12:18pm EST
On Friday, the New York Times had an article entitled "Lifting the Curtain on Web Filter Strategies" about the case. It pretty much outlines how we got where we are now, explains our legal position, and, thankfully, includes Chris Hansen's mention of the Chidren's Internet Protection Act.

11:53am EST
The ACLU press release is out. I'm feeling especially thankful right now to all of you that ignored your cease-and-decist orders and kept on going with your mirrors. Thanks, folks.

12:56pm EST
Michael wrote on Slashdot about the two exceptions contained within the DMCA. These exceptions are a Very Good Thing(tm), and make a world of a difference to our case. More news before long.

4:50pm EST
My mirror is back up. Bennett & Lindsay's should be along anytime now.

12:58am EST
This morning I found that Only Solutions, a German trademark-search company, had scanned this site for nearly every file that makes up the CPHack package (if you can call it that.) Actually, I found that somebody had scanned my site -- Michael Sims figured out that it was Only Solutions. Fortunately, I truly did remove all CPHack files from my site, so they didn't find anything. But I'm guessing that some mirror maintainers simply unlinked the files (Does that could as removing them? I don't know.), which could land them in hot water if Only gets to them before they remove 'em. So if you run a quasi-removed mirror, take this as a cue.

I wonder who hired Only for this? I suspect JSB, the new owners of Cyber Patrol, as I have no idea why Mattel would spend any time or money on a lame-duck product.

6:09pm EST
Matthew Skala has put up a "Cyber Patrol Break FAQ," which does a great job of describing the case, both where it's been and where it's at. It's very interesting, and absolutely worth however long it takes to read it.

11:35am EST
Mattel has sold Cyber Patrol to JSB Software Technologies, whoever they are. JSB paid an astounding $100M USD for the division. This UK company has already purchased surfCONTROL, SurfWatch and LittleBrother. Yahoo has the story. I have absolutely no idea of where this leaves our case.

Our oral argument before the Court of Appeals is scheduled for Wednesday, August 2nd. Also, Charles R. Nesson, Lawrence Lessig, Jonathan L. Zittrain and Diane Cabbell, affiliated with Harvard's Berkman center, and joined by the ACM Committee on Law and Computing Technology, has filed an amicus brief (sorry, it's only available as a PDF) in support of our case. Looks like Lawrence Lessig made this happen. Thanks, Lawrence. :)

9:21pm EST
I've added Mattel's Brief of Appellees [HTML, RTF] and our Reply Brief of Appellants [HTML, RTF] to the site. Standard disclaimers regarding HTML created in a word processor apply.

1:42pm EST
We've filed our brief in the Court of Appeals. You can read it as a RTF file or as the world's ugliest HTML document (saved in Word -- no time to do a proper conversion.)

11:37pm EST
The staff of Messaging Online wrote a screenplay entitled "Peacefire vs. the Cyber Patrol, The Movie" that's pretty bloody funny. Declan McCullagh will be played by Matt Damon, Eddy Jansson by Leonardo DiCaprio and Bennett, Lindsay and I will be played by, believe it or not, the boys of Hanson.

Mmmbop.

3:16pm EST
Bennett Haselton, founder of Peacefire, has slapped filtering companies, including Mattel, on the side of the head with a big, wet salmon.

Figuratively speaking.

Wired is reporting on the great stunt that he pulled. Bennett took anti-gay speech from the websites of Dr. Laura Schlessinger, Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, and Concerned Women for America and put them on free websites at Tripod, Geocities, Angelfire and TheGlobe. None of the source websites were blocked by any major filters. He then, under a pseudonym, submitted his own sites to the filtering companies (SurfWatch, Cyber Patrol, Net Nanny, Bess, WebSENSE and SmartFilter), most of whom proceeded to block the sites for containing hate speech.

When these companies were contacted by the press and asked about their conflicting standards, none of them had a respone beyond stammering. Mattel wouldn't even talk to Wired's Declan McCullagh. The ever-thorough Bennett has archived all of his communications with the filtering companies.

I wonder how Mattel & company will deal with this little gaffe. I'm guessing a lawsuit.

