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GPL To Be Tested by Mattel?
radja writes, "It seems people are beginning to notice that CPHack falls under the GPL. According to this article in Wired, Mattel may have a little trouble getting CPHack off the Web." Check out yesterday's article about the win Mattel had recently with CPHack.
Replying to sorehands, arker, and Ioldanach at once,
sorehands:
"do whatever you want with this" is a pretty broad license--probably all the way to public domain. Someone receiving under this license before the assignment to mattel was publicised could keep doing so.
Additinally, the claim of GPL'ing means that someone receiving before the assignment could take under the GPL (or a quasi-GPL license).
Either license is valid, and wouldn't be revoked under the later assignment.
Arker:
generally, a licensing is not an assignment of rights--especially since the license was exclusive. While licensing, the authors could continue issue under another license (proprietary, perhaps). They can't do this after they assign their rights, which are what had previously let them license.
Ioldanach:
What matters isn't that it was GPL, but the fact of licensure under any license at all. This turns on ancient legal principals rather than the particulars of the GPL.
hawk, esq.
No one, including mattel, is questioning the validity of the GPL - but reguardless of a product or piece of software`s liscense, if it violates copyrights, trademarks and/or patents then That particular product/piece of software can be 'outlawed' and all users CAN be forced to stop using the product.
For example, If I were to, oh, copy the source code of windows from a server at microsoft, then released it under the 'GPL' - and the courts decided to outlaw my software (as they would have every right to do) - then it wouldn't be the GPL being questioned, it would be the Original intelectual property rights of myself that came in question. Since I did not have the right to distribute the software, its illegal for me to do so, under any liscense.
Mind you, what these guys did via reverse engineering is Not what I would consider to be wrong and/or a punishable offense... but the courts have put up an injunction, and that injunction is against the original creators - it nulifies thier rights to distribute the software. Since they have lost the right to do so, then the GPL they granted to the software is itself invalid IN THIS CASE ONLY due to the authors not holding the intelectual rights (according to the courts) in the first place...
man is machine
You can GPL something without signing away any rights. Those who have the code have no copyright on the original code, they simply have a license to view, modify, and distribute the modified and even the original code under the terms of the GPL. They would have copyright on any improvements they made, of cours. So while Mattel may now have the rights to the code (and could thus issue it under a different license) the GPL'd version of the code is out there for good and that license cannot be terminated (barring later court decisions to the contrary, etc.)
The only question that I have is whether it is GPL'd "enough" - as far as I have heard, the customary copy of the GPL didn't come with the software, and there was only a one-line notice that it was GPL'd. Is that really enough to ensure protection?
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Mattel could change the code slightly and release it closed-source.
Another thing, Mattel is a US company and the programmers were not US citizens. How is it possible to sue foreign programmers in US courts? Sounds like they're trying to push US law onto people who aren't in the US.
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
And miss the whole TQM craze?
OK, maybe TQM is passe these days, but we should have learned at least a few things about product quality.
(1) Understand the user's requirements.
(2) Understand how your actions result in a product which does or does not meet customer needs.
(3) When you aren't meeting customer needs, accept that this is true and find a way to improve your performance.
Basically, it sounds like Cyberpatrol doesn't accurately enforce the policies described to the user, and is easily circumventable. I'd call this a defective product.
When you have a defective product, you find ways to improve it. Mattel is wasting time, energy and money in a futile attempt to put the decryption genie back in the bottle. They can subpoena until their blue in the face, but they are facing an exponential spread of the decryption software which they can only meet with an exponential increase in their legal fees. In the end, it isn't about serving their users, but hiding the defects in the product from them.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
They didn't assign the rights, they licenced the use. The GPL is not an assignment of copy-rights, it's a license granting permission to do something that one normally couldn't do. Mattel can certanly prohibit the release of all future versions of CPHack written by Mattel, but they are SOL as far as what's currently out there.
--GnrcMan--
If you GPL something, you can still sell the code to someone under a non-exclusive license, but you cannot transfer exclusive ownership in the way the settlement appears to have done.
I suspect this was done unintentionally however - presented with a settlement document full of legalese, it wouldn't have occured to me to look for this problem. Neither is it likely to occur to most mainstream lawyers who might not be familiar with the implications of the GPL.
The lesson for the rest of us is, make sure you have the right to distribute your code before you GPL it, and if someone does prosecute, make sure they know it has already been licensed to others.
