NZ software developer bows to US threat of legal action

By ADAM GIFFORD

An Auckland software developer has been forced to dumb down his webcam software after a Silicon Valley dot.com threatened him with prosecution under the United States Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Bob Prangnell said the reaction by Webcam site operator SpotLife to his Webcam Watcher product was bullying with no legal justification - but given the willingness of US courts to issue injunctions, he was taking the threat seriously.

A Russian programmer, Dmitry Sklyarov, was arrested at the Def Con hacker convention in Las Vegas in July by the FBI for allegedly violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by demonstrating how to get around security features in US company Adobe's new eBook system.

Mr Prangnell's company, Beausoft, makes a range of software to help people do more with their digital cameras. Webcam Watcher allows users to monitor thousands of webcams from their PC.

Mr Prangnell said webcams had practical applications, such as for security monitoring or checking the length of the cafeteria queue, but their main appeal was probably voyeuristic.

"A lot of people look at them hoping to see some tit," he said, but nearly all the pictures were of people typing at their computers.

Some of those webcams are broadcast by SpotLife, a company founded by webcam manufacturer Logitech, which has so far received more than $US50 million in venture capital funding.

SpotLife wants people who buy internet video cameras to pay it to broadcast their webcam feeds. Initially, it gave a free low-use account to anyone who bought a Logitech camera, in the hope they would upgrade to a paid subscription.

After a recent restructure in which it laid off a quarter of its 200 staff, SpotLife switched to giving buyers a 30-day free trial, after which they must pay to keep broadcasting.

It claims to have a million registered users. SpotLife offers subscribers the option of creating "locked" shows, where visitors are asked for a password to get to the next screen where the picture is displayed.

Mr Prangnell said that because Webcam Watcher only took the picture using an http (hypertext transport protocol) "get" command, it ignored SoftLife's browser-based password system.

"It's not even basic http authentication, where a window pops up which you have to fill in. It's just a bit of HTML [hypertext markup language] and CGI [common gateway interface] script."

SpotLife recently changed its site to exclude visitors whose browsers did not accept cookies - data created by a web server that is stored on a user's computer to allow the website to keep track of their activity.

It meant webcam monitoring programs could no longer access spotlife.com.

"It took me a few minutes to figure out what they had done, and then I changed the program to make it send back a cookie," Mr Prangnell said.

Within four hours he had an updated version of Webcam Watcher on his site, a feat which won him a surge in sales.

Then came the letter from SpotLife's lawyers, claiming he had broken a raft of US copyright and computer fraud laws, as well as trespass.

"They say I've broken their protection scheme, but that's a joke - they're not encrypting. You need something more secure than a wet paper bag to qualify as encryption," Mr Prangnell said.

As a one-man band he does not have the resources to fight through the US court system.

"I told them I will, without prejudice, take out the cookies and urge my users to upgrade," he said.

The Herald was unable to get comment from SpotLife.

Meanwhile, Mr Sklyarov is out of jail and discussing a plea bargain.

Links

Webcam Watcher

SpotLife