A Mattel subsidiary that makes porn-filtering software is suing a pair of computer experts for disseminating a way for kids to figure out Mom and Dad's passwords and get into the verboten hot sites.
The subsidiary, Microsystems Software, which makes and sells Cyber Patrol, has asked a judge to order Eddy Jansson and Matthew Skala to quit distributing cphack, a program they created to end-run Cyber Patrol.
There's no hearing set yet because the defendants are outside the U.S., according to CNET. Skala, a Canadian, and Jansson, thought to be Swedish, published details about cphack both on the Web and through e-mail. Cyber Patrol is used in many of the nation's elementary schools and libraries, and many Internet service providers offer it.
In addition, a large number of adult Websites who take care to keep those under 18 out post links to Cyber Patrol and other popular filters.
Skala was quoted by CNET as saying he opposes Net filters on philosophical grounds, but that the issue in the Cyber Patrol crack was to see precisely what it blocks - including, potentially, otherwise inoffensive Websites. "Parents have a right to know what they're getting, and without our work they wouldn't know," he says.
When run on a computer, cphack discloses the passwords which get adults into adult Websites - and shows the Cyber Patrol list of over 100,000 Websites considered unsuitable for children. CNET says that early on March 16, activists copied cphack and its details and sent them across the Net on over two dozen sites, duplicating Skala and Jansson's original idea.
And those efforts were coordinated, seemingly, on Slashdot.org, which has condemned the suit soundly. "Well, Mattel, the maker of Cyber Patrol and a Big Company, decided it didn't like to be embarrassed - so it's filing suit against the coders," reads a comment on the site.
Microsystems accuses the crackers of causing irreparable harm and seeking to destroy the market for Cyber Patrol by making it ineffective. The Mattel subsidiary also says Skala and Jansson broke American law by reverse-engineering Cyber Patrol - a violation of the software's licensing agreement. They're also looking to get a court order for the Swedish Net company where cphack was published to surrender records of everyone who visited or downloaded the program.
