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Mattel Dislikes Being Embarrassed (UPDATED)
from the DMCA-in-action dept.
Update: 03/16 6:50 PM EDT by J : The problems started with the AP story (cited above). The decryption software posted by the activists was described as "a method for kids to deduce their parents' password and access [pornographic] Web sites."
This was the spin that Mattel's PR people put on the story. They surely didn't want the news media reporting that activists had posted software that exposes their secret, hidden blacklist to the light of day. That wouldn't sound so good - it might get people to ask "why are these blacklists encrypted at all?"
Instead, Mattel's PR decided to say that the decryption software allows kids to view pornography. Predictable - this is the same smear that's always dragged out - but the media swallowed it uncritically. (The AP story was repeated on cnet, and everywhere else that uses the AP feed.)
Even the normally-critical Declan McCullagh wrote a story for Wired whose opening sentence was corporate propaganda. "Toy-maker Mattel has sued two programmers who revealed how to circumvent its CyberPatrol blocking software." Thankfully, the rest of his article gave the full story.
Mattel is not upset about CPHack's minor feature of circumventing the program when installed. Peacefire has been distributing their own instructions to disable Cyber Patrol for months now, and hasn't been sued. (They're pretty simple instructions, too.)
Mattel is upset that people can see the flaws in their software which were previously hidden by encryption. They want to continue selling bad software and will use the full force of law to prevent you from learning how bad it is. Legal papers have already been served and the proceedings will presumably begin shortly. Stay tuned - and don't trust press releases.
Re:LawSuit-Happy Americans try to police the world (Score:3)
Lately I have developed my own personal theory as to why american compagnies (and their government) do things like this: They are not used to dealing directly with foreigners.
This may sound strange, but I actually believe this to be the case. Even though the US society is probably the most diversified one you can think of, the US population appears to be sadly lacking when it comes to understanding and accepting different cultural ways of doing things.
- Recently I saw a program on Discovery, where NASA had arranged 'cultural exchange' meetings, so that their engineers, who will work on the International Space Station, could learn the fine points in socializing with foreigners. Apparently the Japanese/American combination is an especially difficult one, but Eastern Europe/American is problematic as well. Expect a russian to ask how much you earn in a year during casual conversation...
- 5 years ago McDonalds [mcdonalds.com] sued a man here in Denmark for calling himself and his tiny sausage shop for McAllan (he had been a wiskey collector for decades). Ultimately the danish supreme court made a ruling [www.ipb.dk] (in Danish) in favoir of McAllan, which can be interpreted as 'you must be kidding?'. It should be noted that the danish media were unanimously on the side of McAllan.
- Whenever an american megacorp buys a danish compagny, they almost always make headlines when they try and dictate new employee policies without first discussing the new rules with the people on the floor. 'From today smoking will only take place outside the buildings.' is definitely not the danish way of approaching a sensitive problem. Nor is asking for what is considered sensitive personal data, like health or economich status, during job interviews.
I could go on, but you get the picture. Basically 'the american way' is often the source for much headshaking and/or laughter over here I am sad to say. I mean, how would you react if you were told that a society existed where 90.000 children were killed or injured by gunshots each year, and where major law firms waste huge amounts of energy on cataloguing all faults in *all* the pavements in New York, so they can later document negligence on the part of The City of New York when people trip over their own feet?The most amusing part about the Mattel case is, that the information they are trying to get hold of from the Swedish ISP probably doesn't even exist, and even if it did, it wouldn't help much. I have downloaded the CPHack code together with everyone else and their mother, and I cannot be traced. When asked my ISP has responded in their FAQ that they don't even keep logs of what contents which person download, neither through their dialup connection, nor from webpages they host. This kind of data is considered covered by the danish laws of the right to personal privacy. If a (danish) court ruled that *I* personally probably was doing something illegal, then *I* could be the subject of surveillance when online. Danish ISPs as a rule only log just enough information to be able to bill the right persons, that is all. I believe this to be the case in Sweden too, because they are even more restrictive when it comes to public access to 'sensitive' personal information. So, Mattel, you will at best loose track of me at a specific dial-in pool at one of the largest ISPs in Denmark. Good luck!
So now I am waiting for something like the DeCSS case to surface here in Denmark. I am in contact with a journalist of a small but very influential newspaper, and I have talked about these issues with him. He nearly keeled over when I explained the background for the DeCSS brouhaha in Norway. He didn't think they would have been able to get away with that here in Denmark or even in Norway for that matter, but apparently MPAA was able to put a lot of pressure on some insecure public officials up there. He has assured me that a 'Danish police abides US Court ruling' type headline would definitely be interesing, though a particular case should be examined carefully before going to press, of course. Will be interesting to see the outcome of the DeCSS case.
