Talk:Bernstein v. United States

Guidance
I have found the below text pointing to this article. Maybe its some guide to you on the importance of the subject. Maybe someone can make use of it for improving the article itselves. --09:25, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

source: http://lwn.net/Articles/115704/ Ed Felten's tinyp2p (Posted Dec 16, 2004 1:40 UTC (Thu) by subscriber bk) (Post reply)

DISCLAIMER: IANAL

Bernstein v. United States established code as free speech, meaning that it isn't lawful to ban a type of software outright any more than it's legal to ban certain classes of books or publications. However, it may be lawful to ban the use of such software. Compare this to bomb-making recipes: legal to write and publish one, not legal to use one to create and/or use an explosive device.

So it's entirely possible that some brilliant, well-lobbied legislator might decide to try to ban P2P networks or the use thereof on US soil. This is the threat we need to fight.

Apple v. Does
Editors of Bernstein v. United_States are invited to work on Apple v. Does. —Christiaan 01:18, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

DMCA
Does this case trump the DMCA provision banning the publication/distribution of software that circumvents content access controls if the software is distributed in source code? I could see how binaries (and definitely machine code) would be an issue, but distributing programs as source to be compiled by the user themself shouldn't be an issue if the code is speech. It's possible that the compiler (if it's distributed with the circumventing program's source) would be illegal but then people could just (assuming they have the technical know-how, which most don't) compile the circumventor themself. SteveSims (talk) 22:39, 4 December 2007 (UTC)


 * You could try to make that argument in court, but whether it would win or not is another matter. If you want legal advice, best consult a lawyer, and if you find one who will tell you for sure how such a case would be decided, I'd suggest getting a second opinion. --agr (talk) 20:21, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Concrete Threat?
Quoting from the article:

''The government modified the regulations again, substantially loosening them, and Bernstein, now a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, challenged them again. This time, he chose to represent himself, although he had no formal legal training. On October 15, 2003, almost nine years after Bernstein first brought the case, the judge dismissed it and asked Bernstein to come back when the government made a "concrete threat".[2]''

And quoting from WP's WikiLeaks:

US Senator Joe Lieberman, who first called on Amazon to shut down WikiLeaks and then praised the company after doing so called for other companies to follow suit.[148]

Does the latter constitute an example of the former's "concrete threat" ?

The judge requests him to come back! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 157.193.1.142 (talk) 00:10, 15 December 2010 (UTC)


 * No, it clearly does not constitute such an example. -- Jibal (talk) 10:22, 3 January 2011 (UTC)