Bunner appeal in court Thursday (was: [svlug] Two court hearings)

[Ian Kluft]

>From: Seth David Schoen <schoen at loyalty.org>
>The Sklyarov hearing has been POSTPONED and will not take place
>Thursday.  The Bunner hearing will go ahead as scheduled.

Though Dmitry has gotten a lot of attention lately, I can help remind
people here who Andrew Bunner is.  If you recall the DVD Copy Control
Association filed for a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) against 500+
defendants on January 3, 2000, the first work day after the Y2K weekend.
They named (or described web sites without being able to name their authors)
everyone they could find on the Internet with the DeCSS software as a
defendant, attempting to force them to take DeCSS down from their web sites.

The hearing for the TRO was to be at 8AM the following morning.  EFF and
SVLUG managed to get 50 people to pack the courtroom even on that short
notice.  But to show how short the notice was, only one defendant was
able to make it, and that was Andrew Bunner.

Many of us who were able to stay for lunch after the hearing got to meet
him.  If I recall correctly, he goes by Andy (or at least answers to it. :-)
As we found when some people got to meet Dmitry, Andy was also a friendly
guy who was trying to find the words to say he was grateful for the support
from people who didn't even know him.

I still have to look up more about the case.  (Slashdot was the only link
I found earlier and they seem to be Slashdotted themselves right now.)
But since the case is in an appellate court, that means that it's at the
level where precedents (court decisions which must be considered as law
in future court decisions) can be set.  Short of an act of Congress, it
will only be in appellate courts that we can chip away from or overturn
the DMCA.  So this is important.