the DMCA was actually regulating "speech." The first challenge to the DMCA was that, by making tools like DeCSS illegal, the DMCA took away a constitutionally necessary escape hatch to copyright, thus making copyright law as a whole violate the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech. The second challenge was different. The problem was that the program itself was speech and the DMCA was regulating it illicitly. 51
The reasoning went like this. A computer program is a form of expression and communication. The source code can even be read by human beings. True, it is an abstract form of communication—like musical notation and mathematical algorithms. But those are clearly protected by the First Amendment. Congress could not make Schoenberg's twelve-tone scale illegal or punish mathematicians for physics equations that seemed to support a theory of the universe's origin other than the creationism that is currently so popular. True, the source code is a description of a method of doing something, and the code can, if run on a computer, produce a result—but one could argue that those attributes do not affect the First Amendment's protection. Neither a recipe for hash brownies nor a player piano roll for the Nazi "Horst Wessel" song could constitutionally be prohibited, even though actually to make the hash brownies would be illegal, and even though the piano roll is functional (it "makes" the player piano play the tune). True, most people cannot read computer code, but speech does not need to be common or accessible to be protected. In fact, the courts have even held that the choice to communicate in a particular language is constitutionally protected in some settings. 52
On the other hand, software code is undeniably functional. Lots of functional articles can be said to have some expressive content—a gun, an airbag, a crash helmet, a set of burglar's tools, a computer virus. And many actions have expressive content: a terrorist bombing, for example. Surely these could be regulated by Congress? To the defendants, DeCSS looked like a physics equation, a musical score, or a recipe. To the movie studios, DeCSS had all the First Amendment significance of a crowbar, lock pick, or, for that matter, a car bombing. The same argument was repeated over the hyperlinks that Corley and others provided to sites which carried the DeCSS program. Speech or function? To the defendants, forbidding 2600 to link to these sites was like preventing the Washington Post from describing the availability of drugs on certain blocks of 16th Street. To the movie companies, the hyperlinks were the equivalent of loading potential buyers into a van, taking them down there, and giving them enough money to make the purchase. 53
Which of the two First Amendment arguments is more convincing? That the DMCA is a congressionally created off-switch for fair use? Or that software code is speech and the DMCA restricts it? Like a lot of scholars, before Reimerdes went to trial, I thought that the first argument was by far the more powerful. I still do. I thought the odds of the court buying the "code is speech" argument were low. About that I was wrong, though it turned out not to matter. 54
A number of the reports noted that after some initial skepticism, Judge Kaplan had been impressed by the defendants' expert witnesses, particularly those who had testified that code was speech. When the ruling came out, this impression was confirmed. Judge Kaplan agreed that code was a form of speech or expression. But celebration was premature. Having done so, he disagreed with the defendants' claim that it could not be regulated. 55
Computer code is expressive. To that extent, it is a matter of First Amendment concern. But computer code is not purely expressive any more than the assassination of a political figure is purely a political statement. Code causes computers to perform desired functions. Its expressive element no more immunizes its functional aspects from regulation than the expressive motives of an assassin immunize the assassin's action. In an era in which the transmission of computer viruses— which, like DeCSS, are simply computer code and thus to some degree expressive— can disable systems upon which the nation depends and in which other computer code also is capable of inflicting other harm, society must be able to regulate the use and dissemination of code in appropriate circumstances. The Constitution, after all, is a framework for building a just and democratic society. It is not a suicide pact.9 56
Judge Kaplan is right in saying that there cannot be a bright- line rule immunizing computer code from regulation merely because it has expressive elements. The First Amendment does not protect computer viruses. But the defendants were not arguing that computer code was constitutionally inviolable, only that any law that regulated it had to be subject to First Amendment scrutiny. After all, the government makes the description of how to make a nuclear weapon classified information. That is clearly "speech," but its regulation is also constitutional. The First Amendment is not, and never was, an absolute guarantee of freedom of speech. Instead, the question is whether the law is within the realm of "the freedom of speech" guarantee, which in turn depends on what kind of a law it is. Where does it fit in the "levels of scrutiny" that courts have constructed to discriminate between types of legislation affecting speech? Is the DMCA a "content-based" regulation, such as a law forbidding labor picketing but allowing other kinds of demonstrations? Content-based regulations are given the highest and most demanding level of scrutiny. Alternatively, is it a "content- neutral" regulation, such as a law that forbids talking—about any subject—in a library? To Judge Kaplan, the answer was clear, and grounds for sarcasm. 57
The reason that Congress enacted the anti-trafficking provision of the DMCA had nothing to do with suppressing particular ideas of computer programmers and everything to do with functionality—with preventing people from circumventing technological access control measures—just as laws prohibiting the possession of burglar tools have nothing to do with preventing people from expressing themselves by accumulating what to them may be attractive assortments of implements and everything to do with preventing burglaries. 58
I agree, though it is worth noting that the burglar tool analogy is a disputed one. Johansen claimed DeCSS was more like a screwdriver—something with both licit and illicit uses. 59