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Mattel/Cyber Patrol Censors Critics Again
This means, for example, that if you have Cyber Patrol set to block "Full Nudity", you might think you're blocking pictures of nude human beings, but you're actually banning criticism of Mattel and the homepages of people Mattel is suing even if the decryption utility and essay aren't hosted there, such as Matthew Skala's homepage. Feel free to download the demo version of Cyber Patrol, update the filter list to the newest one, and check this out -- or just type it into their search engine, though that won't tell you it's banned under every category. Does Skala's page contain full nudity? No? Then you're seeing an example of a company purposefully and deliberately lying about the content of a page in order to serve their own agenda.
Same thing if you chose Violence/Profanity, or Partial Nudity, or Sexual Acts, Gross Depictions, Intolerance, or Satanic/Cult, or Drugs/Drug Culture, Militant/Extremist, or Sex Education, or Gambling, or Alcohol and Tobacco -- guess what? "All categories" also include "or criticism of our company or product."
Welcome to America in the new millennium, where a corporation just made the decision to ban several documents from the World Wide Web. They did it unilaterally, without court review, without any notice to the public whatsoever, yet their decisions are now being carried out (the Cyber Patrol product automatically updates its list of banned sites on a daily or weekly basis) in public schools and libraries and companies across the country, for children and adults. (Cyber Patrol uses the same list for the "corporate firewall" versions of its products.)
A list of mirrors is still available. Get it while you can. Declan McCullagh, a journalist for Wired, has started an archive of case-related documents; -- he too has received the legal threats, despite never hosting the banned essay. (The .uni files are actually TIFF images of the documents.)
And just as I was finishing up this story, I've received an e-mail in my capacity as censorware.org webmaster. A woman wrote:
The link to the essay you mentioned on your page [our homepage] date 3/16/00 must not be correct. Could you e-mail me the essay? I am a high school librarian and am trying to find out more about what Cyber Patrol filters. Thank you.
I wrote back, among other things:
In fact the link was correct, but Mattel (the maker of Cyber Patrol) has filed suit against the authors of that essay and made legal threats to that ISP which caused them to delete the page. So, the page existed on Friday, but does not today.I certainly understand your desire to find out what Cyber Patrol blocks, but they are going to great lengths to stop you from finding out.
Excellent points. Any chance that these blocked parties might countersue on the grounds that they are being libeled?
And killed off Barbie once and for all, or at least relegate her to an historical obscurity (like Betty Boop).
give me karma
No they can't, the US isn't the government for the world, even if they try to act that way.
Gov't is preparing to and has already tried to mandate the use of censorware in schools and libraries. Still think we're getting a "choice" here?
for Mattel. Are they going to moderate this post down to a -1?
Because mattel is now blocking sites of these servers which contain these files there actually doing a dOs for these providers and should complain to there abuse department. Also if these web servers that contain the material are ISP's they should block there customers from going to mattel/and co-horts sites until they can resolve this.
Of course the *real* wat to get the list is to make it a tearjerker public issue. (*sniffle*) I just want to protect children (*sniff*) Why won't these software vendors make their lists available so that can be combined and used by anyone TO PROTECT YOUR KIDS? (*sniffle*)
look at Australia, which banned handguns
Erm...handguns aren't banned in Australia, dunno where you heard that (the link you provided certainly didn't say so).
Second, they could make a legitimate, legal case for blocking sites that contain the hack to disable CP or that link to sites that have it (or that also link to it). Good luck finding a CP criticism cite that doesn't link to the hack. Now, if they censored all of yahoo or msnbc or something to avoid any negative press, it would be a pretty clear-cut case of avoiding criticism of their bad software. I just don't think anyone's proven anything other than that this is bad PR.
I visited Disney's site in search of a statement when Patrick Naughton was arrested and got a banner ad that boasted "A better way to shop for kids"
As a responsible gun owner? I think as soon as you buy a gun your being pretty iresponsible. Using a gun to stop an armed robbery is a weak argument. Most armed robbers if not confronted will not shoot people, after all they relaise if they get caught, they'll get a huge sentence for murder. You put your hands up and cough up the cash, its not worth your life to suddenly pull a gun and be a hero. Leave that to the police. Or join the bloody army and get trained properly. Gun mad idiots.... But I do advocate the immediate slaughter and genocide of company executives. I thank you.
I dunno about food, clothing or fuel. I will admit to obtaining soon-to-be-outdated computer hardware and software while acting as a corporate monetary transfer medium.
...and germany.
As a parent of young kids, some blocking would be nice (hard porn, hate groups). But it should be:
I can do the above with junkbuster on my Linux-based firewall! However, until my kids get older, I have not turned it on....
Of course, the kids saw me on joecartoon yesterday :)
If I find tomorrow that I can't get to /. from the library because it has been censored because of this article I will be very pissed...
aw come on dude, a little senseless killing never hurt anyone.
http://quaffer.tripod.com
The plan: We all go out and find lots of companies with a history of agressively suing other companies. We go to their website, grab some urls, then send a "concerned customer" letter to Mattel, saying that the following urls told me Nasty Things about Mattel, and linked to these urls, which had some cyberPatrol-hacking programs. Mattel blocks the stuff (probably without even checking it), and then we write to the companies concerned, as would-be clients who can no-longer access their site, and demand that "if it isn't fixed soon, I'll take my business to someone who _can_ run a damn website. The error message I keep getting is [something that spells out Mattel Filterware abuse]. Good day". Then other people can write in as concerned citizens who have noticed that Mattel is using its (govt-backed) position as filterer of public net access to sabotage those it considers a threat, and that you guys seem to have been targeted. Do that with enough companies (prefably competitors, especially competitors that mention filtering or Mattel on their site), and sit back and watch the fireworks commence. And you don't even need to leave your desk. What say you all? And to the Mattel drone reading this - kneejerk cover-ups that could so easily play into the hands of competitors do not a good business strategy make. I hope that repercussions on your market share will implode in a glorious scandal that will dissuade filter-makers from unethical behaviour for an entire week.
Is what Mattel doing wrong? Yes. Is it libel? Maybe, its a grey area. Can you prove it in court? No. The burden of proof is upon you the accuser and I really, really doubt you can convince a judge of both public misrepresentation and some for of compensatible harm.
Did you know, that Jem is just now being re-released on VHS (along with Transformers and GIJoe)? 4 episodes so far. G'wan! Admit you love it! The Holograms: Jem, Jerrica, Kimber, Aja, Rio (Manager), the Misfits: Pizzazz, Roxy (illiterate, remember?), Stormer (the "nice" Misfit), Eric Raymond (Misfits manager. Related to OSS zealot Eric Raymond?), the extras: Danse (ooo! Blond with colour streams of hair, and always in leotards), Video, Techrat, the Starlight girls: Ashley, Banee, Chrissy, and the add-ons Raya (Hologram), Jetta(Misfits), Synergy(the computer), and the Stingers: Riot, Mynx, Rapture. How's all that for a memory jog? :) Tee hee!
"My life is... a garbage heap...
My life's full... of choking gas...
You left! My world's like...
Broooooken glass.... broooooken glass..."
If you recognize the above, you're a Jem addict and just won't admit it.
You claim "Any argument that applies to "stop mattel/cyberpatrol/whatever", can be applied to that [spam filters] as well". Have you actually thought about this? Can you honestly maintain that a spam-filtering program that also covertly filtered out all non-spam email that contained the word "linux" could not be criticised without that criticism applying equally to spam-filters that actually did their job properly?
You are mistaken. Using the software in the way you suggest, at best, people use this software on the grounds that it filters the content that they tell it to, so that they can peruse the content that they _do_ wish to see. The software, however, is _not_ filtering what it has been told to by the user, but what Mattel tells it to, including content that the user would very much like to see. Mattel is restricting by stealth the freedom of the user to view the material. It cannot be claimed that the user chose to have this freedom removed, because it is quite clear (ask the user!) that they agreed only to the curtailment of something completely different, and are completely unable to chose to remove the restriction because Mattel has deliberately concealed the existance of it from the user.
However, this is only a problem with the uncommon scenario that you suggest, the reality is much worse. The software is rarely used by someone to filter their own reading, but installed by people to curtail the reading of _others_. Now we are undeniably talking about censorship. You could make a case that it is desirable censorship, or sensible censorship, but actually claiming that it _isn't_ censorship is simply incorrect, and suggests a reluctance to face the issues.
You claim "Censorship is a process of stopping material from being published. In no way does Cyberpatrol, or any of the other stuff stop material from being published", I shouldn't even have to point out the falsehoods in this one, they should be patently obvious (and there are several more that are a little subtler).
There are several other fundamental principles you're trying to ignore too, but I suspect I cannot help you.
moo.
By the way, you're fired.
Your comment would make some sense, were it not for one simple fact.
The software in question DOES NOT DISABLE Cyberpatrol. It simply allows someone to see what the program allows/disallows.
Mattel is going to the media, claiming that it disables their product, but this is a blatant lie. Unfortuantely, it looks like one you swallowed hook, line, and sinker.
Not sure, but I think we're talking apples and oranges here: You're talking product liability, he's talking slander. IANAL, but I doubt that a EULA would protect a company from a claim of slander.
VOTE WITH YOUR MONKEY!"
That's right. November 2nd will be the first annual National Take your Monkey to Vote Day.
"I want software that will censor everything except full nudity." .co.uk on the end its rated PG)
YES! (if it's got
and a comedy channel without bleeps! Imagine that!
and a Music TV channel with out video munging! or Bleeps!
and an invert function for the V-chip!
A copy is located here:
http://www.angelfire.com/boybands/cp4break/
The mass media are not going to give this major coverage, it's to their interest that the Intenet be muzzled, and more to the point, Mattel is a major advertiser.
The only way to protect our rights in the new reality is to enforce them ourselves by making it so expensive for Mattel to do business that way that they will stop. If Mattel gets away with demanding lists of anybody who views a page critical of Mattel, other corporations will try this form of corporate terrorism. If Mattel suddenly finds its profit disappearing and it's stock prices dropping, other corporations will also learn from that example.
DDOS? Wiping out their internal databases? Turning their Website into an anti-censorship resource? Industrial sabotage? Spreading rumors about product safety? There are a great many places where a major corporation can be kicked in the balls. The time to start kicking is now.
Mattel is trying to make examples of our people. It is time to turn Mattel into an example of what happens to corporations that try to censor the Internet. If what happens is increased profit, freedom of speech on the Net has no future.
If freedom of speech disappears out here, the fault won't be government or corporate, it will be ours for letting them roll over us.
>Please report errors and omissions using the Site Investigation Report.
I'd like to see them get flooded with error reports for the sites they're blocking incorrectly.
Easy, simple steps -- yes, even you could do it:-
1. Moderate DOWN all posts questioning or saying negative things about Open Source, no matter how reasonable or accurate they may be.
2. Moderate UP all pro Open Source posts, no matter how stupid or inaccurate.
3. Moderate UP all posts from people saying nice things about VA Linux/Andover/Malda.
4. Watch VA/Andover/Slashdot stock $$$$ rise
and have a really good laugh at all those suckers who let them get away with it.
Well, I find one or two items in this case interesting. *NOTE* I am not a lawyer. I saw a link to what alleges to be an e-mailed "subpoena" by a lawyer to mirror sites. The email is supposed to contain a word document of the decree and instructs the recipient to retain a Massachusetts lawyer and have said lawyer contact this attorney. To the best of my knowledge, a subpeona cannot be served via e-mail. In my opinion, representing this e-mail as a subpoena and doing so via the Internet is *WIRE FRAUD*. Wire fraud is a felony and a felony conviction is grounds to have said lawyer disbarred. Brave lawyer. *Note* the preceding is the opinion of a lay person who does not practice law and does not condone the practice of law by idiots, and who is successful in the former endevor but has given up on trying to affect the outcome of the latter.
But how many geeks have children?? I do. They won't see anything from Mattel in Birthday paper or under the Christmas tree.
Cyber Patrol has long been in the business of banning sites which the company and its members hold a personal objection to.
Take into instance the American Family Association (http://www.afa.net/) - Cyber Patrol blocks their web site on the basis of hate speech because this web site uses the Biblical doctrine and scripture to object to the practice of homosexuality. Never mind that none of the words in these scriptures are hate-filled or vulgar, but that some are offended by what is tantamount to an opinion.
The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) took offense to the AFA back in 1998, and not only convinced Cyber Patrol to block the AFA's web site, but convinced Cyber Patorl to create a special position for two of their members on Cyber Patrol's board which oversees and decides which web sites to ban. Since then, Cyber Patrol has gone on to block the web sites of dozens of organizations and individuals who speak out against homosexuality. In the meanwhile, many pro-homosexuality web sites, many which go into graphic detail, are allowed to skip by the censors because they supposedly represent a balanced and healthy opinion.
So much for presenting a fair, balanced and unbiasd view, eh?
I wish I could honestly say that I was exaggerating, or making this up, but I am not.
I'm all for website filtering software which helps parents in filtering out what could be harmful content for their children, but Cyber Patorl has now, and has in the past, shown that it will go out of its way to hide the truth from its customers in the name of CYA.
The clown has put a bug in my niece's Barbie doll to monitor my family involvement. I became aware of this when I noticed that the doll's head always followed my movements around the room. I think the clown is planning to show up for a birthday party and poison me with sleeping pills.
I saw the article on Friday and was pretty upset by Mattel's action. I went to the site and downloaded cp4break.zip, which includes pretty much everything Mattel doesn't want us to have.
This may not seem like a big deal, but I did this at work and the file is now sitting on a company owned machine.
I did this on purpose, because my interest in the information is professional. I am a programmer and I specialize in cross platform commnications (*nix and NT). I consider the study of encryption and decryption technologies to be a part of my job.
I also did it because I believe that Mattel is wrong to even suggest that they have a right to go after people that download the information. If they come after me, they will also have to deal with my company. My hope is that will not come to pass, as it would be likely I would become unemployed. That doesn't worry me much - I've got enough programming experience that I have more work than I need.
What does worry me is that corporations are taking greater chunks of our ability to do our jobs away from us. I have worked for a number of companies and have friends at many more. Who hasn't reverse engineered something for their job?
I know of a big company that partners with another to OEM their stuff. The engineers at the first company have to reverse engineer the other folk's stuff because the documentation is often wrong and because there is a cultural gap (as well as corporate, not to mention a big ocean) between the development groups. They couldn't get their stuff out without reverse engineering and that is with a partner.
So if Mattel succeeds in winning this case, and if they get the ISP's logs, and if they trace my IP address back, they will hit my company's firewall. Then I'll be involved in a nasty lawsuit, because if they try to fire me I'll be pretty upset with them for not protecting me (and I've done reverse engineering here, too!). That is why I'm an Anonymous Coward today.
Actually, as the essay published by Jansson and Skala points out, CyberPatrol does not necessarily keep children from viewing smut; all it does is make it slightly more difficult. Cyber patrol would better be called a tool for parents who don't want to take the time to use the Internet with their children to see what they're doing.
It would really be better said it's the parents/guardians/whoever gives the children access to the Internet without watching them that is enabling the child to view smut. These tools (assuming some little kid is smart enough to 1. find them and 2. use them correctly) simply make it a little easier.
That made my Monday.
I saw something in the previous story about this that said Squid was good for that kind of stuff. How about a HOWTO document on setting up Squid for this. Along with the Squid setup, there should be an open discussion forum with lists of URLS in different categories and people's opinions of them. Perhaps PGP signed lists would be appropriate.
It seems to me that an obvious solution would be to create a "better" version of CyberNOT for NT and Unix based servers.
.wonder if anyone'll read this.
Put another way, I don't buy censorship software, but I do write tcp/ip clients and servers and I do understand transparent and application proxying.
Beat them at their own game. .
Shouldn't companies publish the offensive sites? Why the big secret?
http://209.178.22.9/protest/
My computer uses DHCP to connect to the net through my ISP; I can still host a site that people can find thanks to the magic of dynamic DNS. But that means that CP can't block my IP (since it can change occasionally) without blocking every IP in my ISP's DHCP pool.
How many chunks of the IP address space can we force them to block in this fashion? The collateral damage (other sites blocked in the same set of IP addresses) would pile up, their block list would get huge... Basically it would amount to TLC running a denial of service attack against their users.
No to dismiss your pertinent example, but you have made a serious error in logic.
What exactly do you mean when you say "I know all anime isn't porn"? You are claiming that no anime is porn, or equivalently "Every single anime (BAR NONE) is not porn". Perhaps "all" now means "some" in today's vernacular? To be correct, you must say "I know not all anime is porn", or "I know some anime isn't porn".
This is another example of sloppy logic along the lines of the statement "All that glitters is not gold". Just as well that everyone with gold jewellery likes dull gold and therefore they don't polish it, else the statement would be false (as if their gold jewellery glittered it wouldn't be gold). This implies that dull gold jewellery is more valuable than glittering gold jewellery, as glittering gold jewellery is, by definition, not gold.
Perhaps, however, there is something deeper behind the statement. Maybe they are saying that gold really doesn't glitter, implying that it shines instead. Maybe glittering is reserved only for diamonds and other precious stones, and gold is relegated to the more shining leagues.
What do you guys think?
