FC: Boston Globe says judge should not restrict cphack.exe program

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

Judge Harrington seemed to refer to this today (talking about what he read 
in the papers), so perhaps it had an impact in making him take concerns 
over free speech more seriously than he otherwise would have. Certainly 
Mattel has argued that there are no free speech aspects to this case.

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/087/editorials/Cyber_censorship+.shtml


> Declan,
>
> Thanks for your help on this editorial.  Here's a copy, as it run on
> Monday:
>
> The World Wide Web has become a cornucopia of free expression. Government 
> should impose restrictions without a
> trial only when the risk of immediate harm is great. Federal Judge Edward 
> Harrington in Boston should reconsider his
> restraining order that forced the removal of material criticizing the 
> Cyber Patrol filtering program.
>
> Individuals have a right to put Cyber Patrol on their computers. But other 
> people have a right to criticize the selection of
> banned sites, many of which are pornographic but some not, such as Planned 
> Parenthood. Cyber Patrol argues that two
> persons went beyond mere criticism when they posted, on the Internet, code 
> used to create the program. The judge
> needs to decide whether criticism protected by the First Amendment 
> includes the code or whether its publication is barred
> by copyright law.
>
> The two code breakers are from Canada and Sweden and have already removed 
> the program from the Web in response
> to the judge's order.
>
> American sympathizers made copies of the program, and Cyber Patrol is 
> spreading subpoenas around the Internet to
> force these mirror sites to shut down. It sent one to Declan McCullagh, 
> reporter for the Web magazine Wired News, who
> posted links to mirror sites on Politechbot.com, his Web site. He refuses 
> to reveal the names of people who visited the
> mirrors from his site. Compelling him to do so would be a violation of 
> freedom of the press.
>
> The American Civil Liberties Union will appear before Harrington today to 
> argue that his temporary order against the
> mirror sites should not become a longer lasting injunction.
>
> Cyber Patrol engineers have rewritten their program so that the broken 
> code will not affect it. And Cyber Patrol has the
> ability, through the Internet, to instruct computers with the filter to 
> prevent visits to sites that post the code breaker.
>
> The code breaker program is doing no harm, even though it is still 
> available on mirror sites not yet reached by subpoenas.
> The judge should let people publish what they want until he holds a trial 
> on the copyright question. Injunctions should not
> be used to stifle speech unless absolutely necessary.
>
> All content herein is © Globe Newspaper Company and may not be republished 
> without permission. If you have questions or comments
> about the archives, please contact us at any time.

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