Mattel/Cyber Patrol Censors Critics Again

We just ran a story on Friday about Mattel, which makes the Web-censoring software product Cyber Patrol, and their attempted suppression of an essay and utility to decrypt CP's list of banned sites. Since then, things have gotten even uglier. Mattel's attorneys have been mass-mailing the mirrors of Eddy Jansson's site, demanding that ISPs remove them -- the original site and some of the mirrors have been taken down already. Just to make sure though, Mattel is updating the Cyber Patrol blacklists for all of their customers to include the homepages of the authors and all of the mirrors, blocked under every blocking category the product has. (more ...)

This means, for example, that if you have Cyber Patrol set to block "Full Nudity", you might think you're blocking pictures of nude human beings, but you're actually banning criticism of Mattel and the homepages of people Mattel is suing even if the decryption utility and essay aren't hosted there, such as Matthew Skala's homepage. Feel free to download the demo version of Cyber Patrol, update the filter list to the newest one, and check this out -- or just type it into their search engine, though that won't tell you it's banned under every category. Does Skala's page contain full nudity? No? Then you're seeing an example of a company purposefully and deliberately lying about the content of a page in order to serve their own agenda.

Same thing if you chose Violence/Profanity, or Partial Nudity, or Sexual Acts, Gross Depictions, Intolerance, or Satanic/Cult, or Drugs/Drug Culture, Militant/Extremist, or Sex Education, or Gambling, or Alcohol and Tobacco -- guess what? "All categories" also include "or criticism of our company or product."

Welcome to America in the new millennium, where a corporation just made the decision to ban several documents from the World Wide Web. They did it unilaterally, without court review, without any notice to the public whatsoever, yet their decisions are now being carried out (the Cyber Patrol product automatically updates its list of banned sites on a daily or weekly basis) in public schools and libraries and companies across the country, for children and adults. (Cyber Patrol uses the same list for the "corporate firewall" versions of its products.)

A list of mirrors is still available. Get it while you can. Declan McCullagh, a journalist for Wired, has started an archive of case-related documents; -- he too has received the legal threats, despite never hosting the banned essay. (The .uni files are actually TIFF images of the documents.)

And just as I was finishing up this story, I've received an e-mail in my capacity as censorware.org webmaster. A woman wrote:

The link to the essay you mentioned on your page [our homepage] date 3/16/00 must not be correct. Could you e-mail me the essay? I am a high school librarian and am trying to find out more about what Cyber Patrol filters. Thank you.

I wrote back, among other things:

In fact the link was correct, but Mattel (the maker of Cyber Patrol) has filed suit against the authors of that essay and made legal threats to that ISP which caused them to delete the page. So, the page existed on Friday, but does not today.

I certainly understand your desire to find out what Cyber Patrol blocks, but they are going to great lengths to stop you from finding out.

This is typical from now on

This sort of behaviour is perfectly legal under the DMCA and UCITA. Expect to see a lot more of this kind of thing as the megacorps treat the little people as little more than feudal serfs.

Simple solution...

I was wondering about putting together a simple set of scripts file for the protection of corporation-censored programs, such as Decss and Cphack.

The script, on a given date, would format a Usenet post that would contain the uuencoded and zipped source code to the "censored" programs and post it on Usenet through an anonymous remailer.

Every 2 weeks (for instance), all Usenet users would therefore receive the censored programs. And the nice thing is, they cannot censor this, unless they can manage to shut down EVERY Usenet server, EVERY anonymous remailer and EVERY newsgroup in existence! Automatic routing around censorship.

This program would only post to relevant newsgroups and therefore avoid Spam. Another twist that could be added would be to select ONE newsgroup in a list and post only to this one. Hmmmm... alt.usenet.censored.software, anyone? =)

Has this ever been done before?

Preliminary Judgement

I haven't seen the Preliminary Injunction that came out late on Friday mentioned on /. yet. This [nytimes.com] New York Times story (bla bla bla free registration required) from Saturday indicates that Mattel thinks that the ruling extends to mirrors. That's not clear to me just from the story.

Anomalous: inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected

Re:ISPs with backbone

1. ISP's not in the US do not have to obey an order from a US court which lacks jurisdiction over them. No US court has jurisdiction in Sweden as far as I know.

2. If I ran an ISP, and got a court order to remove access to some documents which were in a user's account, guess what I would do?

I would remove access to those documents. NOT REMOVE OR DISABLE THE WHOLE ACCOUNT. I would still be obeying the order. I would not punish the user by removing his access which would restrict even legally non-disputed speech and deny him his right to access the Internet (which has has paid me for).

Why the Swedish ISP obeyed an order which appears to be outside the court's jurisdiction, and furthermore removed the whole account, thus banning the user from the Internet is beyond me. Well actually it isn't, ISPs are pro-censorship these days.

Fascism is now a major export of the United States.

I bought CyberPatrol and

You did too. You (taxpayers) paid for it with your tax money for the libaries and the schools.

