[changed reply-to to -legal, where this belongs]
On Wed, Jan 24, 2001 at 10:50:15AM -0500, jpenny@universal-fasteners.com wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 23, 2001 at 11:47:43PM -0500, Aubin Paul wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I'm a new (read: prospective maintainer) and I've been looking around and I noticed that, thanks to the non-US
> > section of Debian, we could easily put things based on CSS in Debian, provided they're out of the country.
> >
> > "The California Supreme Court delivered a severe blow to the movie
> > industry's attempt to ban DeCSS software and control speech on the Net.
> > On December 13, 2000 it granted Matthew Pavlovich's petition for review
> > based on lack of personal jurisdiction over him. The high court sent
> > the matter back to the trial judge to show why the non-California
> > resident should remain in the case. The Supreme Court's unanimous
> > decision signals its disapproval of the lower court's attempt to
> > exercise personal jurisdiction over the Indiana college student who
> > published DeCSS on a Web site hosting various Linux-based open-source projects."
> > (From eff.org)
> >
> > This means that laws against DeCSS don't even apply in Indiana, not to mention
> > out of the country. There are a number of things I would gladly package,
> > provided the debian legal people wouldn't mind:
>
> This does not mean that at all! It says that a California state judge needs
> to give a better reason that an Indiana resident should be _tried in California_.
> It does not dismiss the California case against said student and it does not
> prevent the proper parties from filing an Indiana suit.
>
> Note: there is a separate argument, that RIAA, as a licensor of the technology
> has no standing to file a suit anywhere. I have heard no ruling on this.
>
Well, this does have two important consequences.
1) It requires the bad guys to file more suits, which it is not clear
they will do.
2) Texas, where Matt Pavlovich resides, has some more favorable
federal court rulings than california.
3) It will almost certainly protect international defendants.
sam th
sam@uchicago.edu
http://www.abisource.com/~sam/
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