Doesn “For Private Home Use Only” cover DeCSS use?
This is still being debated. What is known is that 17 U.S.C. 401, which deals with registration and display of copyright notice, makes no mention of any legal significance placed on notices added to traditional copyright notices. Neither does 17 U.S.C. 501, which deals with copyright infringement, nor 17 U.S.C. 106, which defines the rights considered exclusive to the copyright owner. If on-package “license notices” like “For Private Home Use Only” have any legal weight whatsoever, it doesn’t seem to do so under Title 17. One possible legal justification, however, is the court case of Hadady Corp vs. Dean Witter Reynolds, 739 F. Supp. 1392 (C.D. CA 1990). In this case, the court found that the content of the copyright notice can create abandonment of the copyright and that this can be used as a defense in copyright cases. The standard for abandonment was cited as “the copyright owner must have clearly manifested that intention through some affirmative act”.