Cyberpatrol is NOT "censorship", Mattel is!

What Mattel is doing by suing me [sorehands.com] and suing to block the CPHack information is censorship.

They are using lawsuits to silence comments about their wrongdoings!

Then don't buy their product

By getting the word out as to the hidden agenda, those who can influence IT purchases can recommend against purchasing this product and get something else... &nbsp We (at least alot of us) do have a choice.

I hate to say that although many consider that ignorance is bliss, info like this is worthwhile. &nbsp I know that a large corporation like Mattel (who has seen better days) is trying to protect it's reputation but more speech is the only way to do this, not less.

Speaking of censorship...

This makes me wonder if Mattel's website would be banned for child pornography. It says right on their main page:

"We Touch the Child in Everyone"

Re:Ooooohh, I like that

Seems like they have clear-cut statements about what each category filters, but they also have a disclaimer about non-responsibility for errors and omissions. For example, the Violence/Profanity category (listed below) sure doesn't seem like it should block a program unless you routinely use "unsigned int fuck" or something.

This might remove the possibility of a class action case from the users of the software, however it does save them from the websites they are incorrectly censoring. IANAL, but my recolection tells me that there are three critera for libel

1) You must know the information is false Mattel obviously knows that these sites criticizing them are not pornographic activities or anything else like this.

2) It must cause damage A portion of the web surfing population cannot get to this site, further this population is being told that they can't get to this site because it's run by racially intolerant pornographic satanic cults. If that doesn't harm their reputation I don't know what does.

3) It must be malicious This is clearly a case of retribution against a rival / competitor in order to damage them.

Not only does it look like they would have a case, they'd have a damn good case with a real good chance of winning.

Time for a Barbie-Q?

Perhaps Mattel would get a clue if a few thousand Barbie dolls were to go up in smoke. Given Barbie's popularity at the least it ought to get some media attention. Anyone interested?

Re:use the other media!

We are lucky because Mattel has been really sloppy here, I mean it should be pretty easy to point out to people:

A. None of these sites contain any nudity.

and

B. Mattel is blocking the sites as 'Full Nudity' anyway.

I would think that this is the kind of thing which would turn the average consumer against censorware if it got into the press. I would also think it is something that would turn the press against Mattel. I mean a lot of press companies have online versions, do they really want to be censored by Mattel if they print an article saying, "Mattels new toy X is proved to be toxic to children" or the like? We all know it could happen, we just need to get the newspapers with Web sites to see it.

Email CyberNOT and complain about bans

There is a form at http://www.cyberpatrol.com/forms/siter ev.asp [cyberpatrol.com] that lets you ask why a given site had been placed on CyberNOTs list of banned sites. Use it...

Re:I wrote a rant on this, feel free to plagiarize

Lets put some real world perspective on things here. Individuals have acquired a product, taken it apart, evaluated it and published their findings. Sounds like something car magazines, camera magazines, Consumer Reports, the Consumer Products Safety Commission, Department of Transportation, computer magazines, newspapers, the Food and Drug Administration, National Transportation Safety Commission, Sixty Minutes, 20/20, CNN .... have been doing for years. Up to now, nobody but the tobacco industry have been successful in suppressing such activity.

Can you imagine this type of response if Car and Driver Magazine wrote a bad review of a shock absorber? The magazine has an obligation to exercise care and be responsible in their invstigation and reporting. The component manufacturer would have a tough time stopping publication.

Re:Defamation of character?

From a brief [sorehands.com] posted at sorehands.com [sorehands.com].

A claim for libel requires proof of the following elements:
1. A defamatory communication about the complainant,
2. Which was untrue,
3. With respect to which the party complained of was either:
(a) in the case of a complainant that is not a public figure: negligent in ascertaining its truth or
(b)in the case of a public figure: acting with actual malice, in the sense of knowledge that the communication was false or having reckless disregard of its truth or falsity,
4. Which was published;
5. Causing actual damage to the complainant.

Lets see; 1- Yes, "this site is blocked..." is a defamatory communication. 2- Yes, untrue in many cases. 3- 'a' is true in most incorrectly blocked sites and 'b' is especialy true in the blocking of sites critical to blocking software. 4- Yes, the blocking software is published. 5- A case can be made that any lost hits are damaging to a website.

While IANSL, it seems pretty clear cut to me. Of course it's clarity to me does not mean it is legaly clear at all, but I really want someone to find out.

-=RR=-

Contact Mattel

Toys are a very cut throat market. The large american companies are constantly fending off their Japanesse counter parts in the everlasting quest to create the next Cabbage Patch doll. Because of this they are very customer centric. That's where the bottom line is.

At any rate putting presure on Mattel Interactive isn't going to help. They know you're not going to buy censorware any time soon. But, Mattel toys is another story. This is where the real money is.

