] A pair of students were blocked by a federal court from ] presenting information at a Georgia security and hackers' ] conference on how to break into and modify a university ] electronic transactions system. ] "The temporary restraining order pointed out that the ] irreparable injury to Blackboard, our intellectual ] property rights and clients far outweighed the ] commercial speech rights of the individuals in ] question," said Michael Stanton, a Blackboard spokesman. ] ] The company claims that the speech being blocked is ] commercial speech because the students were a "small ] competitor" to Blackboard. One of the students, ] Georgia Institute of Technology's Billy Hoffman, had ] threatened to give away code allowing any computer to ] emulate Blackboard's technology, the company claims. ] Although an initial cease and desist letter sent to the ] Interz0ne conference organizers hinted that the students ] may have violated the DMCA, the complaint that resulted ] in the temporary restraining order did not touch on that ] copyright law. Court blocks security conference talk | CNET News.com |