Re: RE: implications of recent legal trends

[shafik () acm poly edu (Shafik Yaghmour)]

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On Tue, 18 Apr 2000, Mila, Brian D wrote:

> <snip>
>
> The article failed to mention that the reason for the lawsuit was because
> Cyber Patrol was copyrighted
> with express limitations against decompilation and reverse-engineering,
> which is what was used to 
> expose the secret list of blocked sites from the Cyber Patrol program.
> However, this doesn't apply
> to fragrouter, whisker, etc., that only supply input which the program
> wasn't designed to handle.  
> Subtle difference? Perhaps.  But one that the lawyers are quick to point
> out.  The real meat of the
> story (not mentioned in that article) was that the author of cphack had
> GPL'ed it, so legally can 
> Mattel claim the rights to it? I believe this is why the ACLU got involved
> in the first place.  
>
> Brian

        No ACLU got involved way before and because they and many others
believe that no company should have the right to take away our rights
to reverse engineer a product for reasons of compatibility or criticism.
The fact that is GPL'ed is pretty interesting and if Mattel tried to
pursue anyone else this will probably be tested and if they choose not to
then it does not matter. 

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