(NEW YORK, NY) -- The American Civil Liberties Union plans to appeal a judge's order barring three U.S. Web sites from posting information that reveals how to defeat a popular program used by parents to keep children away from violent or pornographic sites.

The dispute involves Cyber Patrol, software manufactured by a subsidiary of Mattel Inc., the giant toy maker. Youngsters armed with the "cphack" program could bypass parental controls on home computers to reach areas containing nudity or foul language.

The ACLU is seeking a stay on a permanent injunction that prohibits anyone from putting the computer code online. The group also is appealing the order handed down March 28 by U.S. District Court Judge Edward F. Harrington in Boston. ACLU lawyers filed the notice of appeal last week.

"The legal issue here is whether a Boston court has jurisdiction over the entire Internet, and our answer to that is a resounding no," said ACLU senior staff attorney Chris Hansen. "The larger issue is whether Cyber Patrol and other software companies are going to tell the American public exactly what their software blocks, especially when Congress wants to force both children and adults to use it."

The ACLU is appealing on behalf of Web site operators who "mirrored" or posted duplicate copies of the original program, which revealed the hidden data.

Getting around the blocks

The controversy started about two months ago. Eddy L.O. Jansson, who is believed to live in Sweden, and Matthew Skala, a university student in British Columbia, Canada, were able to reverse-engineer the Cyber Patrol Internet filtering software and discover which Web sites could not be accessed. They also created "cphack," a program that allows users to get around the blocking software.

Microsystems Software, which makes Cyber Patrol, sued Jansson and Skala, claiming that the pair had violated copyright. Microsystems is a subsidiary of Mattel Inc.

Microsystems filed its suit March 15 after learning that two hackers had broken into the home version of Cyber Patrol. The company alleged that the hackers had violated its copyright and developed two primitive programs allowing children who downloaded them to learn their parents' password. They could then gain access to a list of Internet addresses that could be used to decipher URLs for the blocked sites on the filtering list.

On March 28, Harrington ruled in favor of a motion of Microsystems after Jansson and Skala agreed to never again compile and reverse-engineer Cyber Patrol, agreed to not teach any other hackers how to do it and signed over all rights to the two programs developed from Microsystem's "source code."

The court order also applied to mirror sites that had posted copies of the programs.

Mirror sites could be in contempt

According to Mattel lawyers, Web sites carrying the "cphack" programs are in violation of a court order and could face penalties that include fines or even imprisonment for contempt.

Sarah R. Wunsch, an ACLU attorney in Boston, said Harrington's order covers other people who were not involved in the original lawsuit.

"We do represent three who do have mirror sites, and two of them have been served with a permanent injunction by the plaintiff, sort of warning them that this applies to them," Wunsch said. "That is why we feel we need to appeal to get some ruling on the legality of the injunction that they are being threatened with and that somebody ought to be able to raise those issues."

Copyright violation or free speech?

Susan Getgood, general manager of Cyber Patrol, noted that Microsystems had filed suit over Jansson and Skala's illegal actions and not their criticism of Cyber Patrol.

"This is about what the hackers did, not what they said," Getgood said. "Theft of intellectual property by copyright violation is not a matter of free speech."

Meanwhile, Microsystems has issued a new version of its filtering software that cannot be bypassed by "cphack." Web sites containing the information that allows someone to circumvent the product have been placed on the list of blocked sites.

In addition to appealing the permanent injunction, the ACLU has also asked Harrington to stay his order as to mirror sites while the appeal goes forward.

Hansen said the ACLU acted after its clients began receiving notices from Microsystem's attorneys. Lindsay Haisley, Bennett Haselton and Waldo L. Jaquith, the three Web site operators represented by the group, have temporarily removed their mirror copies of the decoding program.

If Harrington rejects the ACLU's request for a stay, Hansen said, the next step would be to ask the U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, also based in Boston, for a stay.