By the way, apart from the logic error, I thought your comment was pertinent and well thought out and raised some very interesting points, especially about the EFF writing to the press.
-The Evil One-
Nah we shouldn't cut them slack we should say we are part of a revolution and call it something that *really* scares the shit out of all big corporations - we should call ourselves *communists* ;-) heh heh. After all we give stuff away for free and all so we simply MUST be communists right ? ;-)
Actually at that point they may begin think we are our of touch with the *real* world. Their problems are just beginning though because when it comes to "online" culture *they* are the ones that are out of touch with reality. Their product is putridly poor and now people know it. If they think they can stop the world now and make everything OK by using vicioys lawyerly tricks they are sadly WAY WAY WAY out of touch.
Quit whining and fix your broken pathetic product! Much as I disapprove of it in principle if you want the public to keep on buying then FIX it.
Couldn't the incorrect categorization of sites in a commercial product be considered libelous slander? By placing a site in a certain category they are describing the content of that site. If they incorrectly categorize a site it could cost the owner of the site customers as well as possible social stigmatization. If that is the case anyone involved with the issue should be able to sue Mattel under those conditions.
IMHO if they're gonna do hi-tech cybershit Mattel should get on the cluetrain or they shoud give up now and go back to making dinky cars and hotwheels.
Friggin' losers,
WTF is a "dinky car"???
Some Mattel Execs need to be found gunned down in the street face down.
jason.salopek@usa.net
it would just up the value of old Barbies
This site _DOES NOT_ fit every available category.
This site _DOES NOT_ show you how to disable the software.
This site JUST LETS YOU VIEW THE LIST OF WHAT'S BLOCKED.
Jesus, LEARN TO READ before you open your big mouth!
Here is a summary of what the site contained:
Motivations, tools, and methods are discussed for reverse engineering in general and reverse engineering of censorware in particular. The encryption of the configuration and data files is reversed, as are the password hash functions. File formats are documented, with commentary. Excerpts from the list of blocked sites are presented and commented upon.
They're fighting a war they can't win. If they think that they can piss off all of us and nothing will happen, they are wrong!
Kinda like how Compaq blocks out sites like the NRA (and other "pro-gun" sites) on their corporate internet gateway.
Therefore, for any single category to REALLY be blocked, you'd also have to check your proposed category. If this is true, what's the point of having an extra category that is, in the end, MANDATORY for the software to function as advertised? If someone is employing the blocking software, they DEFINITELY do not want to have sites accessible that will defeat the software. Isn't that completely obvious?
CyberPatrol was developed at the behest of the ADL. The ADL has been shown in U.S. District Court to be an intelligence affiliate of the Mossad. CyberPatrol (along with a domesticized "ECHELON") will allow us to track and suppress patriots, Christians, nationalists, Arabs and other extemists. We already own Russia, and now we own you. Sorry, we win.
bwahahaha
candy little girl?
they some sick puppies!
But actually trying to implement this would be colossally difficult in light of the incredible amount of mirroring going on. It would be far easier to simply search for "cphack" or "cp4hash" and ban those sites. Of course, this would mean anything even referring to it would be hit.
I'm the original author of this thread, but don't think I'm supporting the whole censorware concept. I think it's futile to try to monitor such things with software given the size and variety of the web. The best thing is for parents to take charge and web surf WITH their kids.
so say I make flame retardent clothing (it'd be a hit on slashdot!) A consumer protection agency sets my clothes on fire to prove they arn't really flameproof. So, now I not only sue the agency for setting my clothes on fire, but also deem them as an evil, unamerican organization bent on world domination...and, as with most evil, megolithic, unamerican corporations, bad for our easily manipulated children.
I hope you are keeping copies of your information outside your home/office.. for the reasons which spring immediately to mind.
Geez, I only posted that to piss off some Mattel trolls we might have reading posts.
jason.salopek@usa.net
Btw I post anonymously so the smart ass nazi's that run slashdot moderation can't "misplace" my account when they read something they don't like.
I have a feeling that Mattel really is behaving unacceptably in this matter! But what if I'm wrong?
... wants to hear from you! Call them, write to them, e-mail them! Let them know what they can do to better serve you, their (potential) customer!
:)
:
As a potential Cyber Patrol customer, I am sure that they would be more than happy to entertain an intensive dialogue with me (via phone and e-mail) in order so that I can better understand why it is that I should not know what sites their product will prevent me from seeing and why they are abusing the legal system in an attempt to supress customer-benefiting Consumer Reports-style reviews and analyses of their products.
During my lunch hour, I will call their Tech. Support dept. so I can get their side of the issue, and express my side. Who knows... I might even have to ask to speak with a "supervisor" (and perhaps even the supervisor's supervisor). If I can think of something to say to them tomorrow that I hadn't thought of today, then I will call them again. And so on.
Tonight, when I arrive home, I will send the company an e-mail. If and when they reply, I will send them another e-mail, responding to their points and adding any additional ones of my own. (And if they do not reply I will of course e-mail them to enquire as to whether or not they received my original e-mail). And so on. I think that it would mean a lot to them to know that I cared enough about their company and its product to want to get into a long-term e-mail Pen Pal-esque relationship with the company and its employees.
As as an added convenience -- that is to save them the trouble of having to Xerox(tm) duplicate paper copies of my enquiries for their files, I will send a fax version of each of my e-mails as well.
I will take advantage, so to speak, of Mattel's open invitation for me to submit recomendations for sites to be blocked via a website application (http://www.cyberpatrol.com/forms/lists ub.asp) by using this interface to pose press-conference style questions such as: Why does Mattel insult the good faith of its customers by making additions to its ``CyberLISTS'' for purely political reasons?
I assume that if they had wanted this form interface to strictly support only the transmission of URL's (and not insightful questioning) they would have programmed out the polymorphism that permits the latter.
Mattel has a corporate interest to serve the customer. And that's why I am sure that they would be most appreciative if YOU, humble Slashdot Reader, were to likewise contact them in order to let them know that you are interested in finding out more about how their software works and to express to them that it not acceptable for them to pad their list of blocked sites merely for the sake of corporate censorship.
Mattel / Microsystems / The Learning Company
They will thank you for it!
--------------------------------From the cyberpatrol website (http://www.cyberpatrol.com/central)
If you're looking for support on your Cyber Patrol product, please contact:
Cyber Patrol technical support at (319) 247-3333 Monday thru Friday, 9am to 9pm EST,
or email help@tlcsupport.com, fax 319-395-9600,
or mail The Learning Company 1700 Progress Drive P.O. Box 100 Hiawatha, IA 52233-0100
-----------------------------
P.S. If using the website interface (http://www.cyberpatrol.com/forms/lists ub.asp) to pose your questions (instead of URLs)is the only convenient way for you to contact Mattel, I am sure that they will understand. The important thing, as I am sure they would heartily agree, is to get the communications flowing! Let's make contact!
I have a feeling that Mattel really is behaving unacceptably in this matter! But what if I'm wrong?
... wants to hear from you! Call them, write to them, e-mail them! Let them know what they can do to better serve you, their (potential) customer!
:)
:
As a potential Cyber Patrol customer, I am sure that they would be more than happy to entertain an intensive dialogue with me (via phone and e-mail) in order so that I can better understand why it is that I should not know what sites their product will prevent me from seeing and why they are abusing the legal system in an attempt to supress customer-benefiting Consumer Reports-style reviews and analyses of their products.
During my lunch hour, I will call their Tech. Support dept. so I can get their side of the issue, and express my side. Who knows... I might even have to ask to speak with a "supervisor" (and perhaps even the supervisor's supervisor). If I can think of something to say to them tomorrow that I hadn't thought of today, then I will call them again. And so on.
Tonight, when I arrive home, I will send the company an e-mail. If and when they reply, I will send them another e-mail, responding to their points and adding any additional ones of my own. (And if they do not reply I will of course e-mail them to enquire as to whether or not they received my original e-mail). And so on. I think that it would mean a lot to them to know that I cared enough about their company and its product to want to get into a long-term e-mail Pen Pal-esque relationship with the company and its employees.
As as an added convenience -- that is to save them the trouble of having to Xerox(tm) duplicate paper copies of my enquiries for their files, I will send a fax version of each of my e-mails as well.
I will take advantage, so to speak, of Mattel's open invitation for me to submit recomendations for sites to be blocked via a website application (http://www.cyberpatrol.com/forms/lists ub.asp) by using this interface to pose press-conference style questions such as: Why does Mattel insult the good faith of its customers by making additions to its ``CyberLISTS'' for purely political reasons?
I assume that if they had wanted this form interface to strictly support only the transmission of URL's (and not insightful questioning) they would have programmed out the polymorphism that permits the latter.
Mattel has a corporate interest to serve the customer. And that's why I am sure that they would be most appreciative if YOU, humble Slashdot Reader, were to likewise contact them in order to let them know that you are interested in finding out more about how their software works and to express to them that it not acceptable for them to pad their list of blocked sites merely for the sake of corporate censorship.
Mattel / Microsystems / The Learning Company
They will thank you for it!
--------------------------------From the cyberpatrol website (http://www.cyberpatrol.com/central)
If you're looking for support on your Cyber Patrol product, please contact:
Cyber Patrol technical support at (319) 247-3333 Monday thru Friday, 9am to 9pm EST,
or email help@tlcsupport.com, fax 319-395-9600,
or mail The Learning Company 1700 Progress Drive P.O. Box 100 Hiawatha, IA 52233-0100
P.S. If using the website interface (http://www.cyberpatrol.com/forms/lists ub.asp) to pose your questions (instead of URLs)is the only convenient way for you to contact Mattel, I am sure that they will understand. The important thing, as I am sure they would heartily agree, is to get the communications flowing! Let's make contact!
.
...and france.
I repeat the original posters question - where have you been for the last ten years?
There are a lot of places on the net that contain the default logins and passwords for Admin and Guest accounts under Windows ( and a whole lot of other OS's ). These have been around for years.
Essentially, what your objecting to is that another company has been shown to be totally inept. They failed to educate their user base as to the need for a sensible password maintinence policy and/or didn't provide the capability to modify the defaults.
This kind of thing has been going on since the late eighties. You would think that after all of this time that companies would have woken up to the problem. Here's a cluestick. Beat yourself.
sheesh, this is the internet. Who blocks full nudity anyway?
Try Susan Getgood, Vice President of Marketing, at susang@microsys.com.
MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE
AUTOBOTS RAGE THEIR BATTLES TO
DESTROY THE EVIL FORCES OF
THE DECEPTICONS
THE TRANSFORMERS
ROBOTS IN DISGUISE
THE INSECTICONS
FLEAS AND TICKS AND FLIES
THE TRANSFORMERS
doo doo doo-doo-DOO!
This is slightly offtopic, but I do think that there is a point to be made here.
In my own case, my employers cannot afford to pay me what I could realistically get elsewhere. Instead, they offer me a number of "fringe benifits", including unlimited internet connection time ( as long as the work is done on time ;).
In this regard, the company that I work for has taken a different approach to the one that you have described. Instead of controlling access to content, it emphasizes user education as to what is regarded as acceptable.
These statements are not intended as a critisism of your posting. It's just simply to point out that some companies do have something to lose by the use of blocking software.
I have a feeling that Mattel really is behaving unacceptably in this matter! But what if I'm wrong?
... wants to hear from you! Call them, write to them, e-mail them! Let them know what they can do to better serve you, their (potential) customer!
:)
:
As a potential Cyber Patrol customer, I am sure that they would be more than happy to entertain an intensive dialogue with me (via phone and e-mail) in order so that I can better understand why it is that I should not know what sites their product will prevent me from seeing and why they are abusing the legal system in an attempt to supress customer-benefiting Consumer Reports-style reviews and analyses of their products.
During my lunch hour, I will call their Tech. Support dept. so I can get their side of the issue, and express my side. Who knows... I might even have to ask to speak with a "supervisor" (and perhaps even the supervisor's supervisor). If I can think of something to say to them tomorrow that I hadn't thought of today, then I will call them again. And so on.
Tonight, when I arrive home, I will send the company an e-mail. If and when they reply, I will send them another e-mail, responding to their points and adding any additional ones of my own. (And if they do not reply I will of course e-mail them to enquire as to whether or not they received my original e-mail). And so on. I think that it would mean a lot to them to know that I cared enough about their company and its product to want to get into a long-term e-mail Pen Pal-esque relationship with the company and its employees.
As as an added convenience -- that is to save them the trouble of having to Xerox(tm) duplicate paper copies of my enquiries for their files, I will send a fax version of each of my e-mails as well.
I will take advantage, so to speak, of Mattel's open invitation for me to submit recomendations for sites to be blocked via a website application (http://www.cyberpatrol.com/forms/lists ub.asp) by using this interface to pose press-conference style questions such as: Why does Mattel insult the good faith of its customers by making additions to its ``CyberLISTS'' for purely political reasons?
I assume that if they had wanted this form interface to strictly support only the transmission of URL's (and not insightful questioning) they would have programmed out the polymorphism that permits the latter.
Mattel has a corporate interest to serve the customer. And that's why I am sure that they would be most appreciative if YOU, humble Slashdot Reader, were to likewise contact them in order to let them know that you are interested in finding out more about how their software works and to express to them that it not acceptable for them to pad their list of blocked sites merely for the sake of corporate censorship.
Mattel / Microsystems / The Learning Company
They will thank you for it!
--------------------------------From the cyberpatrol website (http://www.cyberpatrol.com/central)
If you're looking for support on your Cyber Patrol product, please contact:
Cyber Patrol technical support at (319) 247-3333 Monday thru Friday, 9am to 9pm EST,
or email help@tlcsupport.com, fax 319-395-9600,
or mail The Learning Company 1700 Progress Drive P.O. Box 100 Hiawatha, IA 52233-0100
P.S. If using the website interface (http://www.cyberpatrol.com/forms/lists ub.asp) to pose your questions (instead of URLs)is the only convenient way for you to contact Mattel, I am sure that they will understand. The important thing, as I am sure they would heartily agree, is to get the communications flowing! Let's make contact!
Everyone make a copy of the essay and the util, and advertise it on your site.
Even better: Make a fake essay with the same title and publish it.
Hmm, where did I see this before?
Jesus, LEARN TO READ before you open your big mouth!
Sound words of advice. From the site: ...Our code for this attack isn't particularly optimized, and we haven't attacked the rotate-and-add part of the hash at all, but even so we can now reverse the function in a fraction of a second. At this point it's appropriate to categorize the Cyber Patrol HQ password hash function as blown wide open, thus fulfilling our first goal.
The encryption of the configuration and data files is reversed, as are the password hash functions...A package of source code and binaries implementing the attacks is included.
What exactly do you think reversing the hash function of a password does?
Best of all, straight from the documentation of cphack (again, right on the page for those who bother to read it):
If you load a cyberp.ini the "Users" tab will display the names and passwords of the users therein, including the passwords of the innate administrator and deputy accounts.
So, were you born this stupid or did it take a lifetime of hard work?
It would be 'giving it away' if others took it and Mattel had no legal recourse to stop them. However the list could be considered a 'published work' and be held under copyright law. Copying it could be considered plagarism which is illegal and can be fought in court.
For providing on your home page a very nice list of sites to add to our corporate firewall rules. Hmm, I guess their site is down again....
I just checked the copy of the article that I grabbed when the original story came out, and it definitely says that cphack decodes the blocklist, and nothing about it cracking any passwords. There was some example code linked to demonstrate the hash used by CyberPatrol, but no password cracking code.
This, BTW, was the essay by Janssen and Skala, not the AP article, which seems to have fucked up . . .
himi
anonymous because I've been moderating . . .
And how!!!!
Its not an omission because its included, so that doesn't help them.
Its not an error because they did it with malice aforethought, so that doesn't help them.
In short, their disclaimer disclaims nothing.
Another possibly useful contact would be the investment department. Ask the relevent questions /. effect in the flesh anyone?
that Kagato outlined above. A real snailmail letter will have more effect than an email...
humm,
That address:
Investor Relations Contact Information
Jessica Fischer
Vice President, Investor Relations
Mattel. Inc.
333 Continental Blvd.
Mail Stop M1-1408
El Segundo, CA 90245-5012
Tel: (310) 252-3070
me: p.knowles, homepageless and cookieless on the information supercollider
With Matel as the dictator no less? that's rather spooky.
I love this word "information." Are millions of earnest "information" gatherers being forced to use Cyber Patrol against their will? No. Mattel can block whatever the hell they want. Just like Microsoft can add whatever links and Favorites they want to millions of IE installations. A mind that is not close-minded in some way is no mind at all. If all you do is take in everything, then you're just a clone of everything. Everything + Everything = Everything (i.e. nothing)
Absolutely agree! I would strongly suspect however, that the CP documents contain language to the effect that the blocking of a site under a particular category does not necessarily constitute an assertion that the site belongs in that category, etc., though CP license/documentation would not bind the libeled third parties. I think the libeled/slandered sites would have a very good claim -- particularly here where CP make the categorization knowing it to be false.
Mattel will probably include Slashdot in the next version of their list of banned site since they're criticizing Mattel. :)
no registration required.
I would never use that variable name as an unsigned int, but I might use it as a float (float "uck").
:)
Ha Ha! Thats where your wrong! As soon as this becomes a requirement in libraries it's not voluntary!
