Security Researcher Revealing “Secure” Advertising Claim By DigiExam As Utterly False Threatened With Copyright Monopoly Lawsuit

Repression: So it’s happened again – a security researcher showing a marketing claim to be atrociously false has been threatened with a copyright monopoly lawsuit to take down the posted proof. The company DigiExam claims that their examination software is “cheat proof”, which it can’t be by definition when it’s running on somebody’s own computer: these are DRM fantasies. Security researcher Hannes Aspåker developed a proof of concept to show the claim is false and posted it, and was promptly hit with a threat of copyright monopoly infringement lawsuit from DigiExam to take down the proof: DigiExam is deliberately creating chilling effects on free speech in order to protect its false marketing.

DigiExam is a company claiming to sell secure education examinations intended to run in an education environment, but on the student’s own computer. To anybody with a shred of technical knowledge, the security in this situation is utter nonsense, due to the simple fact that DigiExam doesn’t hold the key to the student’s own computer, but the student does: the student can run and modify any code they like to give whatever result they like, including modifying DigiExam’s code to not be cheat proof, which it therefore isn’t to begin with. This is Security 101 for anybody even mildly technically competent.

This hasn’t prevented DigiExam from making bold (and false) claims about being “cheat-proof”. Security researcher Hannes Aspåker decided to face the false marketing head on, and developed a proof of concept showing the modified exam software from DigiExam failing to live up to any of its marketing claims. This is what security researchers do: they puncture dangerous marketing made of nothing but hot air. It didn’t sit well with DigiExam, though. Specifically, when seeing this GIF demonstrating how DigiExam’s product security has been disabled, DigiExam considered it a good idea to threaten the security researcher with a copyright monopoly infringement lawsuit over this particular demonstration artwork, which was made by Aspåker and not them:

This kind of legal threat can cause a lot of people to back down in the face of unknown adversity. Most people don’t know the laws and underlying treaties in detail, and outright fear the concept of facing a courtroom. Thus, such a threat has a chilling effect on legitimate research, even when the threat is utterly baseless, which makes it malicious and in bad faith.

However, this particular security researcher contacted me to ask for some advice, and without technically providing legal advice, I could tell unusually quickly that DigiExam are unusually full of shit. They have no legal clue whatsoever, they’re just angry that someone is pulling the pants down on an obvious lie, and are resorting to anything they can come up with in order to save face. This is a particularly nasty case of deliberately creating chilling effects on baseless takedown grounds just to protect DigiExam’s marketing. (Disclaimer: Aspåker did not ask me to write this article, I’m doing that on my own to call attention to the particularly nasty abuse of legal threats on DigiExam’s part.)

Here’s the (legally) recorded call of when this researcher calls DigiExam back and says he won’t take down the security bulletin in response to the threat:

Call in Swedish where the threat from DigiExam is reiterated.

What’s said by DigiExam’s representative in this call is the following (at the one minute mark), after the lawsuit threat has been reiterated: — Aspåker: So I understand you’re claiming copyright [to the second GIF and demanding I’m taking it down]? — DigiExam: Yes. Our logotype and our interface is our brand, and we have trademark protected them. It’s simply our property.

Let’s review: they are claiming they hold a copyright monopoly to the GIF (which was created by Aspåker, not them), and are saying that the logo and interfaces are their trademark, “simply our property”. This is a stunning ignorance and conflation of wildly different exclusive rights – the copyright monopoly and trademark rights – not to mention the utter clueless confusion with property rights, which is something completely different again from exclusive monopolies.

First, the copyright monopoly goes to the creator of an artwork, end of story. The creator is Aspåker. There can be some problems when other people’s artwork can be seen as part of the new work, and they did claim something about the logotype, something that literally thousands of court cases have