Phil Graham on Sun, 19 Mar 2000 16:11:02 +0100 (CET)


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[Nettime-bold] FC: CyberPatrol decryption utility mirrored in response tolawsuit


Declan has been subpoenaed by Mattell because of posting this! 

Mattell's attorney (Irving Schwartz) is asking for the names of everyone on
the list! See the subpoena and method of service below. It is therefore in
the interests of openness to circulate this as widely as possible. Please
feel free to pass it along to other lists. This is not a chain mail, but an
assertion of internet freedoms.

Phil

X-URL: Politech is at http://www.politechbot.com/
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 09:46:46 -0500
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
Subject: FC: CyberPatrol decryption utility mirrored in response to lawsuit
Sender: owner-politech@vorlon.mit.edu
X-Sender: declan@mail.well.com
To: politech@vorlon.mit.edu
Cc: junger@SAMSARA.LAW.CWRU.EDU
Reply-to: declan@well.com
X-Loop: politech@vorlon.mit.edu

It should be obvious to anyone who has half a clue about the Internet what 
happens when a company or government tries to stomp out something it 
doesn't like.

The offending bytes appear in every corner of the globe.

It happened in the case of DeCSS 
(http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/politech.cgi?name=mirror), and it's 
happening now with the CyberPatrol decryption utility. So far the 
verboten-ware is at:

http://bur-jud-118-039.rh.uchicago.edu/
ftp://blackstar.myip.org/pub/mirrored/
http://www.shub-internet.org/cp4/cp4break.html
http://www.wwcn.org/~grit/free/
http://www.reed.edu/~turnerd/cyberpatrol.tar.gz
http://www.mit.edu/~ocschwar/
http://members.optusnet.com.au/~kris_j/rio.html
ftp://128.148.190.238
http://cr939566-a.bloor1.on.wave.home.com:2600/FusionReactor.html#mattel
http://www.openpgp.net/censorship/index.html

Slashdot.org thread:
   http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/03/16/0022227&mode=thread

Background:
   http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/politech.cgi?name=cyberpatrol

-Declan


>Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 00:51:45 -0500 (EST)
>From: Dave Gowan <dgowan@tfn.net>
>Reply-To: Dave Gowan <dgowan@tfn.net>
>To: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
>Subject: RE: CyberPatrol sues coders who revealed flaws in its software
>
>
>On Wed, 15 Mar 2000, Declan McCullagh wrote:
>
> > >They also offered a small ``cphack'' utility for ``people oppressed by 
> Cyber
> > >Patrol'' that, when run on a parent's computer, reveals the password that
> > >blocks questionable Web sites -- and also discloses the product's entire
> > >list of more than 100,000 Internet sites deemed unsuitable for children.
>
>DeClan:
>         Let me see if I understand this... the company made an
>inferior blocking product, not hacker-proof, and they sell it for
>$30, and now that someone has exposed it as a deficient product,
>they want the courts to guarantee they still get to make the same
>large profit despite the defects in the product?
>
>         I like the phrase above, "...discloses the
>product's entire list of more than 100,000 internet sites deemed
>unsuitable for children."  Maybe now we should get the cphack
>utility, extract the 100,000 sites, and publish the list at
>several sites, so everyone can see if they've been blocked when
>they shouldn't have, and if they have lost any income as a
>consequence.  The newspapers would probably like to the see the
>list, too, to see if it is fair.  Send the list to the Wall
>Street Journal and to Jessie Berst (Berst's AnchorDesk) at ZDNet.
>
>         I wrote articles in three newspapers on this issue of
>mandatory software blocking, saying that blocking should be up
>to parents and not government and not any third parties; I'd
>like to see this one exposed if possible.
>
>Dave Gowan
>Tallahassee

***********

>From: gep2@terabites.com
>Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 23:41:00 -0600
>To: declan@well.com
>
>The CyberPatrol people (and their attorneys) are idiots.
>
>I know of NO better way to ENSURE that the site will be mirrored around the
>world, and that tens of thousands of offline copies of it will be created.
>
>If they're hoping to help their cause, this is the WRONG way for 
>CyberPatrol to
>do that.  The Net doesn't take kindly to this kind of legal bullying!
>
>Gordon Peterson
>http://web2.airmail.net/gep2/
>Support the Anti-SPAM Amendment!  Join at http://www.cauce.org/
>12/19/98: the day the Conservatives demonstrated their scorn for their
>    fraudulent sham of representative government.  Voters, remember it!


