This spring, the A.C.L.U. defended three Web publishers who linked to a small program that circumvented the locks on CyberPatrol, an Internet filter, to view the list of sites that it blocked.
The court makes clear that the appellants were NOT affected by the original judgment and hence cannot be considered to be bound by it (or appeal it) - similar reasoning would also be applied in other cases such as the DeCSS suits, so this is a good look at what standing those mass-mailings of MPAA threat letters really have in law.
The defendants crowed that they were ‘youth access’ activists… [However] the Internet is not Sherwood Forest and hackers are not Robin Hood and the merry men…
Recent court decisions limiting developers' rights to reverse-engineer software products have sparked an outcry by critics who say these actions could severely limit developers and users trying to interoperate or find flaws in commercial software.
CyberPatrol, a product offered by the charming people at Mattel (the El Segundo-based home of Barbie and, as Seal Press will tell you, of a pack of nasty lawyers), blocks access not only to naughty pictures and hate sites but also to the quilting club at Carnegie-Mellon University, journalism-related Usenet groups, and information on such hot-button topics as chess and Chinese food. We know this not because Mattel told us so, but because two intrepid hackers unraveled the secrets of CyberPatrol with a program they called ‘cphack.’
A federal judge in Boston has rejected the ACLU's request to reconsider his ruling in a case over the Cyber Patrol filtering software, setting the stage for a lengthy battle before an appeals court.
Anyone eager to know which Usenet newsgroups and Web URLs are blacklisted by Mattel's Cyber Patrol censorware application, but too lazy to compile and run the cphack utility which decrypts the list, is welcome to visit the Cyber Patrol Block List Web site.
In their ongoing defense of Internet free speech, civil liberties lawyers today lodged another legal attack against a company that filters online pornography.
The American Civil Liberties Union announced Wednesday it is appealing a Boston judge's order, in a lawsuit brought by Mattel against the ‘cphack’ authors, prohibiting the distribution of the program that reveals Cyber Patrol's blacklisted sites.
Lawrence Lessig has written a short and sweet essay, Battling Censorware, explaining why the DMCA allows Mattel to claim the rights to CPHack.
If Mattel has learned anything from its year-long ownership of the Learning Co. software business, it's that you cut your losses and move on.
Copyright law is limited by the Constitution. But when there are conflicts with the First Amendment, some courts lean the other way.
The Register is more than a little concerned with the mental health of US District Judge Edward Harrington…
Attorneys disagreed Wednesday as to whether a new court order applies to mirror sites that post a utility to bypass a popular Internet filter.Includes interesting tidbit about the case spurring the new coinage
spampoena.
A computer science student has avoided a costly legal battle with one of the world's largest toy makers.
Judge's decision banning ‘cphack’ program may — or may not — apply to sites that link to the offending code.
A federal judge's vague ruling in a case over a program that reveals Cyberpatrol's secret blacklist has left the Net's hacking community thoroughly confused.
A federal judge in Boston yesterday struck a blow for parents yesterday when he blasted two international hackers who wrote a software program that allowed children to view smut on the Internet.
But questions linger on whether Web sites may post copies of a controversial program that decodes the filtering software.
A federal judge in Boston today clamped down on three young Web operators who posted a program allowing children to get around Internet sites blocked by filtering firm Cyber Patrol.
A U.S. District judge in Boston on Tuesday forbade two computer hackers from posting source code that could lead others to the list of Web sites banned by the Cyber Patrol Internet filtering software, which is sold by a unit of toymaker Mattel Inc.
...But whether the company succeeds in shutting down mirror sites that have posted the utility depends on a spirited and perhaps groundbreaking legal battle involving copyright laws for open source software.
Too bad they gave in. This issue needs to be debated. Filtering companies should publish the criteria they use for blocking Web content.
Two cryptography buffs, a Canadian and a Swede, figured out the secrets that protect the Internet filtering program Cyber Patrol.
A federal judge in Boston has invited Mattel to start contempt of court proceedings to shut down mirror sites in a suit over its Cyberpatrol filtering software.
Hansen said the ACLU jumped into the case because it was engaged in a continuing battle to make the list of banned sites in such products public.The broadest principle is that people who use these products ought to know what they block and what they don't block,he said.This list ought to be public.
Microsystems Software said Monday that two software experts it was suing had agreed not to tamper with their Internet filtering product, Cyber Patrol, and to sign over a program they wrote that would allow children to bypass it.Four paragraphs later, he mentions that CPHack
also discloses the list of sites that the product blocks users from viewing.
Cyber Patrol, a Net content filtering firm, today settled its copyright lawsuit against two computer experts who cracked into the company's software.
