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----- Forwarded message from "Stanley G. Bubrouski" <stan at ccs.neu.edu> -----

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Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 08:50:57 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Stanley G. Bubrouski" <stan at ccs.neu.edu>
To: "Eric D. Williams" <eric at infobro.com>
Cc: "'aleph1 at securityfocus.com'" <aleph1 at securityfocus.com>,
        "bugtraq at securityfocus.com" <bugtraq at securityfocus.com>
Subject: Re: hacker copyrights was [RE: telnetd exploit code]

Based on the articles you used as reference here it would seem to suggest
that nothing posted on Bugtraq is subject to copyright laws that could be
defended in a court of law.  There is an exception in this case however
since the copyrighter of the document (yes code published in this form can
be referred to asa document as if it were code published in a book with
its own individual copyright) specifically stated it could not be
published to this mailling list.  That said, that is in fact voided by the
fact the author did restrict what mediums his document could be published
on.  To publish a document electronically and then not specify any
circumstances in which it could be published voids said
restriction.  Why?  Because the author(s) published this document
electronically at some point (unless it was stolen from a private computer
system or from a site where restrictions are placed on republication, but
since this was not done on the document itself it would not hold up in a
court of law) without putting the necessary restrictions on its
redistribution.

Everyone here seems to assume that because the code had a banner saying it
was confidential and unpublished proprietary code doesn't mean it can't be
distributed.  If the code were in fact private, Teso would not have
published it (again assuming it wasn't stolen from a private machine),
that means they willing distriubted their alledged private code and voided
any argument to the contrary.  If this code was indeed stolen in some way
I would encourage that all parties involved in stealing it be prosecuted
to the full extent of all applicable laws in the country from which the
file was stolen from.

PS: Aleph if you find this too broad or you are just sick and tired of
this thread I won't be offended if you do not put this through to the
list.

Regards,

Stan

--
Stan Bubrouski                                       stan at ccs.neu.edu


On Wed, 25 Jul 2001, Eric D. Williams wrote:

> Re: the lack of legal backing here are a number of links that appear relevant 
> to the question (do you violate copyright by publishing hacker code, discovered 
> subsequent to intrusion?).  Indeed it appears that the law is fuzzy on this one 
> concerning copyright and intellectual property.  But,  given the circumstance 
> that a listing or binary of the aformentioned code can not be deterined as 
> authorized in the first case - the intrusion itself is illegal, it appears it 
> can not pass the copyright or intellectual property tests.
> 
> Refs with USC refs: 
> http://www.eff.org/Publications/Mike_Godwin/phrack_riggs_neidorf_godwin.article
> Ref with USC footnotes: http://www.netatty.com/copyright.html
> 
> On Wednesday, July 25, 2001 11:48 AM, aleph1 at securityfocus.com 
> [SMTP:aleph1 at securityfocus.com] wrote:
> > The are quite a few responses to this thread but its painfully obvious
> > that no one is quite sure if what they are saying is backed by law.
> > Lots of IANAL. So unless someone with more than a simply opinion posts
> > I'll kill the thread here.
> >
> > --
> > Elias Levy
> > SecurityFocus.com
> > http://www.securityfocus.com/
> > Si vis pacem, para bellum
> 

----- End forwarded message -----