And now to something completely different: Fuck!
Would some kind sould please explain to us poor ignorant non-native english speakers why this word is so bad? For some reason americans tend to go ballistic when this word is used. Yes, it is a 'naughty' one, but this is the real world, remember? If I used something similar in danish when communicating, people would at most consider me immature and probably just ignore me.
a sack of lawyers (Score:3)
As a side note, do the authors *want* the code mirrored, or just distributed directly? I'll have to look again, but I didn't see a license in the code. Obviously the code and essay make it clear that it's a protest on principle, but it'd be nice to know the desired propogation.
J
Need for Freenet (Score:3)
The rest of the time I read about Echelon, big company bully tactics, the great firewall of China and censoring Fahrenheit 451 and start to wonder if the paranoid aren't actually a cabal that tries to look ridiculous in order for us "normal" people not to notice that they're the only ones seeing the true situation.
Add me to the log (Score:3)
The hideous truth is that we're exactly the sorts of people that censorware advocates are trying to protect the children from - intelligent, progressive, think-for-ourselves - we're a major risk to the estabished order.
I think that web sites against censorware should find a way to detect a censorware product and display a banner, instead of the requested page, indicating that the site does not support censorware and the website can not be viewed if you're using a censorware filter. Then perhaps parents may be forced to (re)consider the product.
Hmmm... (Score:3)
Personally, I think they want the logs so that they can add the list of sites involved to those blocked by their software. Then they can say that they're doing it to prevent kids from downloading this "dangerous" piece of "contraband".
Make it clear to censorware users they are out! (Score:3)
This is an excellent suggestion for a partial technical solution to a technical / political problem!
Assuming censorware can be identified by an http daemon, getting a large percentage of web maintainers to "self-block" their content from users of censorware could have a very interestin impact. Imagine an adults ire when they discover an ever growing number of legitimate sites they want to access have refused to deliver their content because of the censorware they installed on their children's behalf. Instead they get a banner berating them for using the product (perhaps with relevant links to anti-censorware sites which they discover to their dismay are censored!). Although it is unrealistic to expect
sites like Yahoo (aptly named, c.f. "yahoos" in Gulliver's Travels) and Google to join in, these big sites rely in no small part on the smaller, personal, and useful sites many of us maintain for our respective comminities. By "freezing out" the censorware users we become not only a large voice against such products, but an evergrowing incentive for people to drop the use of the offending filters.
Alternatively, for those who find cutting off censorware users entirely to be too draconian, one could set up a banner page the censorware user is forced to confront and (at least the first time) read, before continuing to the actual content. Idaelly such a banner page would include links to anti-censorware site and reputable news sites documenting their abuses. After having seen the message once they would of course click through quickly without reading, but that doesn't matter for two reasons: (1) They will have read the message at least once and (2) the message will be reiterated on a subliminal level every time they see such a banner, even if they don't read it explicitly. For the same reason you see Coke and Nike logos plastered everywhere, seeing educational, anti-censorware logos everywhere will have an effect.
Finally, if the censorware products censore a growing number of legitimate sites for displaying such a page and/or logo, this will merely add even fuel to the argument that using such software is much more dangerous to the children one is trying to protect than the so-called harmful material one is trying to protect them against, both by cutting them off from important resources and education materials and because of the distortion its politically/economically motivated censorship has on the public discourse and the ability of its customers to form their own opinions in an informed manner.
In short, I like your idea very much. While not a panacea, it provides the possibility for confronting censorware users with the tradeoff they have made in a very "in-your face" way. The more sites to take this stance, the more they would either be confronted with the cold facts of the choice they have made, or the less usable the net becomes to them because of the software they are using. Either would tend to put people off form continuing its use, which is a net positive for the net as a whole.
If any apache/html gurus out there could toss together a quick 'howto' to accomplish this I would be happy to support it at our site. Alas, I am too buried with work right now to dig into this and impliment it right now myself (call me lazy if you will, though swamped and exhausted would be closer to the truth).
Yet again... (Score:3)
Obviously the US court has no jurisdiction, but will render a verdict anyways. I just have to wonder how US citizens like their tax payer money being spent on operating courts whose judgement has no relevance? This would piss me off to no end if I were american.
-- iCEBaLM
Re:Real information (Score:3)
Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.