Kind of interesting. I'm a huge supporter of the GPL, but it looks like it could come back and bite these programmers in the ass. Basically, they can "give" Mattel the rights to the program, but anyone who had already downloaded cphack and accepted the GPL owns the rights to their copy of the software and they are free to distribute and modify it how they choose.
Anyone have any ideas how to prevent this from happening again in the future?
kwsNI
Now, since it was GPL'd, take out the password decryption (so they can't argue that you are disabling the product), and publish it yourself if you dare. Then you fight Mattel and their hordes of lawyers. Will you wimp out?
That is of course if it's your position that it is legal! I'm not saying to break the law.
Talk is cheap, unless you are talking to a lawyer, then it's $200/hour.
I see everyone talking about being brave and standing up, now lets see who is full of shit.
Mattel can be beat! I won two rounds against them, I am working on winning round three against them!
It's one thing to talk a tough game, it's another thing to DO!
Fight Spammers!
IAAL, and I think you're overlooking the fact that the GPL is not as other licenses. In general, licenses are not assignments of rights because they don't correct rights, because they are revocable. Commercial software licenses are generally revocable, and contain clauses detailing what is to happen in the event that (for example) Microsoft decides that it no longer wants to license Windows to you under the EULA.
The GPL is not revocable by the copyright holder, and thus, I think, has to be seen as an assignment of rights if the non-revocability is found to be binding. So my analysis of this would be that, yes, this case is potentially a test of the GPL, and yes, potentially (I feel uneasy speculating about an agreement I have never seen) the fact that the software was GPL'd could invalidate the settlement reached by the developers.
--John Montoya
(yeah, I do the streetlawyer trolls, but Im having a serious day today)
I am an attorney, but I"m probably not licensed in your jurisdiction. This is not legal advice. Get that from a lawyer who is licensed in your jurisdiction if you need any.
Everyone take a breath, and slow down. Whether Mattel backs down, or litigates and loses, this will *not* be a test of the GPL.
OK, repeat after me: this is not a test of the GPL.
If this is to litigate, it's going to turn on basic contract law principles
of license and assignments. The *only* issue of the GPL that is even relevant is the ability to redistribute, which is a licenseing issue. If the facts as described in the article are correct, Mattel can't call in the existing copies. But it isn't the GPL that's stopping them; it's the license.
Did I mention that this is a basic issue of license in general, and not the GPL?
hawk, esq.
This is something I've been wondering about. Is it necessary to quote to all the GPL boilerplate in order to have a binding GPL licence on a piece of software? The GPL is a standard piece of text that is well documented in many places on the Internet and I'm sure it has made its way into legal textbooks by now as well. Shouldn't it be enough to simply make reference to it and state that it is applicable to this program? Its not like there are different GPLs out there that might cause confusion. GPL is GPL.
By comparison, when you put a copyright notice on something, all you need is the word "copyright" or the © symbol. There is no requirement to quote the copyright act.
Ideology is for ideots.
What we're loosing sight of here is exactly what ownership is. You don't have to have ownership to use / distribute something. Consider commercial software (that allows you use but not distribution) and shareware (that allows you limited use until you pay a fee and often unlimited distribution). In neither case do you own the copyright to the software - but you are licensed to perform various actions with it.
Matel obviously wanted ownership to "kill" the offending code. But the GPL is a very different kind of license; in effect, it disables this legal tactic. I'm sure Matel's lawyers weren't expecting such a hack to be licensed, much less under such a non-standard license as the GPL.
Of course, Matel's ownership of this code is not without value. They can feel free to re-license it and develop closed improvements to it under that new license. They can lock up a niche market.
That is... until OpenCPHack comes along.
If the program is illegal, then the GPL does not give anyone any right to distribute it.
However the question is, is the program illegal? This has yet to be demonstrated. The illegal assignment of rights to Mattel which had already been assigned elsewhere does nothing to make the program illegal. The legality of the program is unchanged from before the settlement.
Whether the program is legal or not depends on whether the reverse engineering is considered to be legitimate under any of the reverse-engineering clauses of relevent copyright laws in the relevent countries. This has yet to be proven one way or the other.
What I haven't seen is any laws which might make the essay, which is far more damaging than the program, illegal.
Suppose, now, that the cphack authors had included an extra clause in the license. And suppose this extra clause said that no matter what, they couldn't be held liable for writing it. Do you think such a thing would stand up in court? Sorry, but if you break the law, not even a fine print disclaimer will save you.
Although if UCITA is passed, this sort of ridiculous license cluase may well become legal in some cases.