[6856] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Boston judge rules on Cyberpatrol decryption utility
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Declan McCullagh)
Tue Mar 28 23:14:25 2000
Message-Id: <4.3.0.20000328184752.022290d0@mail.well.com>
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 18:51:26 -0500
To: cryptography@c2.net
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
Cc: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
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Judge Harrington ruled today in the case brought by Mattel over the cphack
program that decrypts Cyberpatrol's poorly-encrypted blacklist:
http://www.politechbot.com/cyberpatrol/final-injunction.html
He seems to be inviting Mattel to file contempt of court charges against
cphack mirror sites:
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,35244,00.html
Some mirror sites have shut down as a result.
But although Mattel can still argue its original claim (reverse engineering
bad, etc.) it may not have been able to acquire exclusive copyright in the
cphack utility since it was released under the GPL:
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,35226,00.html
http://www.politechbot.com/cyberpatrol/cphack-gpl.txt
-Declan
(who was in Boston for the hearing yesterday)
