Re: ITP: oms -- Open Media System DVD Player
On Wed, Dec 06, 2000 at 01:22:58PM -0700, John Galt wrote:
>
> By the SDNY's injunction being as broad as it is, I would submit that
> libcss is under injunction. You know the text of the injunction,
> Brian--I've seen your comments on it on the harvard list. In fact,
> you could read that the injunction applies to every warm body on Earth and
> every program that looks like it could possibly transfer a bit off a
> DVD. The MPAA picked a good judge--he stayed bought. However, this is
> needless worrying about probability.
An injunction applies only to the people named in it. Debian is not named in
this injunction. Software in the Public Interest is not named in the
injunction. AFIK, nobody that runs any of the Debian master or mirror sites
is named. So long as the package maintainer is also not named in the
injunction, nobody's violating the injunction.
Immagine the following situation: A person in a group typically stereotyped
by media and law enforcement as "shady" is falsely accused of using and
distributing a packet sniffer tool for Microsoft Windows called wnsniff in
order to conduct or help others conduct unlawful wiretaps. A civil lawsuit
is filed in federal court. The person prepares for trial with inadequite
time and legal representation, faces a biased judge, and get enjoined from
using or distributing packet sniffers. The decision is appealed.
Would Debian refuse to permit packet sniffers such as tcpdump and ethereal
in main just because they may be illegal for a small handful of people in
the US to use or distribute? Would someone trying to package an ethernet
sniffing library called libsniff see any trouble with their ITP? Of course
not. Let's be reasonable here.
> [other stuff deleted]
--
Brian Ristuccia
brian@ristuccia.com
bristucc@cs.uml.edu
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