1:04pm EST
Bernice Yeung has written a fairly extensive piece for the San Francisco Weekly: Babes in Toyland: Two hackers piss off Mattel and spawn an Internet legal imbroglio. She reviews the history of the case with a clarity that I haven't seen any many articles.

Also, everybody's favourite lawyer, Irwin B. Schwartz, has an article in the "Public Forum" of the Boston Globe called "Keep copyrights safe on the Net". It's pretty predictable. A personal high point for me is where he says that people like us cost US businesses $10,000,000,000.

11:55am EST
Fairfax I.T. has a story about squidly.org's cease-and-decist order. squidly.org is in Australia, and therefore has absolutely no interest in complying with U.S. court orders.

11:27am EST
Eben Moglen, the general counsel of the FSF, has written a great summary of the case, entitled "Cyberpatrol Curbs Speech" in The Harvard Crimson.

5:50pm EST
News.com reports that Cyber Patrol, which provides content filtering for AOL, is in trouble again. Turns out that they block Democratic sites, but not Republican ones. Neither contain what could be classified as offensive comments. (Well, those Republican sites leave me feeling offended, but that's different...)

9:01pm EST
Wes Mills offers the latest episode of the Schwartz and Nystrom Follies:

The post office advised me today that Schwartz/Nystrom sent me another certified letter, addressed to "wyvern.org" and my po box #. As requested, the Post Office refuses any certified mail not addressed to me or names on my box (i used to get certified mail for the now-bankrupt business that held my box), so they returned it because wyvern.org is neither a valid company name on my box, nor mine.

11:08am EST
Declan McCullagh's got a story covering the latest events over at Wired: "ACLU's Filter Appeal Rejected."

12:45am EST
Wes Mills, a fellow CPHack-er, related this story this morning:

Well, the post office finally found all my back mail (I hadn't checked my PO Box in about a week), and in there was a certified letter from Schwartz/Nystrom. I refused it. Why? There was $0.27 postage due. HAH! The postal carrier said "you can pay the $0.27, or refuse it." I said to bounce the letter. My theory is, if they can't make sure they got the amount right, I'm not gonna do their accounting for them. :)

You know, I'm feeling better and better about this case...

10:51am EST
Judge Harrington has denied our motion for a stay. He said that we don't have the standing for a stay because it's not clear how the order applies to us.

So, first Judge Harrington says that the restraining order applies to mirror sites. Then, when we file for a stay, it doesn't apply. What gives?

4:35pm EST
I finally got across town and picked up the package that's been waiting for me at the post office. It was pretty much another copy of the permanent injunction, plus a cover letter that specifically lists waldo.net and cp.waldo.net, and tells me that I'd best follow Judge Harrington's orders.

I like Irwin Schwartz's signature. I almost signed the certified-mail card "Richard Nixon," but decided against it. On the copy of the permanent injunction, there's a stamp that says that this is certified accurate by Tony Anastas, who signs his name "Paul Gallagher." Maybe I should have signed my card like that, since it seems to fly for Mattel.

12:53pm EST
I got yet another subpoena notice on Saturday. Another cute little postcard that indicates that I'm welcome to come by the post office (again, across town) and pick up a package from Schwartz and Nystrom. ("Sorry We Missed You!") I'd have thought that one subpoena would do it, but I guess not. I'll have to borrow a car from somebody and go pick it up. Thanks to the ACLU and EPIC, these trips across town are the biggest inconvenience of this whole process.

It seems plain to me that we're in the right, and that we'll win; it's not like we'll back down. I wonder how long it will be until Mattel realises this and goes away?

Hey, Mattel: You make a shoddy product. Deal with it. Legally, we can keep saying that until UCITA goes into effect.

11:00am EST
A federal appeals court has ruled that source code is protected under the First Amendment. This is a very big deal. Not just for this case -- it's a really big step for our courts to take. I'm excited.

Also, I picked up my subpoena yesterday. Drove all the way across town in a borrowed Volvo to wait in line at the post office to get a subpoena. I wish I could have waited to get it on a silver platter, but I needed it in order to proceed with the case. It was just a printout of the e-mail. As an extra-special bonus, I got part of somebody else's subpoena in an unrelated case. It was printed upside-down on the back of on of my photocopied sheets of the legal filings.

Yup, I can tell that we're up against some real professionals here.

