“What began as a rallying cry for free speech has turned into a
legal migraine for three young Webmasters who publicized decoded
material belonging to an Internet firm that filters smut from
children’s computers.”
“The men, all in their early 20s, were ordered by a judge to
take down the information or face charges of copyright
violations–the first time such a law has been successfully applied
in the hotly contested filtering debate.”
“Today the alleged offenders got the relief they were looking
for when veteran civil liberties lawyer Chris Hansen offered to
take on the fight against the filtering firm, Cyber Patrol.”
“This court battle could settle the question of whether code
cracking, also called “reverse engineering,” is unlawful. The
Digital Millennium Copyright Act put some of these issues to rest
when it passed in 1998. The act imposes safeguards for software,
music and written works on the Net and outlaws technologies that
can crack copyright-protection devices.”