Everyone who has downloaded it (Score:3)
Not to mention a GROSS misuse of logs, and a GROSS disregard for privacy.
You'd think they just downloaded crack cocaine or something, you can't just track down people because you think they downloaded something YOU DON'T LIKE.
Re:Warning: Disinformation! (Score:3)
Your analogy is false. Look at it this way. If I buy a safe, and fill it with secret documents, and then SELL YOU THE SAFE without giving you a key or the combination, how can I logically complain if you break into the safe? Manipulating data that you have legally acquired is not even CLOSE to being the same thing as breaking and entering, as you would have us believe. This is a common argument when these things come up, and it is always false.
Re:Yet again... (Score:4)
Hence, "by clicking OK you agree" would fall back to "by using this software you agree," and the latter's perfectly fine, since plenty of reverse engineering can be done without ever running a piece of software.
The World is America's Bitch (Score:4)
Tell that to the US courts who feel no compunction whatsoever is handing down injunctions against people in other countries for activities which, obviously to any casual observer, do not concern the aforementioned courts in the least (c.f. DeCSS, etoy.com).
Tell that to the US special agents who routinely kidnap people abroad, bringing them over to the United States to stand trial under US laws, often for activities or behavior which was committed outside of the US and therefor outside of US jurisdiction.
Tell that to the US Army, which on more than one occasion has invaded a country for violation of US Law (remember Panama and Noriega?), completely at odds with both international law and international norms.
Tell that to the IMF, the World Bank, and the WTO, who can coerce with extreme economic threats any government (including, ironically, the US) legislation of nearly any kind under the argument that trade is "unfairly restricted" otherwise. Definitions are deliberately vague, changing to fit the political agenda of the moment.
Most of all, tell that to the Politicians whose hubris in ordering such actions threatens to destroy not just the external victims of their intoxication with power, but the US itself.
Not that they'll listen. After all, if they won't even listen to their own people (and from personal experience I can assure you they don't), they certainly won't listen to a bunch of durn' pinko commie bedwettin' ferrener's anyway. Still, the more voices added to the chorus, the more difficulty they'll have in ignoring it, over time.
Much more importantly, tell your governments to start standing up to the US and stop being our lapdogs! After all, if we lose the battle to stop and reverse the hemorrage of civil liberties here, it would be nice to have somewhere to escape to, in order to fight again another day. If your governments continue to behave as an extention of our own, this option won't exist and the downward spiral and attrition of civil rights and liberties may well reach an irreversable point.
Re:The block list (Score:4)
Re:Everyone who has downloaded it (Score:4)
I would like to suggest ROT-13 as an appropriate method. That's probably enough to keep them busy for years.
-BW
Re:Short code please (Score:4)
Yeah, and it needs to fit on a T-shirt, too!
--
We deserve this. (Score:4)
Step 1. Get organized
Step 2. Recruit your neighbor.
Step 3. Get involved
Or else forget about it.
download it (Score:4)
http://hem.passagen.se/eddy1
even if you just delete it right after
#----------------------------
$mrp=~s/mrp/elite god/g;
Re: encrypted lists and false positives (Score:4)
Because there's a sizable (if misguided) market for censorware, there are quite a few companies vying for that market all of whom consider their prime asset to be their blocked site list, and if there were a plain text copy of one company's list, it would be very easy for every other censorware company to add every site in that list to their own, this negating the original company's advantage.
Now why a company wouldn't think that a list with 75% false positives (assuming that's typical - it might or might not be) isn't considered a liability is very interesting: They get less shit for a false positive than for a false negative. Virtually all censorware products have ways of overriding both. So imagine the two scenarios:
Because of this, censorware companies feel that the larger list they have, the better, no matter where that list comes from. And therefore they try to protect their list from being stolen by encrypting it. Badly.
So that's why. I know it doesn't make any sense, but that's the rationale.
[TMB]
Warning: Disinformation! (Score:4)
Look at this opening statement:
A company that makes popular software to block children from pornographic Internet sites filed an unusual lawsuit late Wednesday against two computer experts who developed a method for kids to deduce their parents' password and access those Web sites.
Anyone else notice the disinformation in this? The censorware doesn't just block children, it blocks everyone. They're making it sound like the people who cracked the encryption are promoting children seeing porn instead of promoting the anti-censorship movement. Way to keep neutral, Yahoo.
But then see this:
Microsystems also asked the judge to order the Swedish Internet company where the bypass utility is published to turn over records identifying everyone who visited the Web site or downloaded the program.
