In August, a California appeals court issued an opinion denying Matthew Pavlovich's motion to dismiss the case against him for lack of personal jurisdiction over him. Pavlovich, who was a college student in Indiana and now lives in Texas, claims that postings made to a mailing list called LiVID, which he ran from his home computer, should not subject him to defending himself in California.
LiVID is an open source development team working to build a DVD player compatible with the Linux operating system that aims to compete with the movie studios' control of DVD players.
In January 2000, a California judge issued an injunction banning dozens of individuals, including Pavlovich, from publishing the DeCSS software code which can be used to break the anti-copying protection on DVDs but is also needed to view DVD movies on Linux-based computers. The judge ruled that DeCSS breaches the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
The appeals court ruled that because Pavlovich knew the movie business was in California, publishing information that might have an effect on its profits was a sufficient connection to find Pavlovich within the court's jurisdiction.
Pavlovich is being supported in his appeal to the California Supreme Court by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a civil liberties organisation that works to protect rights in the digital world.