Re: Dissident versus ASP
* Jeremy Hankins <nowan@nowan.org> [030318 16:54]:
> > What if some small individual wants to start a server doing decss.
> > Not sitting in the USA another place under the jurisdiction of
> > the large media-industry, there might be nothing doable against him.
> > If he has to expose the source, he would thereby importing a
> > circumvention device to the USA, thus eliminating any chance to
> > visit the US without beeing convicted.
>
> Fine, in this hypothetical if he's unable to provide the source to
> folks in the US, the license would not allow him to provide the
> service to folks in the US. Exactly analogous to someone trying to
> distribute deCSS binaries. Exactly what hurdle he would have to place
> in front of US users is up to him (and his lawyer).
And as there is no secure way to restrict people from a country, he
should not able to offer such services at all?
> > What I merely want to say by this, is that distribution is not
> > only a technical burden, but more. (Running a slightly modified
> > webserver that sends out his sourcecode in Germany may expose
> > one to liability for example. With the current GPL one can look
> > at the modifications some months later and test them a bit better
> > to get rid of any problems with that)
>
> I'm certainly not familiar with German law (I'm not even really
> familiar with US law). But does this same liability apply if you make
> changes to a CVS repository?
IANAL, but as far as I understood it, you are liable for everything you
distribute and all all-warenty-excluded statements are null and void
like they were not part of anything (At least for distribution from Germans to
Germans). While I think German law protects people giving things away
for free, they are still liable for damage done willingly or because
extreme lack of care. And putting two things together without looking
at the parts was ruled extreme lack of care, I heard. So as German one
is intrested to do the minimal qa, one would want everyone to do, before
distributing anything one created.
Hochachtungsvoll,
Bernhard R. Link
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Sendmail is like emacs: A nice operating system, but missing
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