Pass the vodka.......

Educational and research use only: Source: www.currents.net, from http://www.ukhackers.com/archive/210300/2103009.htm Restraining Order Imposed Against Hackers

A federal court judge has imposed a temporary restraining order against two hackers accused of reverse-engineering Cyber Patrol software so that it no longer blocks objectionable material.The US Federal District Court Judge, sitting in the District Court for the District of Massachusetts, today issued a temporary restraining order against the two hackers, even though they are both residents of a foreign country.On Wednesday, the maker of Cyber Patrol, Microsystems Software, asked the court for the restraining order, which prohibits the defendants from distributing the code that undermines the ability of Cyber Patrol to block onscreen access to Web sites with offensive material.Microsystems claims that its Cyber Patrol is the world's most widely used Internet filtering software, including wide use by America Online (AOL). The product is designed to protect children from Web sites that contain content advocating violence or hate, or sites that post sexual content meant for adults.Irwin B. Schwartz, the Boston-based attorney for Microsystems, tells Newsbytes that Judge Edward F. Harrington ordered that the "defendants, their officers, agents, servants, employees, attorneys and those persons in active concert or participation with them," discontinue publishing Cyber Patrol bypass code and binaries.The defendants are Swedish resident Eddy L.O. Jansson and Canadian resident Matthew Skala, as well as their Internet service providers (ISPs) Islandnet.com in Canada, and Scandinavia Online in Sweden.The temporary restraining order also prohibits further distribution over the Internet into the United States of the bypass code and binaries published by the hackers and "mirrored," or copied, on other sites throughout the Web.According to Schwartz, "The ruling means that the defendants and those redistributing the defendants' illegal work product will be in violation of a US federal court order if they distribute the material into the United States." Schwartz told Newsbytes that sending material into the United States was one of the areas in which the Massachusetts court had personal jurisdiction over the defendants, which permits the court to make the restraining orders.The ruling also granted Microsystems' request for "expedited discovery" to find out who had downloaded the illegal material derived from the copyright violations. "Discovery" is the legal process which permits both sides of a civil lawsuit to uncover (i.e. "discover") information relevant to the case.By granting Microsystems' request for an expedited discovery order, the court has indicated that it agrees with Microsystems' position that this case raises questions of urgency that need to be dealt with quickly.And, in an example of legal "gottcha," the District Court gave Microsystems permission to serve notice of the immediate injunction on the defendants and their agents via e-mail, in an act that could be seen as a legal version of poetic justice towards the defendants who placed a copyright notice on their infringing Web site.Microsystems says that it has already served the e-mail notices of the court's orders on the defendants.Also part of the temporary restraining order is the directive that the defendants "preserve inviolate the software and information that makes up all such Web sites (those containing the Cyber Patrol source code and binaries, as well as other information), source or object code and documents relating to Cyber Patrol, as well as all records which reflect the identify or number of persons who downloaded CP4break.zip or cphack.exe from the Web sites."A temporary restraining order is only valid for a relatively short period of time. Microsystems' attorney will have to prevail at a court hearing in order to get the term of the temporary restraining orders continued through the time when a final decision is made in the case.

-- another government hack (keep watching 2000@yahoo.com), March 20, 2000