On Mon, 21 Aug 2000, Edenyard wrote:
> I have seen a small example of what people are referring to as the
> obscenities in CORE.EXE and I must say that I think that it is VERY
> foolish to have used such text, for two reasons.
It is passphrase which is used to read Arachne registration key.
In README.TXT, there is Arachne license, with which you have to agree if
you want to use Arachne. This license forbids you to reverse engineer
Arachne binaries.
This "message" won't be displayed on screen on any occasion - it is secret
piece of code, used as passphrase, and only people who break Arachne
license can be exposed to this text. So people, who use Arachne as it was
intended, have no chance to view any obscene message.
> The first, and most obvious, reason, is that the text is, without
> doubt, obscene in places. Should that ever be discovered by certain
> authorities on the internet, I fear that you (or Xchaos) could be in
> VERY serious trouble regrading obscenity laws and so on. I fear also
> that the probability of trouble is increased now that so many people
> have been made aware of it.
Are there any laws which control content of program binnaries - which you
cannot reverse engineer without breaking license ? ;-))) I don't know how
it is in .uk, but in my country, in .cz, we have freedom of speech
guaranteed by constitution. There are some limitation, which would expose
you to prosecution if your publish eg. Mein Kampf by Hitler (but publisher
who did so was not really seriously punished) or maybe child pornography,
but it is completely ok to publish words which I used in registration key
passphrase.
> Secondly, there are people in the World who hold certain beliefs
> based on moral or religious grounds. I completely understand that
> everyone may have a different view of these beliefs, but they DO exist.
> Such people will be extremely disappointed (to put it mildly!) that
> something on their computer contains such text. You may well feel that
> this is a stupid objection - and you might be right - but it DOES exist.
Ok, it was kind of social experiment. People who reverse engineer
proprietary shareware code are often trying to break restrictions which
are built-in unregistered version. They do bad thing - so I felt I have
right to make kind of joke, and hide little "verba surprise" for them.
> My point is that to have obscene text in your code is completely
> unnecessary. We could argue for ever about whether it matters or not.
> But why take the risk of having it there anyway, especially when you
> have worked so very hard for so long to make Arachne a success? The last
> thing that you want now is trouble just because of some stupid little
> bit of obscene text in your code.
This code is unfortunately quite necessary - because it is required for
ARachne registration keys to work. I can only think about XORing it, or
something like that.
> I know that you are busy on other things and you don't need this
> extra problem, but I would urge you to issue a new version of CORE.EXE
> immediately with the obscene text removed. I really do think that this
> is important for YOUR security as well as for any other reason. When you
> have issued it, announce it on the Arachne List so that the news that
> Arachne is now sound spreads as quickly as the present news of the
> obscenity has spread.
I will do what I will decide to do. I am absolutely sure Arachne does not
contain malicius code - the TEMP=C:\DOS exception is Microsoft's fault.
And I absolutely believe in freedom of speech, which includes right to
write license agreement, which obligates people not to reverse-engineer
my code. This includes even police - I think not even police, which would
search for obscenities, has right to reverse engineer Arachne code,
without previous permission of court. So it brings interesting precedence:
anyone, who saw this message in Arachne binary, previously broke my
license agreement about not reverse-engineering Arachne. So which rule
has higher priority ?
> I hope that you won't be offended at this message. I've told you
> before that I think that Arachne has made GREAT progress lately and I
> hope that it continues to do so. I would hate to see that progress
> spoiled by something so silly.
It's ok. It's just that I am not only programmer, I believe internet is
here to change the world. Things like Linux or MP3.com are best of all,and
I feel optimistic about MP3 pirace and Napster and so, although it is
not 100% etical - it does kind of damage to the artists, in fact.
But I think I have right to use anything I wish in proproietary
executable, which is not intended to be viewed by anyone.
--
http://arachne.cz/
(Arachne WWW browser for DOS+Linux / Webhosting / MP3streaming)