You should declare it as a double. Then it could be "duck".
/.
This is akin to burning books, mostly done in the middle ages, by the Vatican especially. Lately done by Hitler's Germany and Khomeni's Iran.
You will note that these governments have changed, and the former is the epitomy of democracy, while the latter is at least getting there.
What element of democratic control have we got over Mattel?
This is rediculus, whats next the will start blocking content from sites that link to their competitors? But seriously I wonder if the averaage user has an easly accesable way for them to tell that more than just porn is being blocked. And I mean more than just a list because I am sure that a list of all the sites blocked would be huge, and the few sites that they have blocked because they dont like the content are hard to find. But then again it is censorware and you do get what you pay for...
If you're going to go about blocking access to information it is always going to backfire. The people that rely on 'easy' solutions like Cyber Patrol get what they deserve. If they are going to be close-minded enough to block information, they should at least do it themselves via their own firewall rather than handing it over to someone else that they cannot trust to look out for their best interests.
I have a website. It's about Macs.
Winston in South Africa.
Have fun... Send in ip numbers that belong to them for blocking.. 8^)
There software is supposed to allow a system administrator to block objectionable content. There is a site that shows you how to disable the software that blocks the content. Therefore, this site DOES fit every category available, because it will allow you to view forbidden content from EVERY category by simply disabling the filter.
I'm not trying to defend the company, but sometimes you just have to play devil's advocate.
Real interesting a US SUBPOENA be delivered to a canadian and Swedish companies and citizens. DO they even have to acknowledge they received it? Anyone know international law on this one? Also the request for logs on who accesed the files. Seems to me a good bet for ISP to avoid some legal problems is not to keep logs past a couple of days and not to do backups of these logs. Do daily or weekly stats. I know back in the "ole days" when uucp mail ruled, I got a call from a company wanting a list of sites a specific person was emailing to. Told them we didnt log that sort of thing. They huffed and puffed then went away.
No. The real reason they want this data hidden is fear of lawsuits from companies listed in their database. Being included in a censorware list automagically cuts your business off from thousands if not millions of potential visitors.
If my business was wrongfully (in MY opinion) included in the black list, I'd sue Mattell for anti-competitive behaviour. Mattell is atempting to REGULATE the market, yet they are not a regulatory body nor subject to the same rules that regulatory bodies must submit to. It's like how the MPAA (which is regulated) labeling a movie 'NC-17' automatically means it won't be shown in most theaters (theaters' city zoning requirements limit them to 'R' or less unless they're licensed as an 'adult business' or in an area zoned for adult-oriented businesses.) This is why movies get cuts, so they can get down to an 'R' level. And this issue is not confined to the porno industry, etc. e.g., Robocop was NC-17 until cuts were made.
Mattell is feeling the fear of lost-revenue lawsuits from businesses, that was a direct result of Mattell's software cutting them off. This might not be an issue if the use of censorware was voluntary, but with potential gov't requirements to mandate this kind of software in schools, libraries, etc., the decision of what does and does not get included in the censored list and the process of who and how the decision is made by non-govermental 3rd party private businesses can become a valid basis for litigation.
Personally, I can't wait for the free speech advocates to get involved, this is definately a violation of free speech if ever there was one. Well I guess this goes to show you, Barbie is a bitch after all.
Well we could all boycott mattel products from now on, tell all your family members and friends not to buy anymore. Probably wouldn't do much damage in the long run, but even if word got out that something like that was happening, theres a chance the public would take notice, even those who have no idea what the CPhack was all about in the first place.
Same here, I downloaded the entire site as soon as I heard mattel was acting like this and I've sent it to everyone I know who was interested in it and didn't have a chance to get it themselves.
Doesn't the first amendment just stop the government from censoring people, but not stop companies from censoring people? (And this, whilst evil, is hardly censorship).
Would it be accurate to describe MPAA as a cartel? Are there any cases where a theatre has been boycotted due to showing unrated films that the MPAA did not want seen?
So, you'd support nuking a town with a high crime rate to get rid of the criminals?
2) It must cause damage
The problem with that is most often the courts see "damage" as financial. If this guy is fired from his job, can't get a job, etc because every employer thinks he runs a site with naked Satans ranting about minorities, he has a clear-cut case. It's not impossible to get a judgement against Mattel, but it is much more difficult (and expensive) without that.
What I wrote to Mattel:
"My opinion: Mattel is heading toward a public relations disaster with the whole on-line community thru its handling in the case you make against Matthew Skala, managing to pissed off a major part of IT guys and to look like a big US corporation stumping on people all over the world.
Having an army of lawyers obtaining court injunctions after citizens does not make you the winner!"
What we need to do is actually raise consumer awareness. Bitching about it here on slashdot is not going to help the people who are most likely to buy this stuff.
We need to start a leaflet campaign. Because the average consumer is NOT going to get access to this because they arnt in the right circles. I wouldnt mind standing outside compusa or bestbuy handing out copies of the essay. There is nothing illegal about telling the consumers what a product does is there? and if ther is that is an even bigger problem. Also a copy of the essay should be on every libraries desk accross the nation.
Stop talking and ACT!
Seems like they have clear-cut statements about what each category filters, but they also have a disclaimer about non-responsibility for errors and omissions.
But this isn't an "error", this is an active effort on their part. So they don't disclaim it, because they can't -- and thus there is clear grounds for a successful lawsuit.
As always, IANAL.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Censor-ware is not in itself evil, it is only evil when it is forced on you against your will and in violations of your rights (forcing it on libraries and such). If you choose to use censor-ware of your own free will then it is not evil at all.
Yes, an open-source censor-ware product sounds like a great idea.
One aspect that would make it even better would a function in the program that let you list and and all URLs in the list, that way anyone could verify that it was not being used for the political manipulation of data access.
So, who wants to give it a go?
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
That's a huge difference.
If what was being mirrored was CyberPatrol executables, then OK, yeah - Mattel would have good reason to be mad, and good reason to seek legal recourse to prevent further distribution.
But what is being mirrored here is a tool that allows a registered owner of CyberPatrol to see the URLs of the sites that are being blocked.
You, as a registered owner of the product, paid for that list. You have a right to see what it contains. Those are your bits.
Now, as that list may be (is) copyrighted material, you may not have the right to redistribute that list - fair enough. Stupid, perhaps, but fair enough. But to block distribution of the tool that lets you see "under the hood" - that's evil.
It's like buying a car with the hood welded shut, and then suing anyone who pries the hood of their own car open - and even going after the people who sell crowbars, on the principle that they'll be used to pry open hoods.
Evil, nasty behavior.
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
But block that information clearly. Cyber Patrol is blocking these pages in every category available to it, including "Nudity." Bypassing proxies is not nudity. Nor is it violence, or most of the other categories under which it's blocked. What it boils down to is if you want to use Cyber Patrol _at all_, you have to consent to this information being blocked. That sort of loss of control puts a very bad taste in my mouth.
Not yet, I just checked. Sort of surprising, actually.
--
Making iDirt 1.82 a safer place, one bug at a time.
A. None of these sites contain any nudity.
and
B. Mattel is blocking the sites as 'Full Nudity' anyway.
You'd think that people would actually care when they heard stuff like that, wouldn't you? Check out Rei's Anime and Manga Page. It's blocked by Bess because it contains nudity.
Wha? Nudity? I can't find any there. I emailed N2H2 asking for a review--they sent back one sentence: That page contains nudity, which is against your site's policy.
The long and short of it is, people don't seem to care about this. It's generally shrugged off as "acceptable inconvenience," which has a lot to do with "I didn't want to see that page anyways."
IMX, Bess blocks approximately half of all anime-related content on the web. Somebody over there doesn't know the difference between anime and hentai, and tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) are being mislead by their stupidity.
CyberPatrol provides two potentially useful pages:
A few thousand (polite) submissions along these lines might raise a few eyebrows.
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
...AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH HHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Do you realize how many painful memories I have of that wretched show?! Goddammit, I thought that I'd never have to hear about Jem again...
o_O You know all their names? Yikes. I just remember that I hate the show.
Starlight girls? (/me pulls out a few Starlight plushies and his plastic imitation Silence Glaive) Lalala, this is the way we behead Taiki, behead Taiki, behead Taiki, this is the way we behead Taiki...
Okay, only a few deranged anime fans are ever gonna get that reference...
A little clarification on the (shudder) Jem issue: I was born in 1980, and have some rather bad memories of my younger sister screaming her head off whenever she couldn't watch that wretched show. I, being a right-minded kid, wanted to watch Transformers which was on another channel at the same time, and she got rather loud whenever she didn't get her way. Those shrill screams still haunt me today.
But it's really cool that Transformers is being re-released. Come on, all you Transfans, admit your desire to watch it again, if you don't already have bootleg tapes. 'Til all are one!
Forgive my ignorance, but I thought a subpoena had to be delivered, in person, by a properly authorized agency, such as a sheriff.
How, then, can Matel's lawyers expect to e-mail subpoenas, when there is no guarantee of delivery, and no certifiable way of being certain the right parties named have, in fact, received a summons?
IANAL, but it seems to me that any so-called subpoena delivered in an improper manner would be laughed out of court.
In my opinion, another lawsuit that should be filed in this case is a class-action suit by the people who bought the software. It claims to block certain sites, and "protect" children from bad things that can be found there. But, obviously it can be circumvented, redering it useless. Has Mattel updated the product's description in light of this hack? "Protects against porno sites unless your child decides to bypass the software with an easily-obtainable software utility"
They read Machiavelli these companies are trying to control there users source of information. We have all seen this where companies went ahead and made sure the press or the customers never seen a certain document that can ruin their name. This is nothing new.
http://theotherside.com/dvd/
I assume that intentionally modifying their product to block sites for reasons other than those specified by the users would constitute fraud towards those users. No?
Of all the things *this* really scares me.
Making it so easy.. for companies to control the information obtained by it's customers..
I know this has been going on previously, but this is taking it to a whole new level.
This really gives me the creeps!
Here's a copy of the letter I just emailed to one of my Senators. Use it as a template if you wish:
I want to bring to your attention developments on the WWW concerning Mattel Corporation and its product, CyberPatrol. CyberPatrol is so-called "blocking software" that allows users to prevent their computers from accessing web sites specified in a list that is included with the program. This software is being used not only by parents but also by public libraries.
There are two matters that concern me and which I think should be addressed by the Federal government. First, two young men, who are not Americans, recently "hacked" or broke the program's encryption and published the list of blocked sites. They demonstrated that the program not only blocked pornographic sites and other sites of repugnant material; but that it also was designed to block certain political sites, such as that of the Electronic Freedom Foundation.
These young men are being sued in American court by Mattel. Mattel is presently using this lawsuit to threaten everyone on the WWW who has also made this material public. This is wrong. The public has a right to know when software either (a) does not do what it is supposed to do or (b) behind their backs is doing something they may not have agreed to have it do. Since the Mattel Corporation has chosen to keep this information secret, we must be able to rely on others to verify that its software functions correctly.
As a side note, Mattel is also attempting to force the young men's Internet Service Providers to provide them with logs of everyone who downloaded material from the web site. Again, the public has an inherent "right to know" about the functionality of products they purchase. No corporation should be in a position to threaten someone for wanting to know more about a product they have purchased.
Second, Mattel Corporation has "updated" the software's list of blocked sites to include all sites known to have provided information critical of CyberPatrol. Shades of "Big Brother." This may not be the first time a corporation has used its power to suppress criticism; but it is a significant event in history of the WWW. If you were to make a public statement critical of Mattel's actions, you could expect that your own web site would shortly thereafter become a target of the blocking software.
I believe that this matter, in all its ramifications, should be brought before Congress and discussed. Mattel Corporation and other companies like it should be made to know that their actions in attempting to suppress free speech are not going unnoticed by the Federal government. This is not an issue that is going to go away. We must act to protect citizens' right to know and to prevent the Internet from becoming the playground of international corporations with unregulated and unbridled power.
More information about this controversy is available from Declan McCullagh's politech mailing list web site: politech. I may also mention in passing that Mr. McCullagh has also been threatened by Mattel for writing articles about this issue and Mattel has demanded the names of everyone on his mailing list so that it may attempt to determine who may have accessed the aforementioned documentation about the CyberPatrol product.
Thank you for your time.
mp
"The secret to strong security: less reliance on secrets." -- Whitfield Diffie
cpcrack does not all anyone, in any circumstances, to get past the blocks. All it does is allow you to see the URLs that your copy does block.
-David T. C.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Imagine it: a list you could subscribe to that would keep track of morally questionable people to be auto-removed fromy our DNS...
What does this button d$#%* NO CARRIER
Sent via the web feedback form:
--
Please reverse your recent decision to censor the reports on your software. You must understand that the world is changing, you cannot just issue vindictives and have them enforced - there are too many people to whom freedom of information is too important for injunction to work.
We are a global presence, and the laws of one nation do not reflect the values of all people.
At the least, take a moment to realize that protecting your "intellectual property" - the database of banned sites - is both an excersize in futility and a disservice to the customer. YOU do not set the values and mores of your customers, one size does not fit all. Give people the chance to override your decisions, give us the ability to choose with exact precision which sites we wish and do not wish our children to see. In short, publish your list.
You will find that all parties are happy, the people who disagree with you can simply override the default, the people who don't think you do enough can add or suggest new sites, and most customers will simply accept the default - and if the default is not really what they wanted, you are absolved - they have the site list, why have they not taken responsiblity upon themselves to look it over?
Thank you,
Blue Lang
i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
The problem with boycotts is that they are usually of something that I never buy anyway.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Further, the issue of censorship on the Internet is in its infancy. Australia has already "shown the way" with its legal requirement that all Internet users run filtering software. It is important to ensure that filtering software companies are accountable, before they start gaining the force of law behind some of their questionable behaviors.
"Live free or die". Ain't it the damn truth.
And don't forget to add Mattel to your list of boycotts..
"The cost of freedom is eternal vigilance." -Thomas Jefferson
Um, Mattel might distribute someting for National Geographic, or they might have collaborated on something, but that would be the most of the relationship there.
Frankly I was even more surprised by the Princeton Review, I'm just quoting from the Popular Brands link at www.mattelshop.com - I don't actually know exactly what the relationship is but presumably if it's on their shop site they're selling it and making money from it or some spin-off.
We'd have to see a complete list of everybody Mattel owns in order to do this (most don't carry the Mattel mark), and I fear the list may be too long and comprehensive to pull it off.
Just looking at their e-shop confirms what you say here, they certainly make a lot of stuff. But a boycott of even there most popular things would hurt them. In fact it might be easier to get a boycott moving by concentrating on one or two of their most popular things instead of issuing a complicated long list that people will find a pain in the ass (oops that comment would be banned wouldn't it) to remember. To that end here are their own listed Popular Brands from the mattelshop website
:A boycott would certainly be good and I hope that there will be some effect from it...bet there aren't that many Barbie/Little Mermaid owning geeks though. However the knock-on/social network ramifications could be large. Slashdot has around ,what? 190,000, users now, if they have any chance of influencing friends and family that could spread effectively.
However, it would be good to have a multi-pronged response to these guys. I note that they have a Shop Mattel web-site which automatically repeated reloads would probably slow down (nothing illegal, just lots of stupid users reloading ;-) ).
--Nestor
"I never died says he" - Ballad of Joe Hill.
--Ben
http://www.motherjones.com/sideshow/pvc.html
If any of them are running advertising then they are being damaged monetarily.
/*---------------------------*/
Man? What is man?
But a collection of chemicals with delusions of granduer.
/*---------------------------*/
Man? What is man?
But a collection of chemicals with delusions of granduer.
Maybe a neutron bomb instead of a nuke. That way non-criminal people can move back in (after you sweep up the bodies) From a utilitarian standpoint, this could be a good idea. If the ratio of criminals to non-criminals was very high.
/*---------------------------*/
Man? What is man?
But a collection of chemicals with delusions of granduer.
/*---------------------------*/
Man? What is man?
But a collection of chemicals with delusions of granduer.
This is an excellent idea.
I've never used an censorware before. When a site gets blocked, is the user told why? For instance, I type in "www.nakedcoeds.com", does my browser show a page saying "sorry, this site has nudity"? Or does it just fail?
What I'm getting at is: Does the censorware make specific and explicit claims about a website's content or does it just block? If the former your libel idea would fly like a dream. If the latter it might be tougher (but still workable AFAIAC, though IANAL).
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
Does anyone out there know a good e-mail/snail mail address to contact Mattel about this matter? A few thousand polite emails from disgruntled Slashdot readers might go a long way toward convincing Mattel that this going to be *very* bad PR.
Oh yeah, as if news programs (on TV, I mean) didn't do that either.
Well, I'm going to propose this story in the newsroom today when I go in to work...I will also make it extremely clear than all this utility does is to reveal the list of banned sites.
_______
Scott Jones
Newscast Director / ABC19 WKPT
Commodore 64 Democoder
FC Closer
The thing that worries me most is if a well-meaning ISP (or not) uses a transparent proxy cache with some of this censoring software.
You'd not easily be able to tell that pieces of the internet were unavailable.
Its only a short step between denying content and rewriting URL's, but lets not go to that scary place this time...
If you buy software that is designed to limit your access to the internet, and if it extends its censoring unethically at least you can disagree and stop using it. This assumes that you can actually find out.
