Re: implications of recent legal trends

[stuart () SiliconDefense com (Stuart Staniford-Chen)]

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"Mila, Brian D" wrote:

> 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.

Thanks to all for the clarifications.  Now I have the bigger picture, it
does seem less worrying.

Stuart.

-- 
Stuart Staniford-Chen --- President --- Silicon Defense
                   stuart () silicondefense com
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