***********

>Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 01:13:42 -0600 (CST)
>From: sam th <sam@bur-jud-118-039.rh.uchicago.edu>
>To: Declan McCullagh <declan@wired.com>
>Subject: Re: [dvd-discuss] CyberPatrol sues programmers who published info
>  on encryption
>
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>Hash: SHA1
>
>I have a mirror on my website.
>However, since this hit slashdot, enough mirroring has gone on already
>that the genie is out of the bottle, so to speak.
>
>
>                                 sam th
>                                 sytobinh@uchicago.edu
>                                 http://bur-jud-118-039.rh.uchicago.edu 
 >
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
>Version: GnuPG v1.0.1 (GNU/Linux)
>Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org
>
>iD8DBQE40Imot+kM0Mq9M/wRAvyMAJ9291qKE+xhFi/GuXijmDWwANvlRACgolCt
>oEvhWJpaXDvaZ5UU2l4agos=
>=0LHg
>-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


***********


>From: "William H. Geiger III" <whgiii@openpgp.net>
>Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 02:03:22 -0600
>To: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
>Subject: Re: FC: CyberPatrol sues coders who revealed flaws in its 
>software, from AP
>X-Mailer: MR/2 Internet Cruiser Edition for OS/2 v2.06 c06
>
>In <4.3.0.20000315220653.02666f00@mail.well.com>, on 03/15/00
>    at 09:07 PM, Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> said:
>
> >Background:
> >   http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/politech.cgi?name=cyberpatrol
>
> >If you want to download the software before the injunction hits:
> >   http://hem.passagen.se/eddy1/reveng/cp4/cp4break.html
>
> >If anyone sets up a mirror site, please let me know.
>
>Hi Declan,
>
>You should have known I couldn't resist. :)
>
>http://www.openpgp.net/censorship/cp4break/index.html
>
>You might want to make reference to
>
>http://www.openpgp.net/censorship/index.html
>
>As I will have links to the above mirror and additional sites that I am
>mirroring.


***********

>Date:         Thu, 16 Mar 2000 05:34:09 -0500
>From: "Peter D. Junger" <junger@SAMSARA.LAW.CWRU.EDU>
>Subject:      Re: CyberPatrol (censorware) sues reverse-engineers
>
>I have downloaded all the files at
><http://hem.passagen.se/eddy1/reveng/cp4/cp4break.html>, but am not
>sure that I got all the hot stuff, since at least one file was
>missing.
>
>It turns out to be a wonderful tutorial on decryption, modular artithmetic,
>8086 assembly language, etc.
>
>I don't know yet whether I dare mirror it.  It's got crypto in it,
>but under the new regulations I guess I can do it.
>
>I suspect that the big risk is the DMCA.  It does make a wonderful
>example of how to circumvent weak encryption.  But I am not sure
>that the circumvention has anything to do with copyrighted materials.
>
>I'm off now, but will look at it more closely later.
>
>But, anyway, I wanted to point out that this is seriously useful
>educational stuff; it's not just a cute hack, although I am sure
>that it is that too.  The programmers explain how they went about
>opening up the filter program, using intuition, a disassembler,
>and a lot of skill and knowledge.
>
>
>--
>Peter D. Junger--Case Western Reserve University Law School--Cleveland, OH
>  EMAIL: junger@samsara.law.cwru.edu    URL:  http://samsara.law.cwru.edu
>          NOTE: junger@pdj2-ra.f-remote.cwru.edu no longer exists


