Netfront Application Hacking Cease and Desist Order

I, as co-owner of HPC:Factor have received a very strong, verified communication from the Senior Vice President of Legal Affairs at ACCESS Co. Ltd in Tokyo.

Having made the owner/administrative position on the hacking of such applications clear in the past, it is unfortunate, but understandable that we are now forced into this position.

Having engaged in a cooperative dialogue with ACCESS Co. Ltd since this issue was raised, ACCESS Co. Ltd have made it clear to us as an organisation that they regard any stub interoperability modification, hex editing, disassembly, resource modification, distribution of modified binaries or selling of services based upon ACCESS Co. Ltd Intellectual Property as copyright infringement. The above list are conditions which they have flagged as being undertaken by members of this community, actively participating on this site, as well as on others not under our control.

ACCESS Co. Ltd has issued us with an immediate cease and desist mandate with regards of allowing discussion of the dismantling of, and, dissemination of their intellectual property.
ACCESS Co. Ltd have stated formally that they are in the process of considering the pursuit of legal avenues against other parties and against HPC:Factor should we fail to exercise necessary responsiveness to the IP case made to and against us by ACCESS Co. Ltd.

The owners and administration of HPC:Factor must therefore state on record that we will cooperate in full with discussions and needs of ACCESS Co. Ltd in this matter, pending and where applicable in lieu of the receipt of legal advice but not without agreement of the owners or exterior to the bounds of International treaties to which our mutual legal systems subscribe.

I therefore issue into the community a single, unequivocal reminder and warning to community members that community facilities owned and operated by HPC:Factor may not be used to advertise, condone or describe processes surrounding EULA term breaches of ACCESS Co. Ltd's Intellectual Property. Such actions are contrary to the forum rules and site charter and will be backed up if necessary using all means at our disposal so as to preserve the integrity and continuity of the site.
I, on behalf of the owners would also like to appeal to community members and fellow webmasters with regards to the continued dissemination of this material to reconsider their position in light of these developments.

As a fellow owner I'm going to add my own comments here...

Fundamentally I am 100% opposed to any type of modification, hacking, reverse engineering, etc of software, ROMs, applications. I have on several occassions made it very clear that I do not appreciate this type of discussion within our forums but, until now, it was more of "Clinton's opinion" than anything else.

Now we are beyond it being simply a matter of opinion.

I have no problem banning posts, threads or users when it comes to this subject and will do so if the discussions do not stop. These types of discussions are now threatening the site - the best for H/PC users - and cannot and will not be tolerated.

understood.

I trust the Netfront folks have notified Len Caplan as well.

Edited by CE Geek 2007-06-29 6:16 PM

We received the communication directly from NetFront. I have no idea if any other sites or individuals were contacted.

Just for the sake of clarification so I can make sure I do not get this site in trouble, is there a site somewhere that tells citizens of mere democracies what exactly software corporations say we are not allowed to discuss pertaining to their copyrighted software products?

I am confused because I can discuss my opinion all I want about the idea of overthrowing the superpower United States of America so long as I do not take any material actions in that direction but software copyright owners can tell us what we can discuss in public, whether we take action or not?

I am not trying to be funny here. I would greatly appreciate a link to a qualified site that can inform me as to precisely what the law is here. I knew there was a big reason why I joined the Open Source movement long ago.

In this particular instance, Chris' original post outlines what is not to be discussed in this matter.

As a general rule, any discussion or "how-to's" on reverse engineering or modifying an application or ROM is the crux of the issue.

bruisedquasar,

The issue is clearly laid down in my original post. The problem is not in discussion of theoretical concepts or processes, the problem is with the actual violation of EULA licenses issued by the software developer - breach of license is breach of contractual law. In addition, reverse engineering, decompilation and the like is in violation of International copyright law - intellectual property.
As far as I can speculate at this time, ACCESS Co. Ltd's largest problem is in the redistribution of binary files, the rampant encouraging of doing it as a be-all to end all solution to peoples problems and most significantly the selling of said material in certain quarters.

Whether and irrespective of what you, I, Clinton or anyone here thinks about the idea of IP and copyright being just and beneficial to society at large - all of the governments of people stated here in this thread subscribe to International conventions. If you dislike that, either move to a principality or state where they are not subscribed to - taking HPC:Factor along with you, or challenge your elected representatives on it. Please do not challenge the future security of this site with it.

You may also be shocked and surprised to learn that I offer little in the way of admission of importance to US law in my personal regard or in this regard, because shockingly I am not American and neither is this case. This matter is ascribed to international treaties in a case raised under Japanese law and has nothing what so ever to do with the US legal system - yet.

hmmm, it was not clear to me either.

can aygshells still be discussed then? just not OS version editing and mfcce modifications?

AYG's that are new applications built for H/PC/Core use are not against any laws that I'm aware of, unless Microsoft trademarked it ... I wouldn't put it past them.
Documented function calls and kernel function information can be obtained from Platform Builder. No problem there.

ok, that information helps. thanks.

I hope Netfront people know that I, for one, bought and paid for a legal copy of Netfront 3.3 ONLY because this hack (that they complain about) made it possible to use it with my HPC. It really gets my goat that they are willing to take my money, but not support my device,AND they will not let someone else support their software.

I think I will ask for my money back and never buy from them again. Their browser is not much better anyway.

Hard life that of HPC user. It was abandoned from Microsoft may yaers ago; no more developer give him a chance to get updated software. He had to resign to use 7 years old crap program.

It's actually much simpler than that. It's not a question of what right a software company has to restrict what you say. It's what right the owners of HPC:Factor have to restrict what you say *in these forums*. And the answer is: They have the right to restrict what you say *in these forums*, in any manner they see fit. You can talk about whatever C:Amie and the other owners of the site say you can talk about here. And it seems pretty clear that, as of when this thread was started, you cannot discuss anything related to modifying Netfront to make it run on other platforms.

Bear in mind, these forums are not 'public' in the sense your example refers to. This is a privately owned and operated website, and the owners of the site have the right to (dis)allow any content they wish. Freedom of Speech guarantees you the right to open your own site and say what you want, but not the right to use other sites in any way other than how their owners dictate. If they choose to co-operate with Access' request to remove and prohibit such content in order to avoid a court dispute, they have every right to do so. It might be noble of them if they decided to fall on their swords in the name of free speech, but certainly not prudent.

On a somewhat unrelated note: I wonder if this has anything to do with their decision to suspend sales of Netfront 3.3 activation keys? Probably not, but the timing is coincidental to be sure.

i wouldnt believe they would suspend sales of such a big software (a fully featured browser is no small app) just because some hpc users edited 2 bytes in the import table to get it to run.