[FYI] (Fwd) FC: CyberPatrol brawl gets ugly and international, from

["Axel H Horns" <horns@t-online.de>]

------- Forwarded message follows -------
Date sent:      	Wed, 22 Mar 2000 18:05:31 -0600
To:             	politech@vorlon.mit.edu
From:           	Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
Subject:        	FC: CyberPatrol brawl gets ugly and international, from CNN
Send reply to:  	declan@well.com

I just got back from Dallas -- only to learn from a reporter who
phoned me that Mattel hasn't given up. Their lawyer is sending me a
physical subpoena via registered mail (and here I was hoping to get
served in person!).

Thanks, everyone, for the offers of legal and moral support. I'll keep
y'all informed about what happens now.

-Declan


http://cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/03/21/cyberpatrol.decoder/

Cyber Patrol decoding brawl gets ugly and international
March 21, 2000

    By Richard Stenger
    CNN Interactive Writer

    FRAMINGHAM, Massachusetts (CNN) -- 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.

    A subsidiary of Mattel Inc. won a court order Friday requiring
    Eddy Jansson of Sweden and Matthew Skala of Canada to stop
    distributing a method to bypass its Cyber Patrol filtering
    software. Now the company is going after mirror sites that posted
    the "cphack" decoding program, and anyone who downloaded it.

    [...]

   Targeting mirror sites, downloaders

    Microsystems' lawyers are also now looking for anyone who
    downloaded cphack, according to Declan McCullagh, a journalist and
    computer expert who received an electronic subpoena from a lawyer
    representing Cyber Patrol.

    "Mattel attorneys are bulk-mailing anyone who even linked to the
    cphack code and telling them the order applies to them too.
    They're also sending out subpoenas, frantically trying to find out
    who downloaded copies," he said in an email on Sunday.

    McCullagh said he never mirrored the cphack utility, but did post
    the addresses of mirror sites to Politechbot, his Web site about
    politics and technology that includes a moderated mailing list.

    "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," he wrote.

    Sydney Rubin, a Cyber Patrol spokesperson, downplayed Mccullagh's
    charge. "The court gave us the ability to [locate those who
    downloaded the program] but I don't think we will. We will do only
    what is absolutely necessary to take this [utility] down," she
    said.

    But Schwartz, in an email to McCullagh, writes: "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'."

    [...]

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