Tech Law Adviser points to Aaron (RSS 1.0 co-author) Swartz's call for lawyers with an interest in such things to "sue for freedom".

First in his list of intellectual property windmills to tilt at is a suit for the protection of Seth Schoen's right to distribute his DeCSS haiku.

Schoen: "I was angry at the attempts by lawyers for the entertainment industry and the government to trivialize the free expression rights of programmers and other people engaged in technical communication."

Absolutely. Code is expression. A very powerful form of expression, but expression nonetheless. Courts do not yet really, fully understand that.

But then, the courts have been letting the IP laws beat the 1st Amendment with a stick, so why should we expect them to rise to the occasion and understand as sophisticated a concept as the essential expressiveness of code; or the long term value in protecting code as fully as any other form of expression.

But some people absolutely get it. Enjoy the Judge Kozinski quote in Swartz's post. Kozinski pithily demonstrates the ludicrious results from copyright law's victory over the First Amendment.