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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I was a tech journalist in the early 00’s and I remember writing about that story or one like that.
A similar thing happened with Microsoft, who either delivered or was served the full documentation of some office format printed out. It’s a pretty popular form of malicious compliance, also paying people in bags of coins.
You’re the hero that GitHub needs.
The irony is that nowadays you could just say “well, the codes open source and all hosted on GitHub…”
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
Wikipedia has XOR truth tables and contains my very secret trade secrets!
I stare at Linux source code very often looking for vulnerabilities.
I unironically have printed pages out to sit down with.
The idea of having the whole kernel printed… is… fun. Lol. How would your organize it for reading? Different chapters that are the directories of the kernel code ?