Upping the stakes in a battle over a utility that reveals Cyberpatrol's list of off-limits websites, Mattel threatened mirror sites with contempt charges during a court hearing Monday afternoon.
According to ZDNet, Eddy L.O. Jansson of Sweden and Matthew Skala of Canada have settled with Microsystems when they ‘agreed Monday to abide by permanent injunctions preventing them from distributing their software, which allows users to bypass the filters. They also agreed to turn over rights to their software to Microsystems.’
Mattel Inc. settled a civil case Monday against two hackers who created a program to bypass the company's popular Internet filter. But the giant toymaker pressed ahead against mirror sites that have posted the code, threatening them with contempt charges, according to court sources.
The defendants agree to sign over rights to a program that shows sites blocked by the filtering software.
ACLU attorney ‘surprised’ as programmers surrender rights to their hack of Cyber Patrol filter and agree to permanent injunction.
The American Civil Liberties Union criticized Internet filtering software maker Microsystems Software Inc. and its parent company Mattel Inc. on Friday, accusing them of attempting to limit free speech on the Internet.
Two computer hackers who had published a way to access the scrambled list of Web sites, banned by the Cyber Patrol filtering software, have turned over their computer code to the unit of toymaker Mattel Inc. that sells the program, Cyber Patrol officials said on Monday.
A federal judge in Boston will hear arguments on Monday over whether a program that reveals Cyberpatrol's secret blacklist should be banned from the Internet.
pirates[Mattel vs. the wicked
pirates]
Lu sur Wired : le fabriquant de jouets Mattel a poursuivi en justice deux cryptologues qui ont developpé un programme pour voir la liste des sites Web interdits par Cyberpatrol, une filiale de Mattel.[Translate with Babelfish]
Injunctions should not be used to stifle speech unless absolutely necessary.
The software is supposed to block things like pornography. But Skala found out that it also blocks anti-nuclear sites, some journalism sites, news sites, sites about atheism (people who do not believe in God) and even the CBC. Mattel even made sure its site blocked out sites that criticized the company.
Skala wanted to know how Mattel chooses which sites go onto the program's internal list of ‘bad’ Web sites. Mattel won't say how it chooses its sites, and it sued Skala for publishing what he found on the list.
Call it legal spam. Lawyers in the Cyber Patrol legal battle have created an e-precedent — sending subpoenas by e-mail.
The company files suit over a program that lets people see which sites its filtering software blocks.
a method to thwart the popular ‘Cyber Patrol’ software, which blocks children from Internet pornography, while touting the innovation of sending subpoenas by e-mail.
What began as a rallying cry for free speech has turned into a legal migraine for three young Webmasters who publicized decoded material belonging to an Internet firm that filters smut from children's computers.
A legal dispute between a U.S. toymaker that produces a popular Internet pornography filter and two programmers that decoded the software could heat up into a messy international brawl.
Mattel is updating the Cyber Patrol blacklists for all of their customers to include the homepages of the authors and all of the mirrors, blocked under every blocking category the product has.
Mattel wants the logs of all those who have downloaded cphack in orderto track the identities and addresses of all persons who accessed the bypass code.While it's inconceivable that any judge in his right mind would grant such an outrageous request, the mere fact of asking is so decidedly creepy that The Register wonders if the welfare of children really ought to be trusted to these people.
As the AP reported Friday, a federal judge in Boston granted Mattel an injunction against the two creators of cphack, which allows users to bypass CyberPatrol and reveals its list of off-limits sites. It's this second part that makes CyberPatrol look so bad.
Judge shuts down anti-filter software, dressed up with a graphic of a child in front of a computer.
A federal judge in Boston has tried to ban the distribution of a computer program that reveals CyberPatrol's secret list of sex sites.
A federal judge Friday ordered a halt to the distribution of a computer program that allows children to bypass software designed to keep them away from Internet pornography.
Toy-maker Mattel has sued two programmers who revealed how to circumvent its CyberPatrol blocking software.
Early today, activists copied the utility and details of the effort and began distributing them across the Internet on nearly two dozen Web sites that duplicated Jansson and Skala's original work. Those efforts apparently were coordinated on technology Web site Slashdot.org, where the lawsuit was roundly condemned.
In addition to demanding the removal of the decryption utility, Mattel is also seeking the logfiles of the Swedish ISP that hosts the decryption utility, to identify everyone who has downloaded it to date. Today's news was filled with Mattel's PR lies about their suit.
A company that makes popular software to block children from Internet pornography is suing two computer experts for distributing a method for kids to deduce their parents' password and access those forbidden Web sites.
The ‘encryption’ used by another major brand of software, Cyber Patrol, (produced by a company repugnant enough to advertise the increase in sales after Australia passed national censorship legislation), has also been broken.