Malicious Compliance

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People conforming to the letter, but not the spirit, of a request. For now, this includes text posts, images, videos and links. Please ensure that the “malicious compliance” aspect is apparent - if you’re making a text post, be sure to explain this part; if it’s an image/video/link, use the “Body” field to elaborate.

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Here's all the source code (lemmy.sdf.org)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/maliciouscompliance

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In 2000, I wrote a Linux device driver that "decrypted" the output of a certain device, and my company, which hosted open-source projects, agreed to host it.

The "encryption" was only a XOR, but that was enough for the maker of said device to sue my company under 17 U.S.C. § 1201 for hundreds of millions in damages.

The story got a lot of press back then because it highlighted how stupid the then-new DMCA was, and also because there was a David open-source enthusiasts vs. Goliath heartless corporation flavor to it.

Our lawyer decided to pick up the fight to generate free publicity for our fledgling company. For discovery, the maker of the device requested "a copy of any and all potentially infringing source code". They weren't specific and they didn't specify the medium.

So we printed the entire Linux kernel source code including my driver in 5-pt font and sent them the boxes of printouts. Legally they had been served, so there was nothing they could do about it.

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[–] BeigeForce 36 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You’re the hero that GitHub needs.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The irony is that nowadays you could just say "well, the codes open source and all hosted on GitHub..."

[–] TeoTwawki 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Double irony is they'd also send a takedown to github claiming the code contains their IP due to being too ignorant to comprehend that none of the code contains any of thiers to do what it does

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Wikipedia has XOR truth tables and contains my very secret trade secrets!