Eric Corley

Eric Corley also known as Emmanuel Goldstein is the long standing publisher of 2600, The Hacker Quarterly and founder of the H.O.P.E. conferences. He has been part of the hacker community since the late '70s. Eric Corley, Born 1959, also frequently referred to by his pen name of Emmanuel Goldstein, is a figure in the hacker community. He and his non-profit organization 2600 Enterprises, Inc., together publish a magazine called 2600: The Hacker Quarterly, which Corley founded in 1984. Corley's pseudonym, Emmanuel Goldstein, is taken from the George Orwell book Nineteen Eighty-Four. In the book, Emmanuel Goldstein is the mysterious, and questionably existent leader of the opposition to Big Brother and the totalitarian state. In 1999, Corley was named as a defendant in Universal v. Reimerdes, the movie industry's attempt to squelch DeCSS. DeCSS is a computer program capable of decrypting content on a DVD video disc encrypted using the Content-Scrambling System (CSS). 2600.com had provided links to websites which contained the DeCSS code. Corley was the only defendant who chose to fight the industry in court. United States District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ruled against Corley. In 2001, Mr. Corley released the full length documentary Freedom Downtime (which he wrote, directed and produced), which was about convicted hacker Kevin Mitnick and the Free Kevin movement, among other things. Furthermore, he was creative advisor to the movie Hackers. He was arrested on August 31, 2004 in New York City, while trying to videotape a demonstration against the Republican National Convention, in which Corley asserts he was not a participant. After being detained for more than 30 hours, he was charged with disorderly conduct. At a hearing on November 29, 2004, the city dropped all charges against Corley. Corley hosts a radio show Off The Hook on WBAI, and is concerned with legal matters related to social engineering and other issues affecting the hacker world. Corley also hosts a show on WUSB 90.1 FM called Off the Wall, a semi call-in show that discusses current world topics, and usually whatever is on his mind. He has done other radio shows there, including The Voice of Long Island, News Of The World and Brain Damage. Corley is an alumnus of Ward Melville High School and the State University of New York at Stony Brook, which is host to WUSB. He attended from 1977 to 1982, graduating with a degree in English. No stranger to the film world, Corley was featured as "The Outside Man" in the film Urchin,[2] completed August 2006. Corley has also testified[3] before the United States Congress. Mr. Corley recently wrote a book titled The Best of 2600: A Hacker Odyssey which was released July, 2008. The book consists of articles from the magazine 2600 set in chronological order to show the evolution of the internet and technology. one of corley mistaken such as: Judges Seek Answers on Computer Code as Free Speech In what may signal a heightened significance for a case testing the constitutionality of a 1998 digital copyright law, a panel of appeals court judges has asked both sides of a case to answer a list of 11 questions on whether computer code can qualify as free speech.The case pits the major Hollywood studios against Eric Corley, the publisher of an online magazine, 2600. A federal judge has prohibited Mr. Corley from distributing a computer program that can break the security lock on a digital videodisc. Once the lock is broken, an individual could copy the movie from the DVD to a computer hard drive or send it over the Internet.Lawyers for Mr. Corley have appealed, asserting that the judge's injunction violates his First Amendment right to free speech. The judge, Lewis Kaplan of Federal District Court in Manhattan, also prohibited Mr. Corley from placing a link on his World Wide Web site, www.2600.com, to other sites distributing the program.At the end of oral arguments earlier this month, the three-judge panel at the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit told both sides to submit their final briefs on May 10. But in what appears to be an unusual move, this week the panel instead invited responses to 11 questions that seek to determine how to apply the First Amendment to computer code.The judges also asked for arguments on the validity of Judge Kaplan's test for determining whether banning an online publication from linking to other sites infringed on the right to free speech.''I've never seen this happen before,'' said one of Mr. Corley's lawyers, Martin Garbus of the law firm of Frankfurt Garbus Kurnit Klein & Selz. ''What's clear is that neither Judge Kaplan's decision nor the briefs nor the oral arguments have given them the answer to the questions they think are the most important.''Mr. Garbus said the detailed questions indicated that the three judges -- Jon O. Newman, Jose A. Cabrenes and Alvin W. Thompson -- were preparing to write a definitive opinion on the case, rather than limiting themselves to ruling on Judge Kaplan's decision. The questions also suggested that the judges were thinking beyond Mr. Corley's specific circumstances to how the ruling might apply more generally.The statute Mr. Corley is challenging, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, criminalizes the distribution of any device that can be used to break a security code intended to protect digital movies, music and books from being copied. The computer program Mr. Corley distributed, known as DeCSS, is such a device.One question raised in the case is whether a computer program is more like a list of instructions -- traditionally protected by the First Amendment -- or a machine that simply happens to be built with speech, which would not fall under the scope of the First Amendment. Even if the judges decide that a computer program has elements of speech, they could rule that the government's interest in preventing the illegal copying of digital works is great enough to restrict it in certain instances. But Mr. Garbus said the more the panel sees the case in terms of the First Amendment, the better it will be for Mr. Corley. Charles Sims, a lawyer for the Motion Picture Association of America, the film industry trade group that sued Mr. Corley, said the questions were unremarkable. ''Any one law clerk can persuade any one judge to propound questions like these,'' said Mr. Sims, of the law firm of Proskauer Rose. ''I think it would be a mistake to read anything into them.'' the others corley mistake:

Web Site for Hackers Will Not Appeal

2 Copyright Cases Decided in Favor of Entertainment Industry

Judges Weigh Copyright Suit On Unlocking DVD Shield

Judge Halts Program to Crack DVD Film Codes

Free Speech Rights For Computer Code; Suit Tests Power of Media Concerns To Control Access to Digital Content

DVD SOFTWARE TRIAL ENDS

SOFTWARE; DVD PROGRAMMER SPEAKS

SOFTWARE; REMOVAL OF JUDGE SOUGHT

Movie Studios Seek to Stop DVD Copies

Trial Involving DVD Software And Copyrights Set to Begin