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------- Forwarded message follows ------- Date sent: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 10:00:49 -0500 To: politech@vorlon.mit.edu From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> Subject: FC: Cyberpatrol suit takes GNU twist -- Mattel's victory not one Send reply to: declan@well.com
I've put up the first few lines of the cphack utility which explicitly releases it under the GPL at: http://www.politechbot.com/cyberpatrol/cphack-gpl.txt
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http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,35226,00.html
Mattel Suit Takes GNU Twist by Declan McCullagh (declan@wired.com) 3:00 a.m. Mar. 28, 2000 PST
BOSTON -- Mattel's claim of victory Monday in a lawsuit over its Cyberpatrol filtering software may be premature.
The toy giant said during a court hearing here that it had acquired intellectual property rights to a program that reveals Cyberpatrol's secret list of off-limits websites and settled the case. Mattel said it planned to use its new copyright in court to ban Internet copying of the "cphack" utility.
But cphack's authors released it under the GNU General Public License, which appears to permit unlimited distribution of the original cphack program, even if Mattel now owns the copyright.
"Once you do that you can't revoke it," said Bennett Haselton of Peacefire, a group opposed to filtering software that temporarily put up its own cphack mirror site.
The Free Software Foundation's GPL agreement says that "the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the program."
Translation: A copyright holder can't change his mind.
"GPL is software that cannot be revoked," said Eben Moglen, a law professor at Columbia University and FSF general counsel. "Anyone downstream who possesses a copy of the software may redistribute it.
"It's a very amusing case," Moglen said. "If people are going to respond to free software they don't like by trying to wipe it out, they're in for some real trouble."
A spokeswoman for Mattel reached late Monday said she didn't know what the effect of the GPL would be.
But she said cphack authors Eddy Jansson and Matthew Skala had signed a contract with Mattel and if there was any deception, "they'd be in big trouble."
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http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,35216,00.html
Mattel Stays on the Offensive by Declan McCullagh (declan@wired.com) 2:45 p.m. Mar. 27, 2000 PST
BOSTON -- 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.
Mattel, which sells Cyberpatrol, said the toy giant had acquired the copyright to "cphack" from the two cryptoanalysts who published it on their website earlier this month in a settlement agreement signed on March 24.
Citing a March 16 Slashdot thread that said "it's time to mirror!", Mattel attorney Irwin Schwartz advised against anyone thinking of distributing cphack from now on.
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