1:30pm EST
We're appealing. (Hence my need to get the subpoena.) The ACLU's press release just went out a few minutes ago. We're asking Judge Harrington to stay his order while we appeal. If he rejects our request, we'll the First Circuit Court of Appeals for a stay.

6:54pm EST
C|Net's Patricia Jacobus has picked up the story with "ACLU lawyers appeal Cyber Patrol copyright ruling." It's a very basic overview of the recent events. She apparently doesn't read my site, or she'd know that Lindsay Haisley still isn't in his early 20s, but, instead, his late 50s.

7:15pm EST
Wired's got a basic story, too: "ACLU Appeals Mattel Ruling."

1:48pm EST
I got a notice in my mailbox last night: The USPS tried to deliver a certified letter, but I wasn't home. (Imagine that: Not home in the middle of the day!) Of course, the sender is Schwartz and Nystrom, the law firm used by Mattel. Darn, I hope that they don't keep missing me. I sure don't want to miss that subpoena.

12:43pm EST
Lawrence Lessig has a most interesting article over at The Industry Standard abut CPHack, the DMCA and the First Amendment. He provides a good case overview and has some quality insight to the legal questions that this case raises.

Also, some folks have started mirroring not just the CPHack code, but also the actual list of blocked sites. This certainly puts an interesting twist on things, doesn't it? Give the list a read.

Finally, Computerworld has a piece on the reverse-engineering issues raised by the case. Except for mistaking Lindsay Haisley's site for that of The Anomymizer, it's a pretty straightforward article.

1:01pm EST
Mattel, a year after buying The Learning Company (owner of Microsystems, maker of Cyber Patrol), is looking to unload it. Gosh, I hope that this doesn't affect our case. I just fear for the job of Larry K. (See March 21st entry.)

12:38pm EST
For a company that claims to be in the business of filtering out offensive material on the Internet, it's funny how they seem to be contributing it. William H. Geiger III, who runs the CPHack Mirror List, sent me his log files from this morning. Microsystems Software, the manufacturer of Cyber Patrol (who is owned by The Learning Company who is owned by Mattel), looks at our sites a lot. Which is to be expected. Here is an excerpt from William's logfile from this morning:

larryk.microsys.com - - [31/Mar/2000:09:50:28 -0500] "GET /censorship/ HTTP/1.1" 302 226 "http://www.peacefire.org/" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows 98; DigExt)"

larryk.microsys.com - - [31/Mar/2000:09:50:28 -0500] "GET /goaway.html HTTP/1.1" 200 86 "http://www.peacefire.org/" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows 98; DigExt)"

larryk.microsys.com - - [31/Mar/2000:09:50:43 -0500] "GET /goaway.html/favicon.ico HTTP/1.1" 404 229 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows 98; DigExt)"

larryk.microsys.com - - [31/Mar/2000:09:50:43 -0500] "GET /favicon.ico HTTP/1.1" 404 217 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows 98; DigExt)"

larryk.microsys.com - - [31/Mar/2000:09:50:43 -0500] "GET /goaway.html/fuckyou HTTP/1.1" 404 225 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows 98; DigExt)"

Looks to me like Mattel is running scared.

3:49pm EST
Richard Stenger has written a pretty solid piece for CNN entitled "Order bans mirror sites that skirt Cyber Patrol, or does it?." He even quotes me, unattributed, from March 28th's 4:41apm entry, which is kind of surreal. (Unfortunately, in retrospect, the sentence that they quoted is stupid and redundant. It makes the point, but why did I write it like that?)

3:32pm EST
We're mulling over the case. There's a lot to think about, so things won't be as rushed as they've been for the last week and a half. When there's news, you'll find it here. I'm not holding out on you, I promise. :)

BTW, I'm still not mirroring the source, as you can tell. As soon as I get the all-clear from the ACLU, it's going back up.

8:20pm EST
God, I love The Register. They just don't beat around the bush like some publications. Thomas C. Greene's "Bizarre language in Mattel ruling" is a quick read that sums up the recent ruling better than anything else that I've read.

10:34am EST
Declan McCullagh's "Mattel Ruling Confuses Hackers" does a really great job of explaining what's going through our heads right now. I'm entirely uncertain of what to make of these recent events.

