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Cphack, the GPL, And So Much More
yankeehack writes: "This is a new article by Declan McCullagh (Wired Magazine) describing the confusion swirling around the CPHACK ruling of Monday, March 27th. What exactly does Mattel have rights to? And what about those who own a copy of the cphack program currently? Read the opinions of some prominent legal scholars on this issue." ery worth reading.
Someone in the employ of the ACLU or the FSF or one of the other organizations who are willing and able to actually fight this should:
- Take the cphack source
- Modify it so that it's only use is to display the CyberPatrol block list (to avoid accusations that this is a tool to allow children to access porn)
- Release it under the GPL **PROPERLY**, with the COPYING file, the copyright signed over to the FSF, and the other required hoop-jumping
And then stand and deliver when Mattel comes knocking.
The original CPhack authors have done their bit. Now it's the turn of the Big Boys.
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Mattel could be doing us all a favor by pursuing this. We've been waiting for a GPL test case quite a while. This one would even test the 17 U.S.C. 205e issue. Maybe we should consider funding Mattel's legal beagles? :-)
And now for the rant: The logic of this line of argument is detestable, really. Why indeed should contracts be drafted around the concept of money. Whatever happened to quid pro quo? The GPL says: "Use this software as you like, change it as you like. But let's share that change." This is not a commercial transaction. The last time I heard, contracts/licenses covering non-monetary forms of compensation are legal and enforceable. Many free software programmers are NOT in it for the money.
This Mattel Flap and the DeCSS flap have my gears moving on why the geek elite are getting their butts kicked.
It seems to me that we are fighting large multi-national companies on their turf. Even worse it seems that national borders aren't very effective at stoping litigation.
I think this all steams from the fact that we are American centric on this issue. I wouldn't be suprised if the reason guys signed their soul to Mattel was because the ACLU didn't communicate with them.
More so, should the ACLU be in charge of this case? The A stands for American. Sure one of the guys was from Canada and that's pretty much the 51st state, but the other guy?
I think what this is comming down to is the geeks need an international legal/political organization.
Kind'a like the EFF but a lot larger.
Since you accept it by clicking and not signing...
Damn, all these evil thoughts keep popping up.
Fight Spammers!
This whole GPL thing is a tempest in a teapot. See what one of the authors has to say.
whether CPHack is GPL'd, owned in whole by Mattel, or whatever, because we don't need CPHack anymore.
The essay was written. The list was exposed. It is (and has always been) well known that CP is a piece of crap that doesn't do what it's supposed to and does other stuff behind your back if you let it.
Now, if they want to use this as a test case for the GPL, they are only going to wind up hurting the FSF and the Open Source community. The GPL had more teeth when companies took it at face value. To test it is to weaken it.
--Threed
Browsing at +2, or else on my Cell Phone. I see no trolls.
Long live the Internet.
Seriously, the "Internet" as I remember it from over a decade ago, was a small collection of a few thousands of interconnected Universities sharing EMail, a very small Usenet (in those days, one could actually read all of alt.sex... and enjoy actual conversations and discussions), and FTP.
It was mainly a closed system. No riff-raff public allowed in. Certainly no advertising or commercial business allowed. It was a community.
And then, all at about the same time, the Internet became open and Webified.
And that's when it died. When it became affordable, when Joe Moron could easily access it, when it became allowable to conduct commercial business...
One of the drawbacks to our computer age is a near-complete loss of history.
Almost everyone--and I mean that most literally: certainly there aren't more than a few hundred thousand people who date back to ARPANet days--has absolutely no clue why and how the Internet came to be.
All they are aware of is that it has pretty graphics, decent search engines, and you can buy porn from home.
They don't know that there are philosophical and moral battles being played out. They don't know about nor understand the EToy(s) issue; they don't blame the MPAA for wanting to stop theft of artist's songs; they want the government to put a stop to kiddypr0n; they've never known EMail without spam and don't even realize that it could be any different.
They watch network television, for cripes sake!
Face it: the lowest common denominator now has access to the Internet, and he actively *wants* the government to keep him safe and secure.
And those proles outnumber the geeks and old-timers ten thousand to one.
They demand a regulated net. They accept a commercially-driven net. They are afraid of freedom of expression.
They are afraid to step out of the tiny box they live their lives in and realize that when everyone pulls together, we can have a pretty damned special and hopeful world.
The Internet is dead.
Long live the Internet.
--
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
While the implications for GPL in general and reverse engineering, and all of that are Highly Important, there seems to be a general silence about the, as I see it, FAR more dire consequences here.
Not only is Mattel going after the program, it's also going after the ESSAY and the BLACKLIST. Wait a minute here! Is this ruling saying that while the government can't censor, private companies can censor people--even non-employees??? This is especially frightful considering the CyberPatrol practice of blacklisting sites critical of CyberPatrol even if the user is only filtering, say, porn or whatnot.