--
-- Don't believe everything you read, hear or think
No, the sites may not contain any nudity, but they do contain information that will enable one to access all the CyberPatrol-blocked sites -- including those with lots and lots of nudity. So the mirrors are being treated as a "special case".
That wouldn't hold up.
What use is a list of blocked sites to a cyber-patrolled machine? You can't reach them anyway, since they are blocked.
If these companies start getting into the "links to links" jumble we saw from the RIAA and other undesirables, we'd soon have a worldwide censor of the net itself.
Is a secret list really that valuable?
"Buy our product becuase its list of sites to block is so much better than our competitors'. Well no, I can't tell you which sites we block, or which sites they block.. erm you'll just have to trust me"
Doesn't seem like much of a selling point to me, their competitors have no need to steal it because no consumers can tell whether it's any good anyway.
If their software works (ie. it filters the sites that are in the list) does it matter if little Johnny sees a list of sites? He can't reach them unless the software sucks at which point they sold you a defective prorgram and possibly contributed to harming your child. See when you installed SuckerPatrol(TM) you thought it would prevent your kid from viewing material you considered inappropriate. So now you spend less time discussing these issues, because you expect them to not arise. However your kid is out there getting all of his viewpoints from the web and people who advertise "hot, deep, wet, live action!" because that sells. All your kid knows is the basest for of the expression of human love. And you didn't spend any time parenting because you had that wonderful, Scientologist sponsored, SuckerPatrol(TM) software installed.
Aren't you glad you decided to let some total strangers massage the material that goes into your kids head?
That's the problem. Every company thinks "I can do such-and-such a thing with such-and-such a result, write a handy little "WE WILL IN NO WAY BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR %s", such_and_such, and they're home free. I think it's time that corporations start being made liable, and not have these "easy-out" solutions! Disclaimers are not the Word of God(tm).
Sigmentation fault - core dumped
Um, Mattel might distribute someting for National Geographic, or they might have collaborated on something, but that would be the most of the relationship there. National Geographic (as in the Magazine, the books, World Magazine, Traveler Magazine, the maps, etc) is the National Geographic Society, a non-profit based in D.C. Look here for more info. Unless there's some other National Geographic that we're talking about here. Which I'm sure the Society would like to hear about, they've been around for about a century...
itachi
I think that Mattel is involved in distributing the CD roms for the NGS, but they have nothing to do with the publications and the paper stuff. At all. Trust me. The NGS cd sets are a little iffy anyway - they didn't get rights for all of the stuff used, or so I heard. Like they paid the photo dudes for the pics to appear in the magazine, but not for the cd sets. Or some freelance photogs, anyway.
itachi
ps - don't you mean www.shopmattel.com?
I don't think purposely putting in the mirror sites counts as an Error and since it isn't in there, it certainly was not left out!
I think they put themselves into play with this action (Play=Lawsuit fodder).
SP
"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong." - Voltaire
I LOVE this...
Talk about poetic justice at it's best.
"Power to the People!"
"How much truth can advertising buy?" - iNsuRge - AK47
So far, I haven't received any "cease and desist" letters for my mirror . Perhaps the Microsystems people haven't figured out how to e-mail me yet, or they're not willing to go after another Canadian citizen, or "the cheque's in the mail."
I know they've seen the site; four different computers from Microsystems accessed the mirror through Slashdot twice on Friday - once around 9:30 AM EST, the other around 1:30 PM. Ahh, the beauty of access logs...oh, and thanks to the guy at Qualcomm who downloaded cp4break.zip at 12:30 PM today - glad to know you're part of the conspiracy of light:)
C'mon boys - I didn't get my DeCSS attack lawyer letter. I want my letter!
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
IMHO, I would rather have my son looking at porno than to give up the decision on what is or is not appropriate material to corporate America. Porno is people having sex in whatever myriad fashion it might take. Mattel, et. al., are deciding for their customers what is right and wrong, and that ability to be a surrogate decision maker is much, much worse than kindergartners watching German scheize films. If people really think that they can trust corporations to make their moral decisions for them (or their children) then they are sadly, sadly ignorant.
Don't the users of these softwares realize that they are entrusting decisions on morality to organizations whose main motivation is profit, not Truth or their children's well being?
I guess this explains Dr. Laura's popularity, at least.
-Rev.
Lets put some real world perspective on things here. Individuals have acquired a product, taken it apart, evaluated it and published their findings. Sounds like something car magazines, camera magazines, Consumer Reports, the Consumer Products Safety Commission, Department of Transportation, computer magazines, newspapers, the Food and Drug Administration, National Transportation Safety Commission, Sixty Minutes, 20/20, CNN .... have been doing for years. Up to now, nobody but the tobacco industry have been successful in suppressing such activity.
Part of what is going on is that software producers have always treated software as some how "special" in that it's "licenced" rather than being sold. This has ment software tending to fall through loopholes. Further in places such as the USA these companies have lobbied for the creation of new laws, which in effect widen the existing loopholes. To try an exclude software from all the usual laws protecting people against shoddy goods and services.
There are all sorts of legal issues in this case that will be given short shrift if Jansson and Skala lose by default. Had they had representation on Friday, counsel for CyberPatrol could have been challenged on jurisdictional grounds.
Except that US judges don't appear to be aware of the whole issue of where the US ends. (Doubtful anyone would be able to bring a contempt of court case against such judges.)
Though are there rules about informing the defendants of the hearing? Also if the US wants to apply it's laws against the world can the world apply US laws (and consitution) against US companies and courts? i.e. in this case that no law can have been broken since no law may exist (in the US) to curtail the (self evidently journalistic) process of examining a product then publishing the findings.
It seems that we have taken a giant step in the wrong direction if today such reverse engineering of a product to verify that it performs as advertised is routinely met by lawsuits and harassment. I suspect that the reasons for this are not only the DMCA but also the fact that the web makes it possible for anybody, not just relatively well-heeled print publications, to challenge companies' assertions.
Actually there would probably be nothing wrong with such publication resulting in lawsuits. Just that the supplier concerned really should be the defendant rather than the plaintiff. Anyone with at least 2 brain cells to rub together should realise that things would be better served by making the supply of shoddy goods a crime. If the state should be doing anything to people who report such organisations, it should be rewarding them.
The First Amendment, being a provision of the U.S. Constitution, is a limitation on the power of government. It has no bearing here.
Specfically it's a limitation of what kind of laws the state can create.
Accusing a private company of violating the First Amendment is like citing the rules of baseball in a hockey game.
In the company's case is based on case law then such an ammendment (which covers only statute law) is irrelevent. If however the case is based arround statute law this may be highly relevent. It's effectivly saying that there is no case, since no law can exist for the alleged defendants to have broken. However it is not the supposed plantiffs who are violating the first ammendement it's the judge who accepted their case. (At best they are in contempt of court at worst comitting high treason. However the US rarely takes actions against it's officials.)
But, if the defendants
choose not to cooperate and/or fail to appear and defend themselves, an judgement would be entered in default and *that* order could be
enforced against any websites operated out of the US or operated by persons with assets in the US.</I><BR>
<BR>
Interstingly do the rules cover <B>informing</B> the plaintiffs and making sure it is actually possible for their to appear? If not maybe the people concerned should petition the Canadian and Swedish goverenments to break diplomatic relations with the US.
Agh, I hope I've not broken their copyright and damagingly stolen their intellectual property by copying their website contents like that.
What licence was the program to view the block list released under? Maybe someone was smart enough to put a clause in that it must not be passed to Mattel...
I was one of the lucky mirrors to get sent the email, I thought I'd post the text of it:
<BR>
Did any of these end up anywhere with tough anti-spam laws?
Furthermore, website owners can't know whether they're being defamed or in other ways injured when their sites are wrongly blocked and labeled as pornography or bomb-making instructions.
Also the more nonsensical the false claim the less likely the webmaster is to even think to check it.
However, filtering software relies on secrecy in a very fundamental way; CyberPatrol's marketable product, their added value, comes from the quality of their blocking lists. If the lists were freely available, or if we had laws that allowed for the lists to be openly copied -- laws that would protect people like Jansson and Skala -- then all filtering companies would go out of business
Actually all that's needed is a decent copyright law, one which is capable of distinguishing between copying and review & critique.
Does listing sites criticizing the company as "nudity", "violence", or "profanity" constitute libel? It seems to me that Mattel has opened itself up to a monstrous class action suit here. They are deliberately misrepresenting the content of these sites to their customers.
Sounds like they are also enguaging in "spam like" tactics. Anyway this kind of action is likely to be a foot shooting exercise, surely people will be less likely to trust such software. Though they might get away with politically blocking a few sites how many before the smell of rat gets too strong?
Can a US court judgement really apply over country lines???
-Michael [Remove two parts of address to mail me]
And the same thing applies to the DCMA, my understanding is that it also prohibits reverse engineering.
Eliminating the ability to reverse engineer things is one of the scarier effects of these laws.
Foxfire
Friendly fire - isn't
I would really, really like to see someone enforce this ruling ... I dont know how they can possibly do it... Does a cached copy count? What about all the usenet postings of it?
,methinks...
What exactly was the reasoning behind the judges ruling? Hell, what laws did he cite in making his decision
Does this mean that companies that make defective products cant be criticized? This is no outright censorship, and a violation of the first amendment rights of the US... come on people... there is no intellectual property here... just criticism...
time to start writing emails and letters,
... hi bingo
There has got to be a legal recourse to combat this companies dicatatorial actions... I dont know of any moral code where what they are doing would be considered "ethical"... Not even close...
Grrr... this is soo damn frustrating...
... hi bingo
Thanks for the info. This explains why I've been having trouble gathering info on it.
"You can never have too many elephants on your team."
Sok, I've already got my copy.
And I ain't giving it up for hell or high water.
When are they going to learn? Once something is
posted, they are screwed. Want a copy? Just email
me.
--Nothing Funny Here.
My mirror is at http://www.atari.co.uk/mirror/cp4break.html
They are suing to prohibit the publication of not only the program or the source, but also the essay that was also on the site.
While CP is not censoring in the definition of the word, the legal action by Microsystems/Mattel, by also trying to prohibit publication of material which they own no copyright, is indeed censorship. It's just the latest in the way Mattel uses the courts to attempt to silence criticisim of their business practices.
Dave
If I were given the task of creating CyberPatrol, I imagine I would create a hash function that translated URLs to single bits in a map, then compress and publish the map alone. Anyone know why CP doesn't use something like this?
Be sure to file a complaint immediately with your state attorney general if this breach of consumer trust concerns you (as it should).
The AG must act on the behalf of consumer complaints, and with sufficient volume, a full investigation will take place. With far more influence and power than any class-action lawsuit, attorney generals will provide us with satisfaction. They exist to protect us from exactly these abuses. This is particularly crucial in those states considering censorware in their public internet terminals.
Call your AG today!
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
Instead of just talking about this here why not go to their website and tell them we want it removed:
http://www.cyberpatrol.com/forms/siter ev.asp
Be nice otherwise they won't take us seriously
I think, is that people are actually paying good money to let Mattel decide what they should see.
;)
But, with a little luck Mattel will be able to censor sex out of these people's lives. If they don't reproduce, then eventually there shouldn't be a market for their software.
Many people had been very afraid of what the gov't was trying to control only to be blind
sided by the Corp'. B. Franklin warned about this one, but it doesn't look like many
took notice. Lets connect the dots:
DMCA, UCITA, CyberPatrol... hmmmm.
Sig
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars
Doesn't this call up jurisdictional issues again? I mean, is the judge actually clueless enough to try and issue a restraining order against the entire internet? The ruling as posted here seems to make it look that way. This is absurd! -- as someone said of DVD/CSS, "like a class-action lawsuit in reverse."
There is a spellbook here; eat it? [ynq]
Think about it. It's an organization marking these individuals as pornographers, satanists, and everything else they could possibly think of. By listing a site on their ban list under a given category, they make a statement that the site in question falls under that category and that the site's authors are responsible for such content. Whether or not you or I would look down on them for this is immaterial. If a person uses the CyberPatrol software and turns on blocking for a given category, then he thinks that sort of content is distasteful. To list the content of a site as satanic is to accuse the authors of creating that content, and therefore defame them to all who would use CyberPatrol. IANAL, but that's not legal.
vi is my shepard, I shall not font.
Yes, it has. Last big instance I remember was a certain law firm hawking green cards.
Polluting USENET is not the answer to censorship. However, posting to the approprate groups as opposed to "every" group would be acceptable, and, in fact, laudable.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
Any site that allows you to expose the links from a particular category, IMHO, should be included in that category. Rather than a underhanded manipulation strategy, it appears to me to be a straight forward programming decision.
Now trying to block the sites (by taking them dwon) for people who aren't running their software is another story....
It seems to me that the reason for filtering these sites is that they contain data or links to data which help circumvent the filtering.
Given that the objective of the filter might be undermined through access to these sites it might seem reasonable to filter them in all categories, because any category of filtering could be disabled using the information on the sites.
I don't advocate or condone any of this, filtering is inevitably a ham fisted tool. I just think it's important to give a ballanced view, and this article is not ballanced.
What would you suggest Mattel do apart from follow your adgenda and close up shop? They sell filtering software, that software has been circumvented, and they have filtered the sites which publish how to circumvent the filtering. This seems like something people who purchase the software would reasonably expect them to do.
The software in question does not infact defeat the blocking software. It simply decrypts the blocked sites list for inspection. Also, simple documents that criticize cyber patrol are being blocked.
"Real interesting a US SUBPOENA be delivered to a canadian and Swedish companies and citizens. DO they even have to acknowledge they received it? Anyone know international law on this one?"
According to one of the professors here at UVic (Matthew Skala's university), Matthew was advised by lawyers that just figuring out how the international laws apply will probably take the courts a couple of years.
So don't expect this to be solved in a hurry...
SO what someone should do, if that is the case, is to make a version of the crack that only decrypts the list, and does not reveal the password. That way Mattel has no excusable reason for censoring sites with the crack software. They still probably will try, since they have a problem with people seeing the list of blocked sites, but I should hope that they wouldn't be able to get away with claiming that this new version of the crack allowed people to view pornography!
With clothing...
penguinicide... when jumping out a window just won't do.
Wow, I must be tired. First time I read that I thought it said:
VOTE WITH YOUR MONKEY!
I was really confused.
penguinicide... when jumping out a window just won't do.
Ran across this article on UpsideToday, entitled R.I.P. reverse engineering?
Yes, but if I recall correctly, it is *only* the media that is reporting that cphack allows you to see the passwords. Matthew's page explaining the process they went through and including the description of cphack is (now, thanks to Mattel's long reach) gone from its server. But I believe I recall reading that it *does not* do anything other than reveal the list of URLs which are blocked - end of story.
This means that all it makes possible for some kid using a Cyberpatrolled machine is to see the list of sites which are banned. Not change the list, edit the list, or bypass it. Granted some of the websites that are listed probably have names which are in bad taste to most folks, but thats about it.
This court case seems to be more about how well a big company can crush any opposition, regardless of legality or any sense of right or wrong. The media is simply playing the tunes for them as Mattel dances. Practically every story on this issue that I have read was based on content from the original, badly written and quite slanted report from AP.
One of the stories I read even identified Mr Johannson (spelling?) as *believed to be living in Norway* - as if he was some sort of criminal on the run.
Every story has stated the software allows you to see the passwords - which is false AFAIK. I would ask Matthew but he has been told not to discuss this at all with anyone by his lawyers.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
But now I really wonder if this whole idiocy (the whole going on isn't nice to put it mildly) will have the impact this article makes us think. Sure; this software will block out sites which don't have to be blocked. True enough. But lets not just focus on the software itself but also on the people who let themselves be blocked.
I'm quite sure that people who allready bought and/or use this software won't really care anymore about articles like this. Once a company makes a certain step it can take quite some effort before they decide to backtrack and go for something else. On the other hand; people who don't use this software (yet) will care. After all; they are consumers looking for a good and dependend program. This is the real issue and these folks won't be stopped by this software to stop reading about flaws and other points of interest.
On the contrary; by pulling stupid stunts like this they are "breaking their own windows" (Dutch saying, basicly it means that they're hurting themselves more then the ones they're after).
Face it; I'm a system administrator myself. Stories like this aren't exactly inviting me to try out this garbage. On the contrary; after seeing this crap in action I put it on my personal software blacklist. The list of software I should not get & companies I should not trust.
Oh wait, they already did that.
Seriously though, if they hadn't gone to the trouble of trying to suppress it I wouldn't have a copy on every machine that I use. Message to clueless suits:
We don't like censors!
We mirror stuff faster than you can issue take down messages!
Any injunction merely speeds the process of propagation as people perceive a need to grab the file before it is taken down!
We are smarter than you are.
We are more resourceful than you are.
You cannot hide things from us, no matter how many judges you pay off.
Unbreakable toys can be used to break other toys.
It provides a utility that allows you to see the admin passwords that disable the software's filtering.
Unbreakable toys can be used to break other toys.
http://www.cyberpatrol.com/forms/lists ub.asp
Alternatively, why not suggest adding http://www.cyberpatrol.com/ and http://www.mattel.com/ as "inappropriate for the workplace" and "inappropriate for kids" respectively?
