27 March 2000. Matthew Skala confirms this statement is his. Thanks also to anonymous.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00/03/27/1736221&cid=101
by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 27, @06:03PM CST (#101)
I have no Slashdot account, cope.
Yes, late Friday I made an agreement with the plaintiffs settling the cases in Boston and Vancouver out of court. I was planning to wait until I heard the results of today's hearing before making any announcement, but it sounds like that is now. I don't know Eddy's current status; last I heard from him he had not officially settled but was close to doing so.
I settled because I have made my point and don't need the headaches. I don't think it's appropriate to characterise this as Microsystems et al "winning". The document is out there, I know the mirror sites aren't going to take it down without a fight (even with my copyright assignment), and judging by the level of conspiracy theory here on Slashdot, the companies' public relations nightmares have only just begun.
Whatever public face they may put on their press releases, I don't think the plaintiffs are very happy right now. Whether they end up happy or having the last laugh will really depend upon how you, the public, reacts to this situation, and that's out of my hands.
There are serious jurisdiction issues for the Boston lawsuit, but the Vancouver lawsuit against me was certainly for real, and many of the relevant legal questions have not yet been decided in Canada. So I'd be faced with being a test case, and all the "fun" that involves. My right to do what I did may appear cut-and-dried to Slashdotters, but we'd have to educate the judge about that, and face all the litigation tricks that a well-funded multinational corporation can come up with. Litigation always involves a risk no matter how good one's case may appear at the outset. I'm a mathematician, not a gambler. I've got better ways to spend my time, thank you all so very much.
Yes, it would be more satisfying to walk away with a court decision saying, "Matthew, you didn't do anything bad, you're a good boy", but enough other people have told me that that it's not worth the hassle to try to get it from a court as well. I reached the point of diminishing returns. If you think that makes me a coward or a sell-out, feel free to prove yourself a better hacker than me by doing yourself whatever you think I ought to have done.
I'm sorry for the people who may find their situations worsened by my having made the copyright assignment. I still think that the overall effect of my actions has been positive. You might well want to explore the fact that the original documents gave permission to redistribute.
- Matthew Skala
28 March 2000. Thanks to anonymous.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00/03/27/1736221&cid=188
Report from Boston (Score:1)
by declan [Declan McCullagh] on Monday March 27, @10:47PM CST (#188)
(User Info)
I was at the hearing; you can find an article I wrote (filed via Palm VII directly from the courthouse) at wired.com. You'll see another there at 6 am ET Tues.
The settlement agreement is not private. I have a copy, and quoted from it in my article.
The agreement requires that Jansson "has not assigned or licensed" the rights to cphack etc.
Mattel is claiming victory. Few people in the "real world" read Slashdot and see the furor here. Mattel's attorneys are crowing about the evil "hackers" and the PR flacks are having a field day. I flew back on the plane to DC with one; I know.
They're reading ./ -- in fact, attorney Irwin Schwartz introduced part of a slashdot posting during the hearing today as examples of how the evil hax0rs are trying to circumvent the Authority of the Court.
Even though I just linked to the cphack app from my article, I got a subpoena. It's unclear to me what happens next. A reasonable interpretation for me and everyone else is that the subpoenas are void now since the permanent injunction is about to be granted and the case settled.
It would be interesting -- purely from a news perspective -- to see someone else write a cphack2 program that used *none* of the source of the original and just the description of the cryptanalysis outlined in the soon-to-be-no-longer defendants' essay. Shouldn't be too difficult.
The ACLU is going to keep fighting as long as Mattel is insisting (which Irwin is) that the permanent injunction applies to mirror sites and violators are up to contempt charges.