The DeCSS cracking case is still under way and it will clearly take some time until this case will finally be closed. However, to keep you up to date with the developments in this case that begins to border on the ridiculous, here is the latest. Isn’t it just staggering how the First Ammendment is abused for every sort of excuse? The next thing we’ll hear is that people fee lthey have the right to shoot others, because they misguidedly believe, wielding guns is also an expression of freedom of speech. Anyway, here it goes… from CNet.

A heated copyright dispute between the movie industry and a lone Web publisher is reaching a boiling point. The New York-based publisher is accused of posting a program that cracks security on DVDs. Lawyers on both sides have been taking jabs at one another in a legal battle that pits claims of digital copyright protections against constitutionally protected free speech.

Today the players will be in court again. This time attorneys defending the publisher, Eric Corley, are asking the judge to punish the Motion Picture Association of American (MPAA) for not producing critical witnesses quickly enough. The association, meanwhile, has filed a request to disqualify Corley’s attorney, Martin Garbus of New York, on the grounds that he once represented Time Warner in another case. Time Warner is now the lead plaintiff in this matter.

“It’s Ethics 101–you can’t go against your former client,” quipped Mark Litvack, vice president of legal affairs for the movie industry’s Worldwide Anti-Piracy group. “We’re looking forward for the judge to bring some order to the process.” Garbus could not immediately be reached for comment.

The MPAA late last year sued Corley in federal court in New York at about the same time another group, the DVD Copy Control Association, launched a similar complaint in Santa Clara County Superior Court in California against 72 Web operators and about 500 other unidentified defendants. Both complaints allege that the offenders were breaking copyright laws by publishing a DVD descrambling program, called DeCSS, authored by a 16-year-old Norwegian boy.

With the program, people can unlock the security on DVD movies and download them onto unauthorized players such as computers running the Linux operating system. Attorneys for the film industry said those movies can then be freely exchanged among friends, though none of the defendants has been accused of illegally swapping files. Defense attorneys argue that programming language is protected speech and that anyone who published the code on the Internet falls under the cloak of First Amendment protections.

Nonetheless, on Jan. 20, the movie industry won a preliminary injunction against Corley and his publication, 2600 Enterprises, which required that he remove the decrypting instructions from his Web site. Garbus today will ask the judge to sanction MPAA attorneys for not producing the organization’s president, Jack Valenti, quickly enough for questioning. “They keep telling us the code was used for piracy, and it’s just not true; we want the president to testify about what kind of evidence he has of a copyright violation,” said one source close to the defense. But the association said Valenti’s busy schedule–with the film festival in Cannes, France–prevented him from being available for questioning until mid-June. The matter is set for trial Dec. 5.