Re: Teen Offers Way to Crack Blocking Software

On 4/24/97, Richard Hopkins <rhopkins[_at_]activision.com> wrote:
>
> -- Off the top of my head, I see at least two defenses to a copyright
> infringement claim: (i) fair use; and (ii) sweat of the brow (ala
> Feist).

Well, let's assume Solid Oak has a license agreement that is at least as good as Pro-CD's license, and it prohibits the licensee from decrypting the data. (At least, *I* would have written that into the license.) This sounds analogous enough to Pro-CD that I suspect Easterbrook, at least, would have no problem upholding this as a violation of the license agreement, at least. And to the extent that Pro-CD statement that Zeidenberg's usage of the phone data was a copyright violation is good law, then the same kind of reasoning might well apply against this kid.

Plus trade secret law may well apply here, since I suspect Solid Oak could easily make a claim that the contents of the list was a trade secret that they have reasonably tried to protect. Of course, this only gets them a remedy from the teenager, and the cat is now quite out of the bag for further protection now that the list has been published.

Of course, if we were under the EU Database Directive, or the H.R. 3531 that Rep. Morehead inroduced in the last Congress, then the data would almost certainly qualify as a database and be protected there, as well.

Question: if I wanted to embarass Solid Oak and felt myself judgement proof (i.e., I'm a poor teenager instead of a wealthy 2d year law student <grin>), what would keep me from claiming I had decrypted Solid Oak's list and found organizations like NOW on the "inappropriate" list, if I said that IP laws prohibited me from telling you what dubiously included sites were on the list?

Richard A. Schafer
<schafer[_at_]mail.utexas.edu>

Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, Begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now. -- Goethe

May fortune favor the foolish. -- Captain James T. Kirk Received on Fri Apr 25 1997 - 18:07:04 GMT