Finnish Supreme Court has denied leave of appeal in the CSS case. Decision of the Helsinki Court of Appeal is therefore final.
Supreme Court does not give any arguments why an appeal is denied. Possible practical reasons include that (1) the case started as provocation, (2) it was highly political, and (3) there was no real legal interests as the defendants were acquitted from all charges (albeit for different reason) by the Court of Appeal. Having a new ruling just on court reasoning or the reinterpretation of facts is admittedly rather difficult to have.
So yes, my prediction on Supreme Court precedent was wrong, and the case is basically closed. We might still try the European Court of Human Rights based on freedom of speech arguments, but that’s pretty far away from where we are now.
On the positive side, there is no binding legal precedent on the issue whether viewing DVDs on Linux is legal. My opinion is that applying the correct facts to the legal interpretation of the Court of Appeal the circumvention of CSS scrambling for DVD viewing is indeed legal in Finland.