Or mail cybernot@microsys.com for more flexibility in giving your reasons for blocking these two offensive sites.
David
--
"We all know you're soft cos we've all seen you dancing.
We all know you're hard cos we've all seen you drinking from noon until noon again"
wugga wugga
Surely someone can arrange a page that automates the filling in of CyberNOT's 'review our decision' form. And then we can Slashdot it.
Actually, would it be possible to set up an engine which checks all these filters, and allowed us to email all the manufacturer's banning specific sites in one go. Maybe hook it into the Meta-Moderation page and we can try to MetaMod the filter software? :)
free experimental electronic music netlabel at www.viablehybrid.com
SO whats next for our fine frends at Mattell? Could it be... SS Barbie? Minister of Propaganda Barbie? The way this is going, soon barbie will be surrounded by dozens of other "friends", all spilling forth the "truth" and the "just cause" that they serve... That being the stranglehold on free speech on the net, and the freedom of choice one is supposed to have. I tell you this... It won't be long until the plastic overlords in their pink corvettes will be telling you what to say, where to eat and what to watch. All hail our future vinyl rulers!
Section One
Prohibition Of False Trade Description
This section also prohibits the supply or offer to supply of goods to which a false trade description has been applied
Section Fourteen
False or Misleading Statements As To Services, ETC
In accordance with this section, any person in the course of a trade or business who either knowingly or recklessly makes a false statement as to the provision of a service, accomodation or facilities etc., shall be guilty of an offence
threadeds blog
Yes, but puting the filter for these sites in every filter grouping that exists is beyond what is nessesairy. it would be just as effective but more moral to create a new group of, say, "Cyper Patrol sercurity circumvention" and have a warning come up if you try to disable it (like you do when you format a disk).
They have options to filter out out morally, which they choose to ignore. Therefore, this is much worse than trying to protect the security of the product (IMHO)
- Sig
Moderate this comment up! This is the UCITA-abuse connection that needs to be made clear!
That doesn't quite follow. Just because a search engine like Yahoo points to a blocked site, it doesn't enable the user to bypass the block. (Then again, Google's cacheing might.) The article does provide information on how to access a blocked site. So by extension, the article is blocked for everything because it allows for access to everything.
I am just trying to think like them.
The same argument does not apply to criticism. If, for example, you removed all pieces of the article relating to bypassing the security, and this was also blocked, then you would have a stronger suit for libel. I think.
W
my comment is not exactly objective, because i work for mattel, (no i am not a trolling lawyer) i read slashdot daily. BTW i speak for my company in capacity, all opinions expressed here are my own.
your post sounds like corrupt logic, let me elucidate my argument: You are unilaterily banning a site because you don't agree with the corporation's policies. This action is pure censorship on your part because it has nothing to do with your company's policy(i assume) on website viewing. That means the users in your domain are getting cheated because they cannot make their own choice at all. Parents at home have the choice of installing cyberpatrol to block their children from viewing sites. A business has the choice of buying the block list to prevent uncomfortable situations from arising on company computers. I will conceed that as soon as someone from your company goes home, they can use the Mattel site on their personal computer. But those adults who have to browse under cyberpatrol will be able to go home and make up their own minds with their own computers.
sorry about all the bold but i am trying to add emphasis
$var = <STDIN>
$var =~ s/\\$//;
this is slashchomp
Until it stops censoring and threatening its critics. There is a competition here:
The number of Cyber Patrol users
VS
The number of Squid / Junkbuster / Webfilter etc users
I'll set it to display a message as to why we have censored Mattel's site and assure the user that it is the only site we censor. If you want to go to their site please go to another machine.
It is similar to "Usenet Death Sentence" and I think it will work. Administers of the world, unite!
Take the offenser off the web by censoring it.
"Welcome to America in the new millennium, where a corporation just made the decision to ban several documents from the World Wide Web."
Nobody banned any documents at all. If you're stupid enough to buy CyberPatrol or any of the other crapola out there passing as filter software, you get what you deserve.
That, however, is a problem for the LIBRARIES not the company that makes CyberPatrol.
If I make a list of books I don't think libraries should own that is completely separate from any decision by an actual library to use my list as a guide (especially if I encrypt my list and don't let anybody see what books are on it, but some government idiot is stupid enough to use plug it into his library purchasing system so none of the books on my list can be bought by the library).
Why is it that every time I see this story reported in the mainstream, there's an statement early in the report that this software circumvents the blocking software? Later in the report, there's usually something more specific about what it actually does (decrypts the black list.)
But there's always the statement that this software is being used by kids to break the censoring, er, filtering.
Wouldn't a strongly worded, accurate description of the situation be better news:
MATTEL Sues Cryptologists for Revealing Major Flaws in their Net Filtering Software's "Black List"
-- Chapman's Observation #1: Nothing is ever simple
(I just searched on both "cyber patrol" and "cyberpatrol" and got no hits on their nonsubscriber section.)
Copyrights, Patents, Trademarks: temporary loans from the Public Domain, not real property ("intellectual" or otherwise)
That is the very definition of censorship.
-Legion
Not if the LIBRARIES weren't told by Mattel that the filtering software would be censoring (proper usage of word) sites critical of their software. The libraries are forced by legislation to use some sort of filtering software on their systems. For whatever reason they chose CyberPatrol. And now that software is making decisions that go far beyond the legislative intent. That is government-sponsored censorship.
-Legion
I have never tried CyberPatrol and I don't feel trying it out either. However, I'm sure every user installing it has to click on some EULA which strips the consumer of any rights forever and ever. So anyone filing a suit has to prove that this infringement overrides their EULA.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Finally someone with some practical sense!
Let's try it out on your city Now and see how well it goes..
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
That sounds like a pretty dumb firewall. For example your very own comment would be filtered out as _bad_.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
If they want to filter out sites that merely critizise Mattel and/or has a crack readily downloadable, they should make another option for it. Not hide it under every filtering-option they have. Besides that, it was a good point but doesn't explain all the stupid lawsuits either.
IMO, the owners of Cyberpatrol is being very unprofessional in their acts.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Beagle
Marissa
I'm not really an elf, I just play one in AD&D.
The question is: Are they publicly misrepresenting these sites? If you simply get a "this site has been blocked" message (without a reason why) then this is not a public misrepresentation is it? You imply something but implications do not hold up in court well. The misrepresentation is in a database that is deliberately encrypted so that the public can't see it.
Harm in the legal sense must be monetarily quantifiable. You cannot award damages in units of prestige or esteem. Denying access to a free essay causes no real monetary harm.
Is what Mattel doing wrong? Yes. Is it libel? Maybe, its a grey area. Can you prove it in court? No. The burden of proof is upon you the accuser and I really, really doubt you can convince a judge of both public misrepresentation and some for of compensatible harm.
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
I think a libel case would be hard to prove. Are they listing these sites improperly? Yes. Is this wrong? Yes. Is this libel? Probably not. Lying is not libel. IANAL, but to me libel requires some level of slander or defamation. It would also have to be public. While wrong, mislisting a site on an internal database no one will ever see unless they unencrypt it is hard to construe as libel. Maybe if the user was told the site was blocked for an incorrect reason or something. The issue here is that the blockee would have to prove the blocker harmed them in some way with deliberate untruths. Thats pretty hard to do.
My question is, why encrypt a blocking file? There is no point to preventing the user from not seeing it. My guess is that they don't want their competitors to simply steal it, which is a valid concern considering the man hours necessary to compile this list. However incorrectly blocking sites is not the way to go about it.
Congrats to whoever submitted this story. Its the first YRO I have actually cared about in a while and to think I was going to start ignoring them completely. I stand corrected.
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
No, the sites may not contain any nudity, but they do contain information that will enable one to access all the CyberPatrol-blocked sites -- including those with lots and lots of nudity. So the mirrors are being treated as a "special case".
Not that I agree by any means with anything that Mattel is doing on this matter, but I do understand why the rebel mirror sites are being tagged the way they are.
begin 644
Not exactly. If Mattel were trying to prevent its customers from finding out about the issue, then it would be blocking all the tech news sites that carry the story.
What Mattel is doing is desperately trying to protect the integrity of its software. Once the "crack" is widely available to all CyberPatrol users, CyberPatrol will cease to have any value to either Mattel or its customers.
If we really wanted to be of some help to the CyberPatrol customers (e.g. parents), we could take down all of our mirrors, and replace them with mirrors of the article that do not contain executables or full source code. If such mirrors existed, CyberPatrol customers would then be able to read the article to get a fuller understanding of the issues involved, while being reassured to some degree that their protectees (e.g. children) would not have trivially easy access to the "crack" software.
If we did this, Mattel would be hard-pressed to come up with a rationalization for blocking the mirrors. The mirrors would be merely educational/informational, and would no longer directly threaten the integrity of the CyberPatrol software. This might keep Mattel happy -- or at least appeased.
Keeping Mattel happy is of dubious value, of course, but a more important consequence of doing this is that it would keep the CyberPatrol customers happy. Think about it: Do we really want to screw all of these customers over just because they happened to purchase software from a company that really didn't know what it was doing when it was trying to "protect" its product by obfuscation?
begin 644
Impediment the .xxx domain. I've said it before so this should should well practiced. The sellers of porn do no want to be sued and they do want to be filtered for the most part. Do you hear cash-for-porn businesses bitching about censorware? For the most part no. They don't want to show a 10 year old a -censored- get -censored- by three -censored- in a bowl of tepid grits. They want to make a buck, so go say it on the mountain, we need a .xxx domain! And viola the net is effectively (or as effectively as one can expect), self regulated.
Do you ever feel like there are people watching you? You're not alone.
Why would a parent install filtering software? The simple answer is that they have an entirely valid concern for what their children are exposed to, and wish to leverage whatever technology is available to protect them. I'm personally of the opinion that kids should be supervised while they surf instead of being left to the judgement of a computer program, as filtering software tends to encourage passive parenting, but that's another issue. The point is that parents who install CyberPatrol usually do it to make sure that their kids don't stumble across something that might corrupt them. That is the primary use of the product.
Ok, so what constitutes material that might corrupt a child? I think we can agree that pornography falls in this category, and protection from pornography is the main selling point of CyberPatrol. What else? Hate groups should probably be censored... Those are usually pretty clear-cut. CyberPatrol also claims to censor extremist groups, and this obviously requires a bit of level-headed judgement. What constitutes an extremist web site? Something that expresses political views that don't jive with societal norms? That's basically what extremists (not hate groups) are - groups with unusual political views, perhaps religiously-driven, perhaps driven by a simple difference in opinions as to how things should be run. Let's stretch this a bit further - if the censor happened to be a die-hard democrat, would they be right to censor a republican campaign site? After all, the site is in disagreement with and critical of the censor's views. What if the site expresses views that are critical of the company employing the censor? Is the company right to classify such a site as an "extremist" site, or even file it in the category of hard-core pornography? Mattel did exactly that. To accept this is to imply that views critical of the Mattel corporation are harmful to children. I consider Mattel's actions to be a most unethical form of lying to cover their ass in the face of embarrasment.
I will say that I'm basically anti-censorship. I believe that parents have a right protect their children, and that includes keeping them from things that they know to be harmful. But censorship as a general practice in society is an extremely dangerous proposition; it can and will be abused (look at the USSR, Nazi Germany, Cuba, and now Mattel - all used censorship to accomplish their political ends). If censorship were to become an accepted institution in the United States (ie, if people were to lose their general qualms about it), I believe we would be in mortal danger as a nation. In other words, I believe that it has a place, but that it should be avoided if at all possible - it's an open invitation to corruption. It seems that it will soon be mandated that Internet access in libraries be censored. It's already becoming apparent that courts are willing to censor certain pieces of software that certain corporations object to (DeCSS, cphack, etc), even when such software often has entirely ethical and legal uses. I think we're starting to head in that general direction.
but what about writing an open-source censor-ware ? At least, it will allow parents to view and edit the site blacklist and/or the filter criteria ...
And, yes, the software could open at start-up a big window saying :
THE WEB IS NOT AN ELECTRONIC BABY-SITTER. IT'S REAL LIFE. IF YOU DON'T LET YOUR CHILD WALK ALONE ON THE STREETS AND TALK TO STRANGERS, YOU SHOULD NOT LET HIM SURF ALONE IN THE WEB.
Ciao
----
FB
Yes, DMCA and UCITA are hot button issues here on slashdot.
Yes, Mattel is being really silly about this whole issue, IMHO.
The fact of the matter, though, is that UCITA has nothing to do with this issue, and DMCA is only marginally relevant, if at all.
Effecting change requires us to be open and honest about the issues in which we want action. Fearmongering and conglomerating unrelated issues doesn't help.
This is just the kernel of a new thought, but...
Mattel's signature product is Barbie. They help throw a big Barbie convention every year. It's attended by thousands of folks, including swarms of press. This year, it will be in Oklahoma City in June.
Is there a Linux/Open Source/whatever group in OKC that could organize a protest? You could *definitely* get local news air time. You could probably get a lot more exposure than that. In fact, if you play your cards right, you could tap into the anti-Mattel sentiment in the Barbie world. Ya see, Mattel has sent out hundreds of cease and desist letters and filed more than a few lawsuits against Barbie fans who dared to post anything even slightly negative about Barbie on the web. Pink Anger is the first group that comes to mind. Hook up with some of the more radical members therein and you could definitely aggravate the heartburn of many Mattel executives.
Just a thought...
Does listing sites criticizing the company as "nudity", "violence", or "profanity" constitute libel? It seems to me that Mattel has opened itself up to a monstrous class action suit here. They are deliberately misrepresenting the content of these sites to their customers.
I agree wholeheartedly with you on that account...the only problem is that as far as i know (IANAL), a libel suit will only have real grounds if the acts in question are in fact illegal. While nudity, profanity, and violence may be distasteful to some, they are not illegal in their own right. now if mattel were to, say, put them in the same category as kiddie porn or some comparable illegal act (and explicitly state it as such), then there would be a ruckus.
I think that the best response to this censorship is a whack-the-mole a la DeCSS--it's obviously impossible for mattel to take down/blacklist every single one of them. Furthermore, if mattel begins blacklisting thousands of sites or entire domains in order to save face it will only serve to discredit them.
With any luck, they will run themselves into the ground before too long.
----------
Uh, just curious...how many Mattel products do you buy a year?
I've never bought a Mattel product for as long as I can remember purchasing stuff. A boycott doesn't work unless you already buy the stuff, and you're a significant portion of their customers. (why boycotting a roof insulation company won't be of use, and neither will boycotting gasoline.)
I read the judge's injunction. The judge's contention was that the guys who did this were allowing kids to completely bypass the blocking software. (Funny...I don't remember this ability being mentioned anywhere in the "banned" pages.) Bottom line is right now...nobody cares. We're still just a bunch of apathetic, whiny kids to them, and not some organization that has any coherent form or power. We have to actually WIN one of these things before people will stop doing it. The mere fact that we've had so many legal "issues" that we've coined an acronym for "I am not a lawyer", alone should tell people that we've been getting dumped on in court for far too long. Somebody sue back. It's the only way. Even if we lose...it'll cost them...and that's the only REAL way to get this on the 6 o'clock news.
Just think how much public opinion of Mattel will drop when they hear, "This man's site was classified as having gaphic nudity on it, just for having criticized the company's software."
Netjak.com independent reviews of domestic & import video ga
Hmm. Anyone look into Tortious Interference with Prospective Economic Advantage? Not every jurisdiction has it...
Does anyone reading this work for the Government? Aren't there some kind of rules about companies delivering services as government contractors (say, software provided to libraries) that provides against misrepresenting that service? As in, calling criticism pornography?
Disclaimer: MINAA (Mummy! I'm Not An Animal!)
It's partially distributed by software (the block list) and partially by humans (the fear factor).
Rather than mailing everyone with junk, they resort to scaring those who don't know any better into paying them for this rubbish.
Maybe we should include the Mattel software in the virus lists?
- JR
If there's a better way to undo stupidity in my own moderation, please let me know.
Posted this on :http://www.cyberpatrol.com/forms/siter ev.asp
Ok. I'm stumped. Hopefully you can help me. How am I supposed to find out that my site is on the CyberNOt list? Do I need to purchase a copy of every site blocker software just to verify that I haven't been put on a blacklist by accident?
Usually, I check out peacefire to see if anyone has decrypted the list, just so I can verify that my site has not been mislabled. (It contains no violence, profanity, or nudity, and I even took the Latin off just because the software was banning sites with the word "cum". [Which means anything containing Latin is normally mislabled as porn.])
Now your company has brought a lawsuit to people who tried to decrypt it's list so that it can be verified. Why? Do your company want your list to be unverifiable?
Up until now, I have dealt peacefully with web blockers as I understand it's purpose. However, your company's desire to use legal force has left me with no choice. Should I find my site mislabled in the future I will not just notify you. I will sue you for libel, and attempt recovery for damages in the form of lost hits, and therefore advertising in court.
Thank you.
Kenneth D. Boucher
-----
No Zen is good zen
So, couldn't the owners of these pages sue Mattel for defamation?
How many of us are sysadmins? Do you have firewalls? Packet filters? Email black lists? HTTP proxies? Yes? So do I.
As of last night, Mattel is off the new as far as I or any of my users are concerned.