I suggest you go to Mattels customer feed back site and fill out the e-mail form:

http://www.service.mattel.com/index.html

In it you probally want to state the following:
You are boycotting all Mattel products because cyberpatrol, a division of Mattel Interactive, is engaging unethical censorship of web sites that are critical of the Cyber Patrol product for blocking sites that are legitimate, and being slow to correct the errors when they are brought to Mattel Interactives attention.

The moral and ethical implications of this raise questions about the company in general. If this is the type of practice they engage in how can we trust them to make safe toys?

Finally and MOST IMPORTANT: If Mattel is so willing to censor sites critical to cyber patrol how do we know they won't also censor sites that discuss toy safety?

I wrote a rant on this, feel free to plagiarize

"There was an unknown error in the submission" and my comment didn't show up on the page after a reload, so let's see if it works this time...

The following is a rant [sandwich.net] I wrote on Saturday, when I first found out about Mattel being awarded the injunction. Anybody may feel free to copy or reproduce parts of it.

My mirror [sandwich.net] does not include any of the program files, but only the published analysis, Mattel's complaint, and an English translation of the Swedish copyright law 1960:729. I have no relation to the defendants in this case, and am only an interested third party.

- David Michael Turover(Perpetual Newbie)

(begin rant)

I am not in a good mood right now.

I've just had to troubleshoot NT's braindead permissions scheme, I've taken a test where several of the "correct answers" are wrong, my right wrist is aching(not good for a CS student), and it's barely noon. On my lunch break I crack open Netscape to read the news, and find that a United States federal judge has ordered two cryptology researchers to remove an essay that they had published on a Swedish website [linuxtoday.com].

The two researchers in question are Matthew Skala, a Canadian, and Eddy L. O. Jansson, a Swede. They have reverse-engineered [politechbot.com] a program called Cyber Patrol, and described in detail [sandwich.net] the cryptography and computer file formats used by the program.

Cyber Patrol [cyberpatrol.com] is a product made by Microsystems Software, which is a subsidiary of Mattel [mattel.com]. The purpose of the product is to prevent any user of a computer where it is installed from accessing any of a list of several Internet web sites, ostensibly to prevent children from viewing pornography. As part of their report, Skala and Jansson offered a Win32 binary named cphack.exe, a utility which decodes Cyber Patrol's list of blocked URLs(website addresses).

Mattel promptly sued [sandwich.net] the authors of the report, charging them with copyright violations and ordering them to remove their program, report, and all supporting and related documents and materiel, claiming that the report and software will cost them over $75,000 in lost sales. On Friday March 17th, two days after Mattel's complaint was registered, Judge Edward F. Harrington awarded Mattel a preliminary injunction against the two. Jansson's internet service provider [passagen.se], though in Sweden and not subject to U.S. law, has removed his account and deleted the documents.

Reverse-engineering is the process of examining a product to see how it works. In almost every industry it is not only expected to occur but considered an integral part of the free market. In the software industry, however, products are often sold with "shrinkwrap licenses" that restrict reverse-engineering. A shrinkwrap license is a contract describing terms of use for a product, in which these terms cannot be read until after the product has been purchased, can not be disputed, and must be agreed to for the consumer to use the product which they have already paid for and in most cases cannot return. In most Western countries these shrinkwrap contracts are unenforcable, and in the U.S. their legality is disputed, although the upcoming UCITA [badsoftware.com] bill will make them law.

In most Western countries, including Sweden, reverse-engineering of software is a right explicitly allowed by law that cannot be taken away by a contract(1960:729 26 g [sandwich.net]). Legal protections against reverse engineering can be obtained; they are called "Patents". Furthermore, an action undertaken in Canada and Sweden should be out of the United States' jurisdiction; However, the U.S. court did not refuse to hear the case as it should have done, and instead granted the injunction by weighing the action under U.S. law.

To make the situation more repugnant, Cyber Patrol doesn't work [securityportal.com]. And not just Cyber Patrol. It is well known that all content-blocking programs such as Cyber Patrol have a high rate of failure, and a high rate of erroneously blocking acceptable content [censorware.org] despite any claims by their marketing departments of being 100% accurate.

This is not the first time Microsystems/Mattel's lawyers have been aggressive. A Microsystems software engineer who was fired from his job for seeking medical attention [sorehands.com] for his sore wrists has since been sued by Mattel [sorehands.com] for documenting his experiences. Outrageous lawsuits such as this have been happening often [opendvd.org] lately, and what is frightening is that in the United States' court culture, they have a good chance of succcess.

Libel?

Does listing sites criticizing the company as "nudity", "violence", or "profanity" constitute libel? It seems to me that Mattel has opened itself up to a monstrous class action suit here. They are deliberately misrepresenting the content of these sites to their customers.

I would *love* to see one of these filter critic cases end with a libel judgement against the filter software maker. That would maybe give the rest a reason to think before they act.

And i hope whatever employee had to add those things to the database got their orders in writing. And has polished up their resume.
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