D.C. Circuit Apportions 10 Minutes Per Side in DMCA First Amendment Challenge

The U.S. Circuit Appeals Court for the D.C. Circuit apportioned 10 minutes per side in oral argument scheduled for May 6 in the appeal that challenges the anti-circumvention and anti-trafficking provisions of the Digital Millennial Copyright Act on First Amendment grounds (see 2403250045), said a clerk’s order Tuesday (docket 23-5159). The appeal is being heard by a panel comprised of Circuit Judges Karen LeCraft Henderson, Patricia Millett and Cornelia Pillard, said the order. Plaintiff-appellants Matthew Green, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute, Andrew Huang, an electrical engineer and hacker, and Alphamax, a video processing platform company, seek to reverse the lower court’s June 2019 dismissal of their case (see 2311300055). The appellants want to engage in certain activities, but fear they will be prosecuted under the provisions of the DMCA, and so they brought a pre-enforcement challenge to those provisions on First Amendment grounds.