It's time to use the tools we have to strike back. How many corporations have cleaned up their email relays du to RBL and ORBS? Most of them, because the threat of losing a chunk of their connectivity is serious and the ability to carry it out has been proven.
We may not be able to fight effectively with lawyers or economic sanctions, but we CAN hurt them. And they can't even complain, since filtering is their business, too.
I am not a lawyer, but I am an admin. Sure, my net is small and my action is a mosquito bite, but if a few majors and/or Universities will follow suit, we can have a real impact.
Fight filters with filters, and may the best man win.
Mattel is selling a product that is designedto block certain information, reliably. Okay, it's impossible for 100% reliability,but they are doing what they can to maximize it.
How useful is it, if you can use the tool, to find out information on how to disable the tool? They HAVE to filter that stuff. It's the resposible thing to do as a software vendor, otherwise they are selling a flawed product.
Anything less, would be the microsoft bob of filtering software. They are doing the right thing for their customers.
90% of respondants to this thread are "Rebels without a cause".
You are NOT "fighting censorship".
Censorship is a process of stopping material from being published. In no way does Cyberpatrol, or any of the other stuff stop material from being published.
What it does is allow people to FILTER content.
THIS IS NOT "Censorship"!!
How many of you readers have spam-filter programs on your email? I bet quite a few. Any argument that applies to "stop mattel/cyberpatrol/whatever", can be applied to that as well. Specifically, any argument you make that cyberpatrol should be bypassed, can be
made for "spammers should have access to methods to bypass spam-filtering programs".
Or USENET-spam filter-bots. Perhaps that is a better parallel.
I doubt it. From what I know of sexual harrassment lawsuits (esp hostile work environment, which this would be addressing) its all about "good faith efforts". The fact that a company tries to prevent employees from putting porn up on their screens protects them even if some employees do - just like posting a sexual harrassment policy makes them less liable for it being broken, not more.
Frankly, I don't think there's much of an argument to be made against companies using filterware. I'm writing this on break, but outside of downloading tax forms, there's really nothing I could be doing on the web that I can legitamately bitch about being told to do from home. Why shouldn't a company do their best to block porn if it will give them a leg up on hostile work environment? What do they have to lose?
-Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
It seems to me that the main problem with filtering software is secrecy. When we don't know what sites are being blocked, then the error rate is also secret, so we can't know whether we're being defrauded as consumers when we buy a filtering product. Since we don't know the content of most sites on the web, if a legitimate site is blocked through error or deliberate choice (e.g., blocking Peacefire as porn) we never find out what we're missing -- unless we try to go there with prior knowledge that it's legitimate. Furthermore, website owners can't know whether they're being defamed or in other ways injured when their sites are wrongly blocked and labeled as pornography or bomb-making instructions.
However, filtering software relies on secrecy in a very fundamental way; CyberPatrol's marketable product, their added value, comes from the quality of their blocking lists. If the lists were freely available, or if we had laws that allowed for the lists to be openly copied -- laws that would protect people like Jansson and Skala -- then all filtering companies would go out of business. There would be no incentive to come up with a good list, because any effort a company put into their list would be lost when someone else made a competing product using the same publicly-accessible list.
I'm sure some people would very much like for this to occur (and a lot of them have posted above). But I don't think, from a public policy perspective, that we're ever going to convince a Congressman to pass a law sending CyberPatrol out of business when there doesn't seem to be any alternative method of filtering. Parents have a real desire, one that I think is legitimate in a lot of cases, to shield their kids from 'objectionable' material. Right now the only ways to do that are to monitor your child's Internet access all the time or to install filtering software.
Another option, and one that I think a lot of parents might take, would be to deprive their kids of the Internet entirely and not give them access at home. As far as freedom of information is concerned, I think we'd be shooting ourselves in the foot if we fought to promote free access to the few sites that CyberPatrol & Co. wrongly block and in doing so caused a lot of kids to lose their access to the entire wealth of the Internet.
Then how should we control commercial filter programs? It might be possible for an independent certification authority (a government agency?) to verify lists and give them a commercially valuable "stamp of approval," but this approach has its fair share of problems. First, the work would be massively redundant, since it would be checking every site blocked by every blocking product -- it would be far more efficient to combine the verified lists into a single trusted list. Second, the independent agency wouldn't be entirely accountable, since the list would remain secret and its own competence would be indeterminate. If it were private, it could be hijacked by commercial interests, and if it were a government agency, there might be constitutional/political concerns with it labeling certain sites. A certification authority would help, but it would be a second-best solution. The only way I see to escape from these problems would be to make everyone a certification authority -- to follow the open-source model. Lists are currently secret, not for any technical reasons, but because the companies who maintain it have to make money. Imagine, though, if a non-profit foundation (American Family Association, etc.) maintained an open list and got programmers to put together an open-source filter that would make use of that list. Anyone could submit sites to the foundation, which would then use real humans to check them before adding them to the list.
Because the profit motive and secrecy would be gone, there would be no incentive for the group to add sites that they knew to be unobjectionable. Also, since the list is openly available, there would be constant attention (from the press, watchdog groups, website owners, etc.) to see whether sites were listed erroneously. If people felt that the list had too many errors or used the wrong categories (for instance, a site might not separate sex education information from pornography), they could start their own competing list, copying and modifying the original one. The open-source filter software would be unable to hide accidental or deliberate errors, and it could be adapted to make use of any group's list at the parent's request. The result would be a system in which errors were self-correcting and parents had both the knowledge and the freedom of choice to make real decisions about what their children should see.
I see three potential problems with the open-source model that would have to be addressed. The first is that that the lists would not be adequately maintained without the profit motive -- it would just cost too much money to employ people to scour the web or read through the submissions for objectionable sites. This may be true, but I have the feeling that some conservative billionaire would be happy to endow a foundation to protect kiddies on the Web forever. Besides, submissions from the public (or at least from trusted members of the public) would make the job of the list-keepers that much easier, since they would only have to read through submissions, not find stuff on their own. Their work would certainly not exceed that of a certification authority.
Secondly, there's the danger that the list would simply become a 100 MB text file of "Where to Find Porn on the Net." Since it would have to be publicly accessible, there's a good chance people might look for objectionable sites by scrolling through the list. But as long as the categories were reasonably vague (for example, CyberPatrol uses "Extremist / Militant" rather than "pipe bomb," "smoke bomb," and "nuclear bomb") then they're no better for that purpose than a search engine. I can type 'porn' or 'pipe bomb' into Altavista and get as many hits as I want; the list wouldn't make my search any easier.
I don't know whether a project of this type would ever come to pass, but I think that it would be greatly beneficial for the Net as a whole. If an open-source alternative exists, then it would be possible to get the public consensus behind shutting down commercial, secrecy-based filtering sites. In fact, the availability of a free open-source alternative might just drive commercial filters out of business on its own, since the open lists could advertise their accountability and reliability in comparison to commercial, secret lists. If we don't have any alternative, though, then the political will to deal with censorware will never exist, and people like Jansson and Skala are going to be fighting a losing battle.
http://freshmeat.net/projects/charities.cron/
I was one of the lucky mirrors to get sent the email, I thought I'd post the text of it:
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
Bryan Klingner, MCSE, MCP+I
If Mattel is blocking people b/c of, say, nudity/sex or racism when they in fact aren't doing those things, there's a respectable claim of libel against Mattel. Somebody should sue them.
InstaPundit! Ahead of the Curve Since 30 Minutes Ago
You've got something here. If your business is damaged you may have a case to collect damages for lost sales, etc. If you don't have material on your site that meets the advertised criteria like nudity, etc. then Mattel's inclusion of you on their block list must be due to malice or negligence.
Wonder if you could sue in small claims court. Defending against thousands of small lawsuits, all over the country, might get their attention, or at least keep their lawyers too busy to engage in mischief elsewhere.
Censorship... I hate. But, on a more serious note. I think the Cyber Patrol concept as whole is a great idea if used and not abuse by the users and creators. Right now the creators are abusing it BIG TIME. I can understand blocking the porn, and well... I can only understand the porn, and maybe a few other exceptions. I think it's perfectly alright for Mattel to block sites with defamatory information or the cp4hack.exe program. But, it SHOULD NOT be done without the users knowledge of it. That is censorship in its ugliest of forms. If they want to do it correctly, they should add a check box that allows the user to choose to block those types of sites. Yet another big company that didn't splash enough cash in the security department and is having it come back to haunt them.
Sure! I'll contribute my sister's entire collection! just give me a little advance warning so i can plan how to get them out.
They that quote Benjamin Franklin on liberty and safety deserve neither.
Assuming that all my opinions are wrong, and censorship is good, then it would be irresponsible for a company that makes censorship software to allow children to access a site that could help them circumvent it.
Here you guys go. Our contribution to this fight:
http://www.infoshop.org/octo/mattel.html
makhnolives
I came to work today and what did I find?
/. was BLOCKED!
action has been taken and the problem is now fixed
Just a coincidence? I wonder.
Is your favorite site blocked?
Check here Cyber Patrol Search Engine
If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur. --Red Adair
5:38 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: 5:39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
(King James edition, The Gospel According to Saint Matthew, as found at Project Gutenberg)
I know something needs to be done, but it really irritates me when people 'selectively quote' from *any* source.
Reality is the ultimate Rorschach.
Yes, the MPAA is a cartel, but they don't go in for the boycotts themselves.
Many of the same people that own theatres also own film studios and distributors. Sony Theatres follows Sony Pictures' company line when it comes to MPAA ratings. I don't think that you'll see either unrated or NC-17 films at a Sony Theatre.
It's the small film producer who can't find someone to distribute his film that gets the short stick. He's got to submit his film to the MPAA rating board (and pay for the priviledge) and then implement their recomendations to get his R rating or accep the NC-17. Without an R, the opportunities for his film to be seen are greatly reduced just because some chains won't run NC-17 films. These chains don't want controvercial films that will draw protestors even though protest often sells more tickets. It's the system that punishes independants, not the MPAA though they are part of the system.
It's very similar to how the RIAA hurts independant artists and labels.
Anomalous: inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Anomalous: deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Canard: a false or unfounded repor
Making a couple of assumptions here:
1) We can prove with no shadow of doubt that CyberPatrol is blocking sites that critsise them as nudity (and every other catagory).
2) We can prove that teh software is blocking other sites incorrectly (commercial sites would be best here, although some .orgs havre the resources to be helpful).
If these are both true, the solution is simple. Find the companies that own the blocked sites, and combine with them into a class action libel suit against Mattel. Sick the Lawyers on the bad guys for a change. Even if no commercial site would agree to help (doubtful if they really are being blocked) theoretically the anti censorware sites could go it alone.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
I guess that also serves to limit criticism...
Mattel probably has a hand (or tentacle) in making some of the Neat Stuff(tm) that the NGS distributes. See, that's the problem - we can't really know.
But I tell you what - I haven't exactly got a lot of love for this corp (which, if memory serves, makes both G.I. Joe toys and real M-16 assault rifles!), so if you can find a way to sting 'em (Legally! Not up to jail time, me!), let me know.
--
In principle, I agree, and I would usually back this sentiment wholeheartedly. Unfortunately, it's not that easy in this case. Mattel is HUGE, and has subsidiaries, who have subsidiaries, etc., etc., in dozens of industries.
We'd have to see a complete list of everybody Mattel owns in order to do this (most don't carry the Mattel mark), and I fear the list may be too long and comprehensive to pull it off.
--
Couldn't this be a case for a libel/slander suit on Mattel?_ ___
________________________________________
___
I'm an exhibit on the mounted animal nature trail.
Too bad, you got my hopes up there for a time.
Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years
Come on guys, this is a dead loser from a public relations point of view.
There are all sorts of legal issues in this case that will be given short shrift if Jansson and Skala lose by default. Had they had representation on Friday, counsel for CyberPatrol could have been challenged on jurisdictional grounds. The facts here are a far cry from those of iCraveTV where deliberate use of U.S. networks by U.S. citizen/residents to make money performing copyright works was easy to show. What is the jurisdiction case here?
I haven't seen the actual order, but the draft asks for discovery in 24 hours -- much sooner than normal. How can mirror web sites be acting "in concert" with Jansson and Skala in a legal sense if their operators have never meet, spoken, or, in most cases, exchanged emails? How about the serving of a supoena by email? We have all heard stories of tricks used by servers to physically serve a supoena on a defendent. How are they getting away with that one? The point is, in legal battles, legal fire must be fought with legal fire. CyberPatrol is winning this round (1) by intimidation and (2) by default. The important issues of copyright law including noncommercial fair use can be lost the same way.
Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years
I'm talking about general public perception of the issue -- that is to say, PR. The lead paragraph in the Yahoo story on Wednesday took the "spin" provided by CP and presented it as a "method for kids to ... access [pornographic] sites." As other posters have said, it's too bad that Jansson and Skala didn't keep the circumvention part of the code to themselves. There is a legitimate debate going on as to whether or not such filtering software should be mandatory in public schools and libraries. To the extent that Jansson and Skala revealed the sites that are blocked inappropriately, they made a positive contribution to the argument for no filters. To the extent that they permit kids to get around filters, they offset, and perhaps negate that positive contribution.
Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years
The Yahoo story said "...two computer experts who developed a method for kids to deduce their parents' password and access those Web sites."
Is this story incorrect? Did Jansson and Skala publish "a method for kids to deduce ... password" or didn't they? Revealing URLs by someone with no competitive product can be viewed as high-minded. Enabling innocent little children to be exposed to smut is a very bad thing.
The public relations battleground looks a lot different if it is *only* the URLs that are revealed but not passwords using any of the Jansson and Skala code.
Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years
Has anyone taken a look at Mattel's financial situation lately? This is their stock info from Yahoo.
Basically, in the last two years, their stock price has quartered and they are losing money. This combined with some recent downgrades from various brokers spells D - O - O - M.
Maybe this is their last attempt to save face before they are bought out or go bankrupt.
A choice of masters is not freedom
Some links are down, broken, etc. Is there a place to list more mirrors? For example, this mirror has all the cp documents, plus the decss stuff. http://decss.homestead.com/ Anyone know how to add these sorts of sites to the mirrors list?
I beleive it does in fact allow you to extract the admin password so you could effectively disable the filtering, no? So, yes the software itself does not directly circumvent the filter, but the ability to reveal the encrypted password is obviously the justification Mattel is using to block sites which contain a mirror of the software.
On a side note, anyone able to tell me just how CP works? Is it a proxy that runs on the client where you point the browser to it ala Junk Buster? If so, could you not just install IJB on a machine and redirect the proxy settings to the IJB port to sidestep CP, or does it use a different mechanism?
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
This is such a clear violation of First Amendment rights. Their product is deliberately preventing you and me from voicing our opinions, concerns and criticisms to people who would otherwise want to hear them.
The First Amendment, being a provision of the U.S. Constitution, is a limitation on the power of government. It has no bearing here.
Accusing a private company of violating the First Amendment is like citing the rules of baseball in a hockey game. There are plenty of reasons why Mattel's actions as reported here are wrong and awful, but the First Amendment isn't one of them.
- - - -
The real Tetsujin 28 is a giant robot.
What action can be taken? Are folks like the ACLU willing to help out? It just seems wrong that Big Business can abuse and bully us little guys around, but we have *no* recourse whatsoever.
IMO, there ought to be some sort of grass-roots action that can be taken. Maybe something like the Usenet Death Penalty -- maybe the DNS Death Penalty - sysadmins could just remove any mattell-affiliated entries from their DNS lists.
PS - for more Corporate Evil stuff, check out GRC's findings at http://grc.com/optout.htm
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
I did ask in the original thread whether they could be sued for libel if they listed a site that was patently not pornographic as containing pornographic material. In this case I feel that in listing sites in categories for contents that they know are not there they are abusing the power and authority they have been given by the purchasers of their software. They are using this power to pursue a private agenda at the expense of their customers.
They may argue that in so listing these sites they are preventing the download of items that would then allow access to sites that they have banned. However this is not true as far as I know of Eddy Jansson's program which simply gives access to the list of banned sites.
I feel that there is the opening for law suits (possibly class action I don't know enough to be sure) both for the sites that have been blocked by this abusive action, and for the users of the software who are being used as pawns by CyberPatrol in their private little war. I don't see how actions like this can help CyberPatrol's standing.
Hey I've just had a thought. If we can get the files far enough distributed could we get CyberPatrol to block the entire Internet.
Gamma Testing - Where testing is extended to the full user community (AKA Shipping the Program)
Why don't all of us start to put that information on our web pages... let's see them try to censor the whole web.
EHC
It may seem obvious, but what really has to happen for this lawsuit to end is for the customers of the product to complain. This means that the school teacher who wrote in to mention the link being down needs to complain to the school board. It doesn't matter how much everyone else complains about the produce, nothing will happen until the bottom line is affected. It has already been mentioned that more publicity is needed for this so that the customer base for the product can hear what is going on. It should be evident that if you use web blocking software you probably don't read /. on a regular basis. I don't want to get into the whole debate about the need for web blocking software, but as someone in highschool once told me, "So what if someone sees a boob, will the world end?"
I just stopped by:
http://www.cyberpatrol.com/forms/siterev.asp
where they allow the submission of sites to be reviewed for possible removal from their "CyberNOT" list, and posted the following comment in regard to the site http://www.islandnet.com/~mskala.
