On Fri, Mar 07, 2003 at 04:59:50PM -0500, David Turner wrote:
> On Fri, 2003-03-07 at 13:11, Brian T. Sniffen wrote:
> > Unfortunately, in the age of the DMCA that isn't quite enough. Since
> > the GPL has few restrictions on functional modification, it's not much
> > of an issue there. A document license has a broader problem: the
> > "first person to crack it open" would be violating the DMCA to do so.
>
> Would this text fix the problem?
>
> 6.6. Each time you distribute the Program (or any work based on the
> Program), you grant to the recipient and all third parties that
^^^^
> receive copies indirectly through the recipient the authority to gain
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> access to the work by descrambling a scrambled work, decrypting an
> encrypted work, or otherwise avoiding, bypassing, removing,
> deactivating, or impairing a technological measure effectively
> controlling access to a work.
Strike the indicated text. It shouldn't be possible to "steal" the
source code of Free Software. Access control is entirely the
responsibility of the distributor, and he fails to perform that function
diligently, he should not have standing under the terms of a Free
Software license to sue random third parties for having "gained
unathorized access" to the work.
Any breach of a distributor's access control that is truly reprehensible
will surely be punishable under statutes unrelated to copyright.
I feel pretty strongly about this, by the way. :)
Otherwise, I see no problem with the above.
--
G. Branden Robinson | Organized religion is a sham and a
Debian GNU/Linux | crutch for weak-minded people who
branden@debian.org | need strength in numbers.
http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | -- Jesse Ventura
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