[6803] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: CyberPatrol sues cryptanalysts who revealed flaws in itssoftware
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ed Gerck)
Thu Mar 16 11:11:46 2000
Message-ID: <38D10067.33013E50@nma.com>
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 07:40:23 -0800
From: Ed Gerck <egerck@nma.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
Cc: cryptography@c2.net, cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
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List:
If you can't cope, sue. The reverse-engineering
argument, that it trespasses on property, was already
used by Microsoft many years ago (ca. 1993) against Stacker.
In short, Stacker (the then market leader for on-the-fly
disk compression software) found out that Microsoft had
pirated its code for disk compression in Doublespace, and sued
Micrsoft -- but Microsoft countersued saying that Stacker
could not have reverse engineered Microsoft's code without
a court order. The argument is the same as if you think that
your stolen property is within a certain house -- you can't
trespass or invade the house in order to verify it, you
need to get a court order. Stacker won in part, but lost
a lot. As an aside, the then market leader (Stacker), now
is no longer even a player.
Thus, what happened here is not new and those that want to
effectively combat "hidden" features, pirated code or covert
weaknesses by decompiling code should be aware of it. The
end, however merit it may have, cannot justify the means.
Cheers -- Ed Gerck
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: CyberPatrol sues cryptanalysts who revealed flaws in itssoftware
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 23:09:55 -0500
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
To: cryptography@c2.net, cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
>In an unusual legal strategy, Microsystems alleged that Skala and Jansson
>violated U.S. copyright law when they reverse-engineered Cyber Patrol to
>analyze it, which the company said is expressly prohibited in its license
>agreements.
>