"Why is this site on your list in the first place? Does it contain obscenity or nudity? No. It contains information about your product that you don't want people to see. Using a product with the scope and influence of CyberPatrol to censor opinions your company doesn't agree with is _ethically_and_morally_reprehensible_."
If enough people do the same, maybe it will at least get their attention. I also e-mailed a summary of what CyberPatrol is doing to the editor of our local newspaper.
I was a bit surprised to see that www.slashdot.org doesn't appear on their censored list by now...
"What about that time we caught you naked in the kitchen with a bowl of Jello?!?" "Hey-I was HOT and I was HUNGRY!!!"
The reason MSI (the company that originally created Cyber Patrol) encrypted the list is because they spent a lot of $$ compiling it, you idiots. A "Not" list is the heart of these products and why give theirs away to the competition?
translator.infoseek.com is blocked under: Violence/Profanity, Partial Nudity, Full Nudity, Sexual Acts/Text, Gross Dep./Text, Intolerance, Satanic / Cult, Drugs / Culture, Militant / Extremist, Sex Education, Question./Gambl., and Alcohol/Tobacco. Thats about all the catagories it has, except for the Resvered 1 - 4. Its basicly a translater site like babelfish, there is no reason I can think of to block it (as much as I hate to admit it, you can see their reasoning behind blocking sites that have Cphack on it). Can anyone figure this out
I always prefer to start the year off with a bang - or, to be more precise, a series of loud hums, a crackle or two, and
a long established principle that often has those who would trample our rights to get a life. I normally wouldn't care about programs such as Cyber Patrol, but when you have Mattel & a federal judge telling us (all over the world) what we can and can't distribute / publish, things are not going well. I do not see how any judge could enforce his/her/its ruling not to distribute cphack. That judge will only end up impotent. Mattel wants to limit the "damage" caused by cphack through intimidating strong-arm tactics? I doubt they can succeed unless the Net is ruled by whimps. We don't need to rely on mirrors and staying one click ahead of the censors. There are other effective ways to distribute cphack, too. Anybody wanting copies of cphack and the documentation can get them from a very offshore e-mail-on-demand system: barf@163.net with the subject line: Screw Mattel Why do this? Because I can.
Reverse the order of the digits to reply.
Right. It's well known that the MPAA imposed self-regulation entirely to avoid "big borther" (and of course now they're all chummy and on the same team, but that's a different story) If a movie has an NC-17 rating, it can be shown to whoever wants be shown it, as far as the law goes. Now, if theaters start letting kids in to NC-17 movies, the MPAA won't like it of course and they will be blacklisted and won't be able to show movies (coming from MPAA member studios) Now, most theaters don't show NC-17 movies because it doesn't look very good and it doesn't get much business (if it's a normal theater). This is entierely differently from a pornographic film which is not rated by MPAA, and has its status as "over 18 only" imposed by law. Notice age for pornos is 18, NC-17s is 17. If they were both enforced by government regulation NC-17 would be NC-18. So Anomalous Canard is right, and I have no clue who I'm really replying to is goofy. Because I'm viewing at 2 threshold. And very tired, starting to type disjointed, you noticed, did? ---------- /me is happy about finally being able to get into NC-17 movies.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
Spire's right. Apparently, whoever wrote this program had motives not as pure as the freshly driven snow. Not only does this program show the list of banned sites, but it also provides a list of passwords that allow CyberPatrol to be *disabled*!!!
I can fully understand why they would block any and all instances of this program to paying subscribers. If I purchased this product, I wouldn't want it to be easily disabled.
However, if the software author (hint, hint) were to release a program that *ONLY* shows the list of blocked sites, without providing the passwords that can be used to disable the protection, then I'd be against any effort to block access to it. Sadly, that didn't happen. (hint, hint)
Well, all the sites which were deemed critical of CyberPatrol were blocked, not just the ones with the bypass program. (hint, hint)
If all they blocked out of hand were the sites with the bypass program, it would be no problem because, as you said, a paying customer does not want the software disabled. But the reason for the program in the first place was because Mattel was plugging any site that miffed them.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
The software linked to does not allow you to circumvent (as far as I can tell) the censorware itself. It simply lets you look at their encrypted list of blocked sites. It gives you a way to rapidly evaluate just how lame (or not lame) their site categorization system is.
Let's say I have a big database of URLs. Lets also say I own a registered, fully legal copy of CyberPatrol.
I write a script that runs through my database, and attemps to connect (through CyberPatrol) to each URL. My script logs the failures.
And then I publish the list. Is this in any way illegal?
If it is, then I bet there's some reporters who'd like to hear about that...
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Man, this has got to be the worst example of premeditated evil I have ever seen from a corporation - not just suing to intimidate people who critizise them (that's been done before) but actively using their position as a filter to prevent their customers from finding out about the critizism.
That's just Wrong.
This story needs to get written up by a wide-distribution Old Media outlet, and then dissiminated as widely as possible, to people like librarians, school principals, and Congressmen.
Anubody know any reporters?
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
At this rate, how long will it be before Cyber Patrol blocks the poage for Net Nanny, and they retaliate by blocking Mattel for extremist/hate (or, perhaps accuratly, for providing inappropriate role models). If I had more free time (yeah, I know, if I have time to post this...) I might be tempted to write a filter that removes offensive corperate sites on the basis of not encouraging kids to become consumer-units and bad citizens (which many corperates certainly ARE).
I just mailed Passagen, the Swedish web space provider of the original cp4break homepage, and asked them whether it is their policy to comply with foreign courts asking them to censor pages, and whether this also extends to foreign dictatorships wanting to censor pages.
--
%japh = (
'name' => 'Niklas Nordebo', 'mail' => 'niklas@' . 'nordebo.com',
'work' => 'www.sonox.com', 'phone' => '+46-708-405095'
Hello, This is a load of crap, so here you guys go. If you want a tar and gzipped version of the files and essay you can get it here.
Get your PostgreSQL here: http://www.commandprompt.com/
I got my restraining order in the second wave of 'em, which hit Sunday. So I took the content off of my site, though I did not take the site down. I'm using it to distribute information about the case until I'm assured by an attorney that I can put the site back up, as I fully anticipate will occur.
I guess the tough & manly thing to do would be to leave the program up. But I just don't have the resources to handle a lawsuit, or to be found in contempt of court for refusing to follow the orders of what must be the most poorly-applied subpoena that I've ever seen.
Better everyone goes out and buys a CD with Aqua's "Barbie Girl" on it...
How surprised can we be, really? They want to be big brother, so what do you expect them to do? The only big surprise here is the ISPs caving in to their demands. Does anyone know of an ISP with a backbone? Surely there must be one, though perhaps not in the US...
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
Since so much of the criticism is being posted here, is /. banned yet?
If we can get the code posted to every single host on the internet, then we can help Mattel reach its goal of blocking out the whole net!! Well, we probably couldn't get it posted to cyberpatrol.com...
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
As I mentioned in one of my comments to the original story, this was a fairly easy move to forcast. It's pretty much what every other corporation has done when faced with criticism on the Web - do anything they can to block it (think AOL, or any number of free homepage sites).
The issue here is that the blockee would have to prove the blocker harmed them in some way with deliberate untruths. Thats pretty hard to do.
Wouldn't misrepresenting the site to thousands (millions?) of customers as "pornographic", "violent", "extreme", "hate-mongering", and whatever other categories they have qualify?
If you click on a site, and a cybercensor message pops up "this site has been blocked" there is a very obvious implication in that message that the site contains offensive material for which the software was installed to block. If Mattel has knowingly blocked sites which do not meet the criteria they have represented to their customers, surely this qualifies as defamation and provides a strong argument for libel.
Harm is done in that potential readers have been prevented from reading their essay. This results in professional harm (wider readership -> wider recognition -> higher professional esteem) to the web page author directly, not to mention the more widely discussed (in this no-doubt soon-to-be censored forum at least) social and political harm to our society as a whole.
Whether one could make it stick or not I don't know, but some speach-friendly lawyers should definitely take a look at it.
Also, doesn't legal action against a person outside of the US infringe just a bit on the national sovereignty of the other country (e.g. Canada and Sweden)?
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Unlikely. Such a tactic would force Mattel to explain why the product doesn't block Yahoo, or AltaVista, or any one of a thousand directories or search engines which link to pornographic or "questionable" content. It's just too thin.
It seems that we have taken a giant step in the wrong direction if today such reverse engineering of a product to verify that it performs as advertised is routinely met by lawsuits and harassment. I suspect that the reasons for this are not only the DMCA but also the fact that the web makes it possible for anybody, not just relatively well-heeled print publications, to challenge companies' assertions.
Cyber Patrol calls their list of banned sites "CyberNOT" (they also have a list of "approved" sites called "CyberYES"). They license it to various firewall manufacturers to include as an optional accessory in those products.
--
Michael Sims-michael at slashdot.org
What I see a need for in consumer law is the ability to sue a company for claims about their product and also claims about others products. If you want to claim 4 out of 5 dentists surveyed you better be able to give me the names of all 5 dentists you talked to. Mattel needs to feel the legal heat from this. A simple boycott takes much more time and effort. A countersuit based on showing their product harms consumers in some way would be much more effective.
Do really dense people warp space more than others?
> Expect to see a lot more of this kind of thing as the megacorps treat the little people as little more than feudal serfs.
Good point!
But, now that you've gotten me thinking about it, are we serfs, or are we simply a medium through which wealth is transfered between corporations? That's the way it seems to me. After all, where do most of us get our money? From corporations. And what do we do with that money? We trade it to other corporations, and usually in exchange for something extremely ephemeral (non-durable), such as food, clothing, fuel, or soon-to-be-outdated computer software and hardware.
Or, put another way: we trade irreplaceable chunks of our time for wealth, then we trade most of that wealth away for stuff that gets used up. Seems pretty silly, doesn't it?
One corporation pays us, while others compete for the money we've been paid. We are one of the primary media through which money is transfered between the truly wealthy individuals and corporations in the world. That's the game that's being played. Well, one of the games, anyway.
If only we could continue to bring in wealth, but not transfer it back out, then we could eventually get into the game ourselves. Maybe we could change the rules or even come up with some different, more equitable game.
But until then, we'll just be the pawns. We'll be suitably outraged when they tell us that the 'net is corrupting our children, and we'll open our wallets when they offer to sell us software that will keep our little angels from falling from grace. We're such *good* little pawns, aren't we?
I'm sure that someony in the slashdot community must have the power to make this a news item on other sources but the web (newspapers, TV...)
The only way to precent censorship like this is to expose them to the general public. When their product receives bad publicity, they will stop.
-- Nothing is as subjective as reality --
I am not a lawyer, still less a US constitutional lawyer, but surely this is not true. If the US government is spending money then it has to be used in a constitutionally valid way. I seem to recall that the recent case about school vouchers was decided on this issue: school vouchers were almost all being spent by parents to send their children to religiously based schools. Ergo the government was funding religion, and that is forbidden by the constitution.
If a link that tenuous can be held to be unconstitutional, what would the purchase of censorware for libraries be?
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
How can you distinguish between "We at Mattel want to suppress criticism of Mattel" and "We at Mattel want to make sure that anyone who has this software installed won't find his child downloading the unblocking software and defeating the software he purchased no matter what level of blocking he has enabled"?
The proper thing would be to have the next version contain a label for "This page links to software that defeats CyberPatrol", which most people would promptly enable. Actually the proper thing would be not to install censorware, but you can't expect people to behave rationally.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
The reason that Mattel has classified these pages as nudity is because they are all pointing out how the Emperor isn't wearing any clothes...
If you want to get rid of the bathwater, you've got to throw out a few babies.
This access is ostensibly not for personal use (yeah, right, and nobody makes personal calls from their work phone, either), so the company isn't required to allow ANYTHING that's not business-related.
"You can never have too many elephants on your team."
I work for a large corporation that does use content blocking. This is mostly to prevent later claims of institutional sexual harassment. (No flames, please -- it's been made quite clear within the organization that I, personally, am opposed to this, for a number of reasons, only some of which are related to censorship/freedom of speech issues.) In the future, if/when we decide to revisit the content blocking service provider (I believe we currently use CyberNOT), at least egregious handling like this will help me keep CyberPatrol from being used. I'm not a fan of CyberNOT, either, but the contract's been signed, so I'm stuck for a while.
Mattel is really shooting themselves in the foot by doing this. This is at the level of UCITA. As much as corporations demand performance benchmarks, does this company really believe that such benchmarks of their "performance" (ie how effective their blocking really is) won't be desired? Get with it, folks...
"You can never have too many elephants on your team."
I work for a very large company that uses CyberNOT, which (as I learned in this discussion) is the name of the list for CyberPatrol. But it's important to realize that my company uses this, not for censorship, but for protection against sexual harassment lawsuits. The suits who made the decision are well aware that this product (like every other product in this category) doesn't block everything. But by using it, the organization is showing 'due diligence' in an effort to maintain a harassment-free workplace. (God, I sound like one of THEM now!) So if anyone were to ever sue, stating that the corporation tolerated porn-surfing at the workplace, we can point and say, "See! We tried!"
Personally, I think a better way to handle it is to let managers manage, and have draconian punishments for individuals who violate the policy. It is true that in a work environment, such surfing has no place. This is not a library with constitutionally protected free speech, nor is it imposed on employees' personal web surfing at home. If you wanna look at playboy.com, go right ahead. But it doesn't belong on your desk, not necessarily for religious reasons, but because that can in fact create one of those "hostile work environments".
So you see: Reading /. can be work-related! :)
"You can never have too many elephants on your team."
Why don't the geek fight back and block all Mattel related official sites from our DNS ? That way they TOO can enjoy the fun of being censored...
The file is on my computer. It's a school computer, but I'm under my rights to host a server so long as it's not warez or mp3s.
I think the real question is, how will your school's staff react when Mattel sends them a "take it down or else" letter?
--
-=DaveHowe=-
I'm not sure that 'editorial control' applies in this case.
To be honest, neither do I - but I was able to convince the legal bod that the risk of it was about equal to that of not filtering, and much cheaper. They ended up with a "porn on pcs is a sacking offence, you must be able to justify all web use and we WILL be logging what servers you visit" policy, and AFAIK are still fine.
--
-=DaveHowe=-
I work for a large corporation that does use content blocking. This is mostly to prevent later claims of institutional sexual harassment. (No flames, please -- it's been made quite clear within the organization that I, personally, am opposed to this, for a number of reasons, only some of which are related to censorship/freedom of speech issues.) In the future, if/when we decide to revisit the content blocking service provider (I believe we currently use CyberNOT), at least egregious handling like this will help me keep CyberPatrol from being used. I'm not a fan of CyberNOT, either, but the contract's been signed, so I'm stuck for a while. .....
Hmmm. I found the best way to strike THIS one down was that, if you censor or otherwise filter the feed, you are exercising editorial control - therefore, are directly responsible (and legally liable) for anything that gets through the filter.
--
-=DaveHowe=-
What action can be taken? Are folks like the ACLU willing to help out?
This from the TBTF 'Blog is reporting the American Civil Liberties Union will back Waldo Jaquith, Lindsay Haisley, and Bennett Haselton in their case against Cyber Patrol.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
If all this program did was point out the blocked URLs and newsgroups that would be a horse of a different color.
No, I have no objection to showing companies that they are inept. I also have no objection when a censorware company censors locations that allow end users to defeat the censorware.
Maybe a libel suit wouldn't hold up, but the preliminary injunction could easily be reversed. "Your honor, we reverse-engineered this product to see just how it works, and we were surprised to find that Mattel is deceiving their customers by classifying anti-Mattel sites as containing nudity when they do not." If ever there was a case just asking to be a public champion for the pro-reverse-engineering movement, this is it. Mattel shot themselves in the foot by playing the reverse-engineering card and then proceeding to hide undocumented "features" in their encrypted database, and we need to call them on it. This is the perfect example of using reverse-engineering to keep a company in check, to be sure that their product does what they say it does, and a victory here would go a long way towards getting support behind reverse-engineering.
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
I'd love to see a libel judgement as well. Especially since this they are deliberately and willfully claiming that these web sites contain something that they do not.
As I understand it the Cyber Patrol software asks Mattel, who owns the list of sites, "Does this site contain nudity/violence/profanity/etc?" and Mattel is intentionally answering in an untruthful and harmful way. There has to be a libel case there (not that I know anything about law.)
Take this a step further and consider cases where Mattel (and others) are slandering sites due to negligence as well. For instance if I said something like "Mattel sells kiddie porn on their web site" and never even checked to make sure, wouldn't that be considered libelous even if I was just mistaken about the facts?
numb
If a number of people sue Mattel for denying them information about their company's products, or blocking access to sites without their permission? Isn't there a way to convince the courts that this kind of tactic harms customers?
Somehow, limiting people's access to information is supposed to be justifiable retaliation against someone limiting people's access to information?
(Censorship begat censorship. =anagram>So, proscribing the cheapness.
So, inspects abhorring speech.
Echo angriness! Bitch! Oppress!)
[
Check out the pages of this eternity service, it is similar to what you're talking about.
http://www.cypherspace.org/~adam/eternity/
Unbreakable toys can be used to break other toys.