Patricia Jacobus, who has been covering this case for C|Net, has a story related to the most recent events. After reading the story, I'm left wondering if she's not writing about a wholly different case. I didn't see anything in the ruling that described the mirror sites as working with Jansson or Skala, did you?

The AP has a considerably more accurate piece. Also, check out the Slashdot thread.

10:13am EST
I woke up to find Declan McCullagh's piece, "Mattel Suit Takes GNU Twist" in Wired. I've got to be honest: I'm giddy. Of course, Mattel has said that Skala and Jansson would be in "big trouble" if they purposely deceived Mattel. As McCullagh points out, though, the language of the agreement that Jansson signed was extremely loose, permitting just such an event as this to occur.

Jansson and Skala are my new heroes. :)

10:19am EST
Check out the thread on Slashdot. People raise some interesting points about the nature of contract law, copyright law, licensing law, and where the GPL fits in with all of this.

11:47am EST
Bennett (my other new hero :) has discovered that the source was distributed with the Windows executable. Previously, it had been suspected that the program may not be GPL-able because the Windows executable had been distributed sans source. But Bennett found the source in the ZIP file, meaning that there's no legal obstacle to declaring the program GPLd and, therefore, it is not ownable by Mattel.

To quote Nelson, from The Simpsons: "Ha-ha!"

12:48pm EST
Elinor Abreau has a piece about the settlement in The Standard. It's not up-to-speed on the GNU twist, but I figured I should mention it.

1:10pm EST
ABC News is reporting on the settlement, as well as the new issues surrounding the GPL.

4:41pm EST
Judge Harrington has ordered all sites "in active concert or participation" with Skala and Jansson to remove their sites. Mattel is going to serve that permanent injunction to every mirror site. Funny, I'm not working with Skala or Jansson, so I guess you could hardly say that I'm working with them. Yet, no doubt, I'll be served. Declan McCullagh has the story.

5:58pm EST
You can see the permanent injunction in HTML or as a graphic. I guess I'd be a "purveyor of pornography" and a "merchant of death and violence," huh?

6:57pm EST
CNN has a story, though it doesn't include the afternoon's events, entitled "Cyber Patrol hacker sells out for one dollar." It delves into the GPL a bit, and they even interview the FSF. Skala is quoted in here as saying that the topic of the GPL never came up, and that he has transferred his copyright to Mattel, GPL or no GPL.

Though it's from yesterday, I want to toss up a link to boston.com's article from yesterday, entitled "Microsystems reaches agreement with hackers of Cyber Patrol."

11:12am EST
The Boston Globe has a great editorial imploring Judge Harrington to side with us. This is, IMHO, well worth reading. The Globe breaks this case down so much more simply than I ever could.

So, I've been looking at some of the sites that Cyber Patrol blocks. (Bear in mind that they have a human-created list -- nothing automated. All of these sites are checked by employees and authorised by employees.) My favourites from last night's log-reading session?

Well, I liked rita.com. It's blocked for "Violence / Profanity, Partial Nudity, Full Nudity, Sexual Acts / Text, Gross Depictions / Text, Questionable / Illegal & Gambling." When I saw that list of offenses, I knew that I just had to see the page. Turns out that it's Rita M. Starceski's website. Rita is a single mother that lives in Pittsburgh, PA. Most of her website is her account of what it's like to be a single mother, with links to support resources for single mothers and lots of photos of Nicholas, her 1-year-old baby. (Who is very cute, I might add.) No violence, no profanity. There is what might pass for partial nudity. (But if that's all it takes, why isn't Coppertone's site blocked?)

My other favourite blocked sites are st10.yahoo.com and st15.yahoo.com. These are, as best I can tell, simply additional servers to handle the store.yahoo.com load. They're blocked for containing "Partial Nudity." (Hey, if I'm wrong about this store.yahoo.com mirror thing, could somebody e-mail me?)

Anyhow, there are lots of other wrongly-blocked sites, but these are my favourites right now.

11:45am EST
Declan McCullah has a new article, "Mattel's Filter Fiasco to Court," that provides an updated overview of the case.