***********

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**** Subpoena notice ****

X-URL: Politech is at http://www.politechbot.com/
Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2000 03:18:50 -0500
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
Subject: FC: Mattel sends me a subpoena, wants politech reader list
Sender: owner-politech@vorlon.mit.edu
X-Sender: declan@mail.well.com
To: politech@vorlon.mit.edu
Reply-to: declan@well.com
X-Loop: politech@vorlon.mit.edu

Mattel's attorneys have sent me a subpoena. Mattel, which sells 
CyberPatrol, has a problem: It wants to know exactly who's been downloading 
a program that reveals CyberPatrol's list of off-limits web sites.

Now, I never mirrored this "cphack" utility. But I did post the addresses 
of mirror sites to the politech list and the politechbot.com web site -- 
and that information source seems to be what attorney Irwin Schwartz is 
worried about. Schwartz copied system administrators at MIT, which is where 
the list lives.

Naturally I have no intention of revealing the identities of politech 
readers to Mattel or anyone else. Nor is a subpoena sent via email usually 
viewed as proper service, at least where I come from.

I've set up a web site to keep track of all these documents and developments:
   http://www.politechbot.com/cyberpatrol/

-Declan

***********

>From: "Irwin B. Schwartz" <ischwartz@schwartz-nystrom.com>
>To: "'webmaster@bip.net'" <webmaster@bip.net>,
>         "'redaktionen@bip.net'"
>         <redaktionen@bip.net>,
>         "'declan@well.com'" <declan@well.com>,
>         "'web-request@mit.edu'" <web-request@mit.edu>,
>         "'mis-team@mit.edu'" <mis-team@mit.edu>
>Cc: "'mailbox@schwartz-nystrom.com'" <mailbox@schwartz-nystrom.com>
>Subject: Service of Temporary Restraining Order
>Date: Sat, 18 Mar 2000 17:34:03 -0500
>
>To Whom It May Concern
>
>Re:     Microsystems Software Inc. et al. v. Scandinavia Online AB et 
>al.,  Case No. 00-cv10488-EFH (D. Mass.)
>
>Greetings:
>
>         This firm represents Microsystems Software, Inc. and Mattel, Inc. 
> in the above-referenced action filed in the United States District Court 
> for the District of Massachusetts.
>
>         On March 17, 2000, United States District Judge Edward Harrington 
> entered a temporary restraining order in the above-referenced matter 
> prohibiting any further publication of "CP4break.zip" or "cphack.exe" or 
> any derivative thereof, which likely violate United States copyright laws 
> (the "Order").  A copy of that Order is attached here as Order.uni and in 
> its proposed form as order.doc.  You may open the *.uni document with a 
> *.tif file reader.
>
>
>
>         It has come to our attention that your Web hosting service or Web 
> site is publishing one or both of these prohibited files.  This letter 
> and the enclosed Word documents and *uni files will place you on notice 
> of Judge Harrington's Order.
>
>      The Order also permits Microsystems to take discovery on an 
> expedited basis.  Accordingly, I have included a subpoena to you that 
> requires you to disclose the log of persons who downloaded either 
> "CP4break.zip" and/or "cphack.exe".  A copy of the subpoena is attached 
> here as *.uni and in Word format as subpoena.doc.
>
>
>
>
>         In addition, attached to this E-mail transmittal are the 
> following documents in Microsoft Word and *.uni format:
>
>Verified Complaint
>
>Plaintiffs' Ex Parte Motion for Temporary Restraining Order and Expedited 
>Discovery;
>
>Memorandum in Support of Ex Parte Motion for Temporary Restraining Order 
>and Expedited Discovery.
>
>         We recommend that you retain counsel in Massachusetts and we ask 
> that you or your counsel contact us as soon as possible to arrange more 
> formal service of these documents on you.
>
>                                 Sincerely,
>
>
>
>                                 Irwin B. Schwartz
>
>Enclosures




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