FC: CyberPatrol decryption utility mirrored in response to lawsuit

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

It should be obvious to anyone who has half a clue about the Internet what 
happens when a company or government tries to stomp out something it 
doesn't like.

The offending bytes appear in every corner of the globe.

It happened in the case of DeCSS 
(http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/politech.cgi?name=mirror), and it's 
happening now with the CyberPatrol decryption utility. So far the 
verboten-ware is at:

http://bur-jud-118-039.rh.uchicago.edu/
ftp://blackstar.myip.org/pub/mirrored/
http://www.shub-internet.org/cp4/cp4break.html
http://www.wwcn.org/~grit/free/
http://www.reed.edu/~turnerd/cyberpatrol.tar.gz
http://www.mit.edu/~ocschwar/
http://members.optusnet.com.au/~kris_j/rio.html
ftp://128.148.190.238
http://cr939566-a.bloor1.on.wave.home.com:2600/FusionReactor.html#mattel
http://www.openpgp.net/censorship/index.html

Slashdot.org thread:
  http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/03/16/0022227&mode=thread

Background:
  http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/politech.cgi?name=cyberpatrol

-Declan


> Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 00:51:45 -0500 (EST)
> From: Dave Gowan <dgowan () tfn net>
> Reply-To: Dave Gowan <dgowan () tfn net>
> To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
> Subject: RE: CyberPatrol sues coders who revealed flaws in its software
>
>
> On Wed, 15 Mar 2000, Declan McCullagh wrote:
>
> > >They also offered a small ``cphack'' utility for ``people oppressed by 
> Cyber
> > >Patrol'' that, when run on a parent's computer, reveals the password that
> > >blocks questionable Web sites -- and also discloses the product's entire
> > >list of more than 100,000 Internet sites deemed unsuitable for children.
>
> DeClan:
>         Let me see if I understand this... the company made an
> inferior blocking product, not hacker-proof, and they sell it for
> $30, and now that someone has exposed it as a deficient product,
> they want the courts to guarantee they still get to make the same
> large profit despite the defects in the product?
>
>         I like the phrase above, "...discloses the
> product's entire list of more than 100,000 internet sites deemed
> unsuitable for children."  Maybe now we should get the cphack
> utility, extract the 100,000 sites, and publish the list at
> several sites, so everyone can see if they've been blocked when
> they shouldn't have, and if they have lost any income as a
> consequence.  The newspapers would probably like to the see the
> list, too, to see if it is fair.  Send the list to the Wall
> Street Journal and to Jessie Berst (Berst's AnchorDesk) at ZDNet.
>
>         I wrote articles in three newspapers on this issue of
> mandatory software blocking, saying that blocking should be up
> to parents and not government and not any third parties; I'd
> like to see this one exposed if possible.
>
> Dave Gowan
> Tallahassee

***********

> From: gep2 () terabites com
> Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 23:41:00 -0600
> To: declan () well com
>
> The CyberPatrol people (and their attorneys) are idiots.
>
> I know of NO better way to ENSURE that the site will be mirrored around the
> world, and that tens of thousands of offline copies of it will be created.
>
> If they're hoping to help their cause, this is the WRONG way for 
> CyberPatrol to
> do that.  The Net doesn't take kindly to this kind of legal bullying!
>
> Gordon Peterson
> http://web2.airmail.net/gep2/
> Support the Anti-SPAM Amendment!  Join at http://www.cauce.org/
> 12/19/98: the day the Conservatives demonstrated their scorn for their
>    fraudulent sham of representative government.  Voters, remember it!


***********

> Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 01:13:42 -0600 (CST)
> From: sam th <sam () bur-jud-118-039 rh uchicago edu>
> To: Declan McCullagh <declan () wired com>
> Subject: Re: [dvd-discuss] CyberPatrol sues programmers who published info
>  on encryption
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> I have a mirror on my website.
> However, since this hit slashdot, enough mirroring has gone on already
> that the genie is out of the bottle, so to speak.
>
>
>                                 sam th
>                                 sytobinh () uchicago edu
>                                 http://bur-jud-118-039.rh.uchicago.edu 
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.0.1 (GNU/Linux)
> Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org
>
> iD8DBQE40Imot+kM0Mq9M/wRAvyMAJ9291qKE+xhFi/GuXijmDWwANvlRACgolCt
> oEvhWJpaXDvaZ5UU2l4agos=
> =0LHg
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


***********


> From: "William H. Geiger III" <whgiii () openpgp net>
> Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 02:03:22 -0600
> To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
> Subject: Re: FC: CyberPatrol sues coders who revealed flaws in its 
> software, from AP
> X-Mailer: MR/2 Internet Cruiser Edition for OS/2 v2.06 c06
>
> In <4.3.0.20000315220653.02666f00 () mail well com>, on 03/15/00
>    at 09:07 PM, Declan McCullagh <declan () well com> said:
>
> >Background:
> >   http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/politech.cgi?name=cyberpatrol
>
> >If you want to download the software before the injunction hits:
> >   http://hem.passagen.se/eddy1/reveng/cp4/cp4break.html
>
> >If anyone sets up a mirror site, please let me know.
>
> Hi Declan,
>
> You should have known I couldn't resist. :)
>
> http://www.openpgp.net/censorship/cp4break/index.html
>
> You might want to make reference to
>
> http://www.openpgp.net/censorship/index.html
>
> As I will have links to the above mirror and additional sites that I am
> mirroring.


***********

> Date:         Thu, 16 Mar 2000 05:34:09 -0500
> From: "Peter D. Junger" <junger () SAMSARA LAW CWRU EDU>
> Subject:      Re: CyberPatrol (censorware) sues reverse-engineers
>
> I have downloaded all the files at
> <http://hem.passagen.se/eddy1/reveng/cp4/cp4break.html>, but am not
> sure that I got all the hot stuff, since at least one file was
> missing.
>
> It turns out to be a wonderful tutorial on decryption, modular artithmetic,
> 8086 assembly language, etc.
>
> I don't know yet whether I dare mirror it.  It's got crypto in it,
> but under the new regulations I guess I can do it.
>
> I suspect that the big risk is the DMCA.  It does make a wonderful
> example of how to circumvent weak encryption.  But I am not sure
> that the circumvention has anything to do with copyrighted materials.
>
> I'm off now, but will look at it more closely later.
>
> But, anyway, I wanted to point out that this is seriously useful
> educational stuff; it's not just a cute hack, although I am sure
> that it is that too.  The programmers explain how they went about
> opening up the filter program, using intuition, a disassembler,
> and a lot of skill and knowledge.
>
>
> --
> Peter D. Junger--Case Western Reserve University Law School--Cleveland, OH
>  EMAIL: junger () samsara law cwru edu    URL:  http://samsara.law.cwru.edu
>          NOTE: junger () pdj2-ra f-remote cwru edu no longer exists


***********

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