12:30pm EST
The LA Times has a story entitled "Filter Case Pits Copyright vs. Free Speech." Another overview of the case, though Microsystems' spokesman gets increasingly condescending in this one. I'm sure that Lindsay Haisley, a defendant in the case (later note: only in the sense that he's running a mirror site; none of us are legally defendants, of course), appreciates being referred to as a member of the "boys 17 to 25" group. Lindsay is 58 years old.

4:20pm EST
Mattel has settled with the authors of cphack, but they want a permanent court order shutting down all mirror sites. The ACLU has asked Judge Harrington to disclude mirror sites from the order. Judge Harrington will have a decision Wednesday. In the meantime, the restraining order, which was set to expire today, continues. Declan McCullaugh, not surprisingly, has the first story about the most recent events. (6:50pm update: It's important that I mention this. This article reports that cphack authors Skala and Jansson have given up all rights to cphack to Mattel.)

Of all possible outcomes of today's hearing, this was not one that I had considered. Consequently, I'm just not sure of what to make of it.

CNN has a pretty straightforward story. (They even link to all of our sites.) I'm amazed at how well my server has stood up. It's been Slashdotted six ways from Sunday without blinking. Yay, Linux.

7:05pm EST
ZDNet has "the story," as does Slashdot. Accusations of a payoff are flying around /. -- people think that Skala and Jansson got big money from Mattel in order to settle. From where I stand, it seems that any way out of this mess would look good, payoff or no payoff. Offered a legal way to end the mess, I can certainly understand why they'd back down. I wish that they hadn't. But I can understand.

6:52pm EST
Bennett Haselton has noticed that the Windows version of cphack reports, under the "About" box:

Cyber Patrol Hack v0.1.0
Released under the GNU Public License

Once a program is GPLed, that's that. The authors surrendered all rights to their program. So can they, legally, transfer those rights to Mattel? That's up to the lawyers to fight out, I guess.

9:05pm EST
I recommend that you read Matthew Skala's website, as well as his post to Slashdot. He explains, quite logically, why he decided to settle with Mattel. It was obviously the best thing for him to do without martyring himself.

11:51pm EST
News.Com has a story relating to today's events. Nothing exciting, but Lindsay Haisley continues to be referred to as one of "three young Web operators." ("Hi there, I'm Waldo. I operate the web. I am the IETF.") Also, the author mistakenly states that Microsystems has specifically gone after me, Lindsay and Bennett. We have in fact, just offered ourselves up, thanks to the ACLU. They haven't gone specifically after us...yet.

Time for bed. Just one more chapter of Barron's "French The Easy Way"...and I should really finish chapter 12 of Steve Ouallin's "Practical C Programming". And I wonder why I'm so tired in the morning. :)

2:59pm EST
Declan McCullagh's politechbot reports that more subpoenas are still going out, including some on late Friday.

I'd like to remind everybody that the court hearing is Monday at 2:00pm in the Federal Court in Boston, Judge Harrington's courtroom. It's open to the public. Please consider going if you're in the area, and please be extremely nice. Shock 'em: dress up. :)

8:43pm EST
Check out Rob Lemos' piece, "ACLU Slams Cyber Patrol Tactics," which is pretty sympathetic to our case. (Lemos writes most of ZDNet's hacker-related stories.) It's also worth reading Elinor Abreu's piece in The Industry Standard, "Cyber Patrol Sues Hackers." It's a straightforward piece that covers all of the bases and presents a great overview of the case.

I know that tomorrow is The Big Day, but it doesn't feel like it. I guess because I don't actually have to be up on Boston. I don't feel so nervous anymore. I had butterflies in my stomach all last week, and couldn't quite settle down. I actually managed to relax a bit this afternoon and not think about the case. All thanks to the ACLU covering my butt. I'd like to think that, for the most part, tomorrow will be business as usual. I know that my clients would appreciate that. :)

3:08pm EST
The ACLU's press release is out. It lists David Sobel -- yes, the David Sobel -- as being one of the legal representatives of The Peacefire Three. The hearing will take place on Monday, March 27th at 2:00pm in the U.S. District Court in Boston.

The AP is running a story that says that Judge Harrington has permitted these subpoenas to be delivered via e-mail. If the AP knows something that the rest of us don't, then I wish that they'd share it with the rest of the class.