Um, why? The only reason I can possibly think of, which is pretty paranoid, is that Microsystems plans on using this as data, to say "hey, look how many people can now see porn whenever they want to, instead of letting us decide what is decent for them!" If you want to get really paranoid, you can say Microsystems wants to track who downloaded it and say "sorry, you've gotta get rid of that program", but I'm not sure how far you can trace IP addresses...
And the common "their encryption sucks, it's their fault" argument is trash. If someone breaks into your house because they could smash down your door, is it your fault that you didn't have steel bars? It's a question of whether or not reverse engineering like this is legal, not a "you suck, get better" situation.
------------
Real information (Score:4)
What has happened here is that someone did an expert(at least compared to the people that did the programming) analysis of a cryptographic aproach. Something that is specifically allowed under US law.
Save your breaking and entering analogies for piracy. This was an act of free speech consumers have a right to know what they are paying for. The list of blocked sites should not be encrypted with anything more powerfull then a simple shift cipher to keep children from looking at the list in a text browser. The person that bought the program has the *RIGHT* to know what sites are being blocked.
This encryption scheme is not a method to stop piracy or digital theft. It has one reason for existance, which is to keep people from knowing what sites and what rules are used to block sites. Reverse engineering is completely legal. Therefor if they don't want to see their precious list fall into the wrong hands they should use a decent encryption algorithm.
Re:mirrors! (Score:4)
Re:peacefire down? (Score:5)
1. We didn't post the Cyber Patrol block list. We posted a utility that can cryptographically attack the block list. In order to read the decrypted block list, a user would have to already have a copy of Cyber Patrol, which they can't get from us. Our posting does not contain material from Cyber Patrol, except for a few lines of hex dump and assembly code embedded in the essay we wrote explaining the break.
2. Although we sympathise with Peacefire and think they are fine people, we are not Peacefire. Peacefire deserves credit and blame for many things, but not for this particular project. We did this independently of them. It wasn't a Peacefire project.
Block porn, allow the KKK (Score:5)
Just for the fun, I tried grep'ping for the most known porn site and they were all there.
Strangely enough, I looked for known URLS of the Ku Kluxx Klan, none showed up.
Yeah! Porn is bad, kids should not know about sex!
Lets inculcate them racism and hate instead.
This law does nothing for me as a consumer (Score:5)
I just read this, and am enraged at the very thought of this litigation. I am a parent, and thought for a while about using some of this software because my time to surf with my kids is limited. I never did it though because it goes against everything that I believe about parenting. Those that hide things from their kids only ensure that their kids will hear it from somebody else, and that their values are not the same. Why even go there? Any smart parent will deal with the issue and give their kids the support that they need to make smart decisions. The software is nothing more than a cop out.
Given that I would not use this sort of software, I still have to say that parents that do choose this (lazy!) path have a clear right to understand what it is they are getting for their money. How else are they going to know? Type in a bunch of URLs and see if they are blocked? Maybe if they typed in a lot of them they would understand what was being done. Heck if they thought about it for a while, they probably could just deduce the rule sets based on the content of the blocked sites! Would this then be reverse engineering? I hardly see that as being illegal. I think the DMCA only serves to empower the corporations with the ability to keep their customers stupid. The chances of any group of parents doing this is almost none. Who's interest is best represented here? Not mine!
This decryption is a service to me and reinforces my decision not to use this type of software. There are many ways around this sort of thing anyway. Some of the easier ones that I can think of are easily within the abilities of smart children that I know. Information like this flies through the kid network faster than you think. If one of them really wants to know, I don't think that this sort of software will stop them for long. Just one kid wanting to be popular or cool with a printer could print the content, and the methods of getting it and show it off at school. Give that a few weeks and pretty soon almost all of them who want to see will. Simple. The only ones that can have an effect on this are the parents.
We deserve the right of full-disclosure on any technology that can have this much impact on our lives. How will this happen if it can't be verified. Trust our goverment to handle it? Not bloody likely.
Who can we write to? I am beginning to realize that this is going to be a long battle. Fight it or become just another dumb computer USER.Oh, the irony. (Score:5)
That's the drill, Mattel! Teach little girls to want to grow up to be sex objects, but make sure they don't know what the "sex" part is about until they do grow up.
--
I see no problem here (Score:5)
Congratulate your child for seeing through your silly attempt, and having graduated to the level of being able to view the real world for themselves.
Your kid will trust you so much more when you trust them. (vice versa works too)