Do you know what that would do to the environment? Bleh!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Anyhow she has grown out of Barbies and is into some serious Lego hacking.
Where should we post them?
threadeds blog
Mattel's defense could be that while the site does not contain any of the things listed, the site could be used to access information that is in this category.
This is not to say that they would win a suit, but one should have a good counter arguement to it before you go to court.
Maybe if everyone who is blocked filed a small claims court action against Mattel they could bog them down?
W
"Please direct general inquiries to Mattel's main phone number, which is (310) 252-2000. Written correspondence may be sent to the company's headquarters address listed below:
Mattel, Inc. 333 Continental Boulevard, El Segundo, CA 90245-5012"
Agh, I hope I've not broken their copyright and damagingly stolen their intellectual property by copying their website contents like that.
First of all, write, fax, or phone the traditional news media. Explain what Mattel is doing, why it's wrong, and how this is only the latest in an increasing string of abuses by major companies over the last few years. Explain that fair criticism of companies is rapily becoming impossible. Make it clear that the general public has GOT to know about this!
Second of all, get other people to contact the same organisation with similar information. If every local TV station gets one letter, they won't think it's a concern. If the national news shows get a thousand letters, it should at least be enough to get them to look into it.
I just wrote a letter to The National (CBC-TV) covering the above. If anyone else out there in Canada is going to write to CBC, send it to the National as well. Let's get this NOTICED!
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
So, who's going to be first to sue them for restraint of trade, slander, libel (or whatever the US equivalent is - IANAL or an American for that matter) for falsely claiming their mirror contains offensive material when it doesn't?
Class action suit time?
- Andy R.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
If you're involved directly in this, contact John Markoff at the New York Times (he's in their SF office), the Wall Street Journal, and the San Jose Mercury News (Silicon Valley's local paper.) If you don't sound like a nut, you'll be able to get through to the appropriate reporter on the phone without any trouble.
The long and short of it is, people don't seem to care about this. It's generally shrugged off as "acceptable inconvenience," which has a lot to do with "I didn't want to see that page anyways."
Not to dismiss your example, but I think this case is different in ways that may make people more likely to care.
In the case of blocking an anime site, one: the people who would block nudity probably really don't want to see it anyway. I know all anime isn't porn, but it is usually a little more riske than people who would buy filterware go for. Two: most filterware users would likely give the company the benifit of the doubt in terms of it being a mistake, not censorship. "oh, maybe there was a picture on there that confused whatever image search they use, or they had a banner ad for something that had nudity in the ad, I don't know, but they wouldn't block the site wrong on purpose..."
In this case, however, neither of those rationalizations apply. People who use the software are exactly those who would be interested in knowing about the sites that are blocked, and there is no way to claim that this is anything but a deliberate false blocking. If someone with name recognition (there was a gentleman from EFF at the Boston fundraiser who would be optimal but I've forgotten his name) wrote a collumn on this specific situation, it probably would get press, and talking about this instance may help get more interest in the more general mistakes and misconducts.
-Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
If it doesn't it should. Our firewall products filter on matched. Such as Child and touch, or Child and Pron, etc. An engine looks at the text of a page, grinds key words against a set list. If two match up, not page is passed inside. Not really censorship IMO, this is just a corporate firewall restriction to protect the company from the surfing of it's employees.
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
-- My comment is above.
Since we don't have high-priced lawyers to defend our free speech, the best weapon we rabble have in a case like this is a consumer boycott. Mattel understands one thing: money. So let's hurt them where it counts.
I will be pursuing a resolution within my professional association that will condemn Mattel's involvement with censorship.
VOTE WITH YOUR MONEY!
makhnorulez
www.infoshop.org
It's like how the MPAA (which is regulated) labeling a movie 'NC-17' automatically means it won't be shown in most theaters (theaters' city zoning requirements limit them to 'R' or less unless they're licensed as an 'adult business' or in an area zoned for adult-oriented businesses.) This is why movies get cuts, so they can get down to an 'R' level. And this issue is not confined to the porno industry, etc. e.g., Robocop was NC-17 until cuts were made.
Huh? The MPAA is *not* regulated. It is a voluntary industry group that issues advisory movie ratings. No film maker is required to even submit their film for rating. Theatres enforce the MPAA ratings not because of zoning, but because of corporate policy. Many theatres will not show NC-17 films, but some will.
Anomalous: inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Anomalous: deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Canard: a false or unfounded repor
ISPs in the US are under the jurisdiction of the US courts. When presented with a court order, they either comply or face sanctions. That could mean large fines or confiscation of the equipment used to serve the disputed pages. Ignoring a court order of this kind is a very quick way to get spanked hard by a Federal judge.
Anomalous: inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Anomalous: deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Canard: a false or unfounded repor
If you think I am kidding, ask Barbie Benson
Fight Spammers!
To see what is needed for a finding of libel, it is well detailed in my summary judgment motion.
Mattel has encrypted the list, so it is not being "published" and do not say why a site is blocked. It could be deduced by a user by playing with the settings. BUT now that Mattel knows that the list is easily decrypted and publishes the list with these statements, does it make the publication libelous. Now that everyone has the secret decoder ring
Anyone who have recevied the email from Mattel, please contact me through my site, so I may get some of the copies. It may have something I can use against Mattel to defend against them, and to take a new lawsuit against Mattel.
Fight Spammers!
Fight Spammers!
I would love to see them sued for libel so as to use their own defense against them! Turnabout is fair play. :)
Fight Spammers!
There is another way for them to prevent the kids from using CPHack. Cyberpatrol can prevent programs from being executed.
CPHack is not a program that disables Cyberpatrol!
There are sites with very easy instructions to disable CyberPatrol.
Fight Spammers!
You also have to include sites of companies that Mattel owns! cyberpatrol.com, learningco.com, calandar.com, microsys.com, etc.
Fight Spammers!
http://www.cyberpatrol.com/forms/siterev.asp
Here is an url where you can ask why is censored. Few thousand of these just might do something, I hope at least.
So a couple of days ago, I saw the original /. story about Mattel coming down on these guys for the cphack program.
/. this morning. Am I in any kind of legal hot water with this? What if I more or less say "fuck you" when I get the email demanding I remove the program and code?
I thought, hmm, this routine sounds pretty familiar. Better grab it while I can. Sure enough, a few days later, one injunction later, the original site was gone. So setup a mirror for the program and the code. I email the owner of openpgp.net and let him know that I've setup a mirror.
All is well until I read
The way I understand the injunction it only applies to Matthew Skala and Eddy Jansson, as well as those working with them.
I am not working with them. I have had *no* contact with them in the past, nor have I ever contact any third party I knew to be working with them.
The file is on my computer http://zonedefense.dhs.org/
It's a school computer, but I'm under my rights to host a server so long as it's not warez or mp3s.
What does the peanut gallery think?
No sig is worth reading.
In case you're trying to email the executives at Mattel, here's some info you can use:
The list of directors and officers is at http://www.mattel.com/corporate/ company/investors/
Here's an nslookup on their mail servers and a conversation with it to try a few mail ID's. Unfortunately, it looks like their mail is a black hole with no bounces for bad accounts:
[scott@virtual2 ~]$ nslookup
Default Server: comet.execpc.com
Address: 204.29.202.6
> set type=mx
> mattel.com
Server: comet.execpc.com
Address: 204.29.202.6
Non-authoritative answer:
mattel.compreference = 10, mail exchanger = mail3.pilot.net
mattel.compreference = 20, mail exchanger = mail2.pilot.net
mattel.compreference = 30, mail exchanger = mail.pilot.net
Authoritative answers can be found from:
mattel.comnameserver = NS.pilot.net
mattel.comnameserver = NS2.pilot.net
mattel.comnameserver = NS3.pilot.net
mail3.pilot.net internet address = 205.139.40.16
mail3.pilot.net internet address = 205.139.40.17
mail2.pilot.net internet address = 198.232.147.18
mail2.pilot.net internet address = 198.232.147.16
mail2.pilot.net internet address = 198.232.147.17
mail.pilot.net internet address = 198.232.147.18
mail.pilot.net internet address = 198.232.147.16
mail.pilot.net internet address = 198.232.147.17
NS.pilot.net internet address = 198.232.147.10
NS2.pilot.net internet address = 198.232.147.12
NS3.pilot.net internet address = 205.139.40.10
> exit
[scott@virtual2 ~]$ telnet mail.pilot.net 25
Trying 198.232.147.16...
Connected to mail.pilot.net.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 mail01-oak.pilot.net ESMTP Sendmail; Mon, 20 Mar 2000 08:56:14 -0800 (PST) y
helo 2tp.com
250 mail01-oak.pilot.net Hello scott@virtual2.execpc.com [169.207.2.36], pleaseu
mail from: scott@2tp.com
250 scott@2tp.com... Sender ok
rcpt to: jbarad@mattel.com
250 jbarad@mattel.com... Recipient ok
rcpt to: jill.barad@mattel.com
250 jill.barad@mattel.com... Recipient ok
rcpt to: anydumbass@mattel.com
250 anydumbass@mattel.com... Recipient ok
quit
This is kinda spooky, not just for what they're doing, but for the aditude behind it... It's sort of saying "yes, our product is supposed to be to keep the internet safe, but we don't mind using it as a tool to enforce our edicts, either." Just imagine what would happen if this program were even MORE widely used... People willingly letting others censor what they can and can't see, without even knowing it.
This is obviously one that is going to be hard to fight online. Since the people who most need to be informed are the ones Matel is making sure to keep least informed. And sadly most slashdot readers don't have the time or money to launch nation wide public service anouncements on TV...
Oh well, back to word of mouth, I suppose.
This sort of behaviour is perfectly legal under the DMCA and UCITA. Expect to see a lot more of this kind of thing as the megacorps treat the little people as little more than feudal serfs.
I was wondering about putting together a simple set of scripts file for the protection of corporation-censored programs, such as Decss and Cphack.
The script, on a given date, would format a Usenet post that would contain the uuencoded and zipped source code to the "censored" programs and post it on Usenet through an anonymous remailer.
Every 2 weeks (for instance), all Usenet users would therefore receive the censored programs. And the nice thing is, they cannot censor this, unless they can manage to shut down EVERY Usenet server, EVERY anonymous remailer and EVERY newsgroup in existence! Automatic routing around censorship.
This program would only post to relevant newsgroups and therefore avoid Spam. Another twist that could be added would be to select ONE newsgroup in a list and post only to this one. Hmmmm... alt.usenet.censored.software, anyone? =)
Has this ever been done before?
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
I haven't seen the Preliminary Injunction that came out late on Friday mentioned on /. yet. This New York Times story (bla bla bla free registration required) from Saturday indicates that Mattel thinks that the ruling extends to mirrors. That's not clear to me just from the story.
Anomalous: inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Anomalous: deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Canard: a false or unfounded repor
Fight Spammers!
They are using lawsuits to silence comments about their wrongdoings!
Fight Spammers!
By getting the word out as to the hidden agenda, those who can influence IT purchases can recommend against purchasing this product and get something else...   We (at least alot of us) do have a choice.
I hate to say that although many consider that ignorance is bliss, info like this is worthwhile.   I know that a large corporation like Mattel (who has seen better days) is trying to protect it's reputation but more speech is the only way to do this, not less.
-- Win2k: "It's not so much that it's only 65,000 bugs, it's just that they stopped at 65,535 to prevent an overflow."
This makes me wonder if Mattel's website would be banned for child pornography. It says right on their main page:
"We Touch the Child in Everyone"
Perhaps Mattel would get a clue if a few thousand Barbie dolls were to go up in smoke. Given Barbie's popularity at the least it ought to get some media attention. Anyone interested?
There is a form at http://www.cyberpatrol.com/forms/siter ev.asp that lets you ask why a given site had been placed on CyberNOTs list of banned sites. Use it...
free experimental electronic music netlabel at www.viablehybrid.com
Lets put some real world perspective on things here. Individuals have acquired a product, taken it apart, evaluated it and published their findings. Sounds like something car magazines, camera magazines, Consumer Reports, the Consumer Products Safety Commission, Department of Transportation, computer magazines, newspapers, the Food and Drug Administration, National Transportation Safety Commission, Sixty Minutes, 20/20, CNN .... have been doing for years. Up to now, nobody but the tobacco industry have been successful in suppressing such activity.
Can you imagine this type of response if Car and Driver Magazine wrote a bad review of a shock absorber? The magazine has an obligation to exercise care and be responsible in their invstigation and reporting. The component manufacturer would have a tough time stopping publication.
Toys are a very cut throat market. The large american companies are constantly fending off their Japanesse counter parts in the everlasting quest to create the next Cabbage Patch doll. Because of this they are very customer centric. That's where the bottom line is.
At any rate putting presure on Mattel Interactive isn't going to help. They know you're not going to buy censorware any time soon. But, Mattel toys is another story. This is where the real money is.
I suggest you go to Mattels customer feed back site and fill out the e-mail form:
http://www.service.mattel.com/index.html
In it you probally want to state the following:
You are boycotting all Mattel products because cyberpatrol, a division of Mattel Interactive, is engaging unethical censorship of web sites that are critical of the Cyber Patrol product for blocking sites that are legitimate, and being slow to correct the errors when they are brought to Mattel Interactives attention.
The moral and ethical implications of this raise questions about the company in general. If this is the type of practice they engage in how can we trust them to make safe toys?
Finally and MOST IMPORTANT: If Mattel is so willing to censor sites critical to cyber patrol how do we know they won't also censor sites that discuss toy safety?
The following is a rant I wrote on Saturday, when I first found out about Mattel being awarded the injunction. Anybody may feel free to copy or reproduce parts of it.
My mirror does not include any of the program files, but only the published analysis, Mattel's complaint, and an English translation of the Swedish copyright law 1960:729. I have no relation to the defendants in this case, and am only an interested third party.
- David Michael Turover(Perpetual Newbie)
(begin rant)
I am not in a good mood right now.
I've just had to troubleshoot NT's braindead permissions scheme, I've taken a test where several of the "correct answers" are wrong, my right wrist is aching(not good for a CS student), and it's barely noon. On my lunch break I crack open Netscape to read the news, and find that a United States federal judge has ordered two cryptology researchers to remove an essay that they had published on a Swedish website.
The two researchers in question are Matthew Skala, a Canadian, and Eddy L. O. Jansson, a Swede. They have reverse-engineered a program called Cyber Patrol, and described in detail the cryptography and computer file formats used by the program.
Cyber Patrol is a product made by Microsystems Software, which is a subsidiary of Mattel. The purpose of the product is to prevent any user of a computer where it is installed from accessing any of a list of several Internet web sites, ostensibly to prevent children from viewing pornography. As part of their report, Skala and Jansson offered a Win32 binary named cphack.exe, a utility which decodes Cyber Patrol's list of blocked URLs(website addresses).
Mattel promptly sued the authors of the report, charging them with copyright violations and ordering them to remove their program, report, and all supporting and related documents and materiel, claiming that the report and software will cost them over $75,000 in lost sales. On Friday March 17th, two days after Mattel's complaint was registered, Judge Edward F. Harrington awarded Mattel a preliminary injunction against the two. Jansson's internet service provider, though in Sweden and not subject to U.S. law, has removed his account and deleted the documents.
Reverse-engineering is the process of examining a product to see how it works. In almost every industry it is not only expected to occur but considered an integral part of the free market. In the software industry, however, products are often sold with "shrinkwrap licenses" that restrict reverse-engineering. A shrinkwrap license is a contract describing terms of use for a product, in which these terms cannot be read until after the product has been purchased, can not be disputed, and must be agreed to for the consumer to use the product which they have already paid for and in most cases cannot return. In most Western countries these shrinkwrap contracts are unenforcable, and in the U.S. their legality is disputed, although the upcoming UCITA bill will make them law.
In most Western countries, including Sweden, reverse-engineering of software is a right explicitly allowed by law that cannot be taken away by a contract(1960:729 26 g). Legal protections against reverse engineering can be obtained; they are called "Patents". Furthermore, an action undertaken in Canada and Sweden should be out of the United States' jurisdiction; However, the U.S. court did not refuse to hear the case as it should have done, and instead granted the injunction by weighing the action under U.S. law.
To make the situation more repugnant, Cyber Patrol doesn't work. And not just Cyber Patrol. It is well known that all content-blocking programs such as Cyber Patrol have a high rate of failure, and a high rate of erroneously blocking acceptable content despite any claims by their marketing departments of being 100% accurate.
This is not the first time Microsystems/Mattel's lawyers have been aggressive. A Microsystems software engineer who was fired from his job for seeking medical attention for his sore wrists has since been sued by Mattel for documenting his experiences. Outrageous lawsuits such as this have been happening often lately, and what is frightening is that in the United States' court culture, they have a good chance of succcess.
Does listing sites criticizing the company as "nudity", "violence", or "profanity" constitute libel? It seems to me that Mattel has opened itself up to a monstrous class action suit here. They are deliberately misrepresenting the content of these sites to their customers.
/||\
I would *love* to see one of these filter critic cases end with a libel judgement against the filter software maker. That would maybe give the rest a reason to think before they act.
And i hope whatever employee had to add those things to the database got their orders in writing. And has polished up their resume.
__
(oO)
Hand me that airplane glue and I'll tell you another story.