Hey, here's a thought: Maybe we should try and become known as, say, "The Peacefire Six Hundred And Forty Two". It wouldn't be accurate, but it sure sounds a lot bigger and tougher, doesn't it?

And ya' know what? I actually slept pretty well last night.

4:14pm EST
Our papers were filed today -- civil action # 00-10488-EFH. You can download the Motion of Nonparties to Quash Subpoenas and the Opposition to Motion for Preliminary Injunction from EPIC's site. (Update: See them as HTML: Motion To Quash and Opposition to Motion.)

6:04pm EST
Keith Dawson has coined a new term: spampoena. It's the latest addition to his Jargon Scout webpage.

spampoena: an overbroad subpoena of dubious validity "served" by email to unnamed recipients throughout cyberspace. The first spampoena was just sent out in the Cyber Patrol / CPhack case, and we may dearly desire that, quashed forthrightly, it will be the last ever served. A judge in Boston, in a hearing at which no defense attorney was present, granted a subpoena requiring that a Canadian and a Swede remove certain content from their Web sites. The lawyer for Cyber Patrol's parent company requested and reportedly received permission to serve copies of the subpoena by email to hundreds of unknown others in all parts of the world. Several hundred of the spampoenas have been mailed (and fewer received).

6:27pm EST
FeO₂, an organization that I helped to found and now sit on the board of, is mirroring the code now. Thanks to everybody out there that's mirroring cphack! I know that there's hundreds of sites out there, but we need more! 500 defendants were named in the DeCSS case, so we'll have to get at least that many.

9:03pm EST
My name is on the front page of Slashdot. Incrediblé! The story pretty much consists of the ACLU press release, but I very much look forward to seeing some of the comments. Slashdot folks are a bright bunch.

5:42pm EST
Things are starting to heat up. The ACLU is getting rolling, and I hope that they'll issue a press release tomorrow. We're starting to line up interviews, and there's been some very sympathetic press. Keith Dawson has dubbed us The Peacefire Three, which cracks me up. I never thought that I'd be part of a "The $OrgName [0-9]" group. You know, like The Chicago Seven. Also, there's some very exciting news regarding an attorney that's going to be involved with this case. I don't think that I can give any names yet, but the idea that this individual would ever know who I am is incredible to me; I'm having trouble with the idea that they'd want to represent me in court. More on that when I can say something. Spirits are high.

9:28pm EST
C|Net has a story. Being by C|Net, it's somewhat less than accurate, but it's a good start.

12:35pm EST
Brian Ristuccia knew just what to do with his subpoena. Good call. :)

5:10pm EST
The ACLU is backing me. I'm happy. Thanks, ACLU.

7:35pm EST
The ACLU is delaying their decision until tomorrow morning. It looks good -- I have a feeling that they'll take the case & represent me. WVIR, a local TV station, interviewed me today. Unfortunately, their story makes me look like some sort of a pornographer, but it's a start. They'll do a bigger, more interesting story once the word comes from On High as to whether I'll get ACLU backing.

I really feel like a crash test dummy in all of this. I strapped myself in and slammed myself into a wall, screaming "free speech!" in lieu of wearing a seatbelt. Not surprisingly, my head popped off.

12:38pm EST
Just got into work to find I'd been served with a temporary restraining order and a subpoena (via e-mail, without my name appearing on it) by Microsystems Software for posting this code. Pending analysis of this order, by an attorney, I've taken down the mirror.

For a copy of the program, see the mirrors list. If you are interested in doing so, you can grab the source code and the programs from one of the mirrored sites and put up your own mirror. Be sure to e-mail Open PGP to let them know where your mirror is so that they can link to it.

2:18pm EST
The ACLU is interested. I'm supposed to get a call back from an attorney in a few minutes. I don't know if they'll take the case, but they're certainly quite interested. Keep your fingers crossed.

2:52pm EST
There's a pow-pow going on at the national ACLU offices about the case; they should have a decision by the end of the day, tomorrow at the latest.

6:05pm EST
Talked with ACLU further. They're working hard, but they will not have a decision until late tomorrow. If they do not back us, we're absolutely screwed. There's no way around it. It's so easy to commit an act in the name of free speech; defending that act is considerably more difficult. I know that I've done the right thing.