The publisher of a hacker Web site will not appeal a ruling that prohibits the posting of links to software that unlocks digital copyright protections on DVDs, lawywers say.
Both the New York District Court and the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals have ruled that Eric Corley and his 2600 Magazine Web site violated the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which was enacted to protect intellectual property rights from digital piracy.
Corley had planned to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, but has decided against doing so, attorneys at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who helped in his defence said on Wednesday.
"This decision ends the publication's two-and-a-half-year legal battle" with eight motion picture studios, said the EFF, a civil liberties organisation based in San Francisco.
The group vowed to support other challenges to the DMCA, which makes it illegal to produce or distribute software that could circumvent copy protections.
Corley's Web site had linked to software that allows people to unscramble copyright protections on DVDs. The software was written by a Norwegian teenager who said he wanted to be able to play DVDs on computers running the open source Linux operating system.