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
I thought I'd write a piece about this when it was all over, but now I feel the need to speak up a little. Let's see if I can clarify some things for you.
I've settled with Mattel, through my attorney.
Why we wanted to settle? Well, let's see... As far as I'm concerned, we did what we set out to do; to show that the hash used in CP was not secure, and that the banlist contains lot's of questionable items. Implicitly, we suggest they change to a real secure hash, and take the review-process of suggestions for bans a little bit more seriously. We included the software as proof of concept. Now we move on to other things.
About the licence, copyright and what not. First we must keep our perspective on things. I honestly didn't believe for a second that Mattel would go after us in the courts. At the most I thought that maybe they would contact us in email, requesting we withdraw the files, though I held for more probable that they'd simply update the encryption, making our software void and that'd be it. With hindsight, I guess I'm just really really naivë. I certainly never ment for this to hit the courts (as some seem to be suggesting). This explains in some way why things are so 'murky' as far as licenses go. I can speak only for myself, but my take was that our work would be free for anyone to do whatever they wanted with (I've gotten email saying it was used as a teaching aid, a perfect example of good use, IMHO). So, I wanted something in the essay about this, so I added the part about anyone being allowed to mirror it and so forth. This was a late addition and I informed Matthew about it. I did however make one big mistake, and that is that "GPL" string. You see, when I finished 'cphack' (which got it's name not because it's can be used to 'hack past' CP, but because it is a quick hack, basically written by me top down. I know it's a piece of crap as far as 'engineering' goes, but that is often the case with hacks, no?), anyway, I had finished the software and thought'd I'd write something in the header expressing my intentions as to it's use, distribution and so forth, and so I entered simply 'Released under the GPL'. Now, I made a mental note about speaking to Matthew, that maybe we should release the whole thing under the GPL. For one thing, part of the code was simply my translation of his c-code, so I had to ask him about it, right? Guess what? I forgot. It really didn't hit me until it made conversation on Slashdot, and now I'm not sure what, if anything, I can do about it. All I ever wanted was for people to use the (admittedly crappy) software in any way they saw fit, never having to wonder (or ask) if it was okay by me. As far as I'm concerned, the string weren't meant to be in the distribution, and Mattel got my rights to it.
Now for the titles I've gotten. I have never called myself a hacker. The press have. My sincere apologies to the real hackers out there. I do share most of the mentality, as described in the first third of Levy's _Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution_ and in the Jargon File, but I am not yet one myself. Some have called my a student. I am not a student (well, not officially, I'm on a never ending quest for knowledge, but I don't think that counts). Someone even referred to me -- or me and Matthew both -- as a cryptanalysts! I am not a cryptanalyst, but thanks for your faith in my abilities. If for some reason you have to call me something more than simply 'Eddy', you can use the term 'programmer'.
I am that, at least.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
A particularly interesting piece is an off-the-cuff comment at the end of the article which says that free licenses are generally held to be revokable.
If true, this has huge consequences for the GPL and other open source licenses. I am sure FSF tried its best to make the license non-revokable, but it's up to courts to decide whether this effort succeeded. If there were to be a ruling that the copyright holder can revoke an open-source license granted previously -- oh, boy!
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
The cp4hack was not GPLd, as anyone who took a look at the original source could easily see. They basically released it under a public domain type of license. From the original release
"The source is included, and you can do whatever you want with it"
Given that, ANYONE can modify and claim copyright on the software. I see no legal way that Mattel could use copyright law to revoke anyone's use of this software for any reason. They really need the judge to rule that the software is illegal for some reason and thus give a justification for someone to pull it from a web site. As it stands now, Mattel has no leg to stand on.
Let's face it, they wrote a pathetically weak program, and they deserved to have it reverse engineered.
However....we must remember...this can only
be a partial test. Even if it fails to hold up
due to obscure US law...that does NOT mean that
other countries laws and court systems would
do the same.
As long as even one country fully honors the GPL,
almost all countries would honor mattels
copyright...which is why the GPL is important...
without the GPL mattel could stop mirrors in
justr about any country
All one has to do is put up a mirror in a free
country...then its all set. Now comes the
questions....
If a US citizen, residing in the US, puts up
something on a web server that is in another
country...is he bound by US law when that server
is distributing files to US residents?
I really could see arguments go both ways on this.
(somehow I think courts would rule that they
are...tho what would you expect? authoritarians
don't like to give up their illusions of power)
What about links? Would it be illegal for my web
page, in the US on a US server, to link a copy of
the program that is on a non-us server, in a
country where the distribution is deemed legal?
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"