Remember... all computer programs consist of nothing but various forms of reading data, writing data, and numerically processing the data. The idea of outlawing programs is scary to me... it's like outlawing words... or hammers. If it was merely illegal to use the program, I'd at least be a little less scared, but that still means it's perfectly legal to distribute it, which won't satisfy Mattel.
If I'm understanding this case correctly (and I'm not a lawyer), this means that Mattel can't yank back what already exists and is being distributed. If they want to regain the rights to cphack that were irrevocably distributed, they are going to have to get the program declared illegal, which A: would mean the original authors would have never had the right to distribute it, and thus can't grant people rights under the GPL, which means that while Mattel wouldn't own any rights to it either, they could pursue legal action against those who possess/distribute it, and B: would be one of the scarier things I've seen in a while.
The license was deliberately designed that way for philisophical reasons.
Translation: A copyright holder can't change his mind.
The Free Software Foundation's GPL agreement says that "the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the program."
Mattel Suit Takes a GNU Twist: The authors of the cphack program, which disables CyberPatrol and decrypts the ban list, turned over all rights to the program they possessed under copyright law to Mattel. Mattel was planning on using those rights to force everybody to delete their copies or at least stop distributing it. Except... cphack was released under the GNU General Public License.
Dave says he's tired, and it's certainly easy to understand why. Well, I always say there's just one thing to do when you're tired... This one's for you, Dave.
The thing that comes to mind is, why did the plantiff choose the phrase "each day"? Why not "each hour", "minute", or "instant"? This is good news, anyhow... who wants to be nailed with 365 libel charges when the libelee just gets around to noticing you a year later?
SINGLE PUBLICATION RULING PROTECTS WEB PUBLISHERS: "The court said the posting of an article is a single event starting the running of the applicable statute of limitations, and not a continuous publication that might start it running anew each day it remains posted online. The ruling rejects the claim by a libel plaintiff that the item's ongoing presence on the Web created a virtually perpetual statute of limitations, which might allow a lawsuit to be brought at any time. "
Indirectly from Spicy Noodles, which linked to something else on this site: This page should be censored. Funny stuff! (There's a little "adult" stuff on the other end of that link (no pics or anything), but what's funny is that there is only a little... you'll understand when you see it.)