On Thu, Mar 20, 2003 at 01:51:31AM +0100, Jakob Bohm wrote: > On Thu, Mar 20, 2003 at 12:47:48AM +0100, Henning Makholm wrote: > > Is there any "DMCA-like laws" anywhere that say that a copyright > > holder can *not* authorize other people to access his work? > > > > I don't know, but if there are not, and a lot of people start > using such licenses, the big media companies are likely to get > their supporters in government to enact an amendment stating > that just because the copyright holders of *some* works > protected by a technology authorize locksmithing, this does not > allow ordinary citizens to create, distribute or possess tools > which can also crack the works copyrighted by the big media > companies. Eh? So we should refrain from defending both Fair Use *and* the rights of copyright holders who elect to use permissive licenses for fear of further attacks against both by copyright cartels that want to reserve as many exclusive rights as possible, even those not historically addressed by copyright law? I strongly disagree with such appeasement. > Looking at it from another perspective, anti-copy-protection > clauses in free software licenses are intended to deal with two > unrelated issues: > > 1. Someone might store a copy of the free software in a > copy-protected format thereby subverting the virality of the > license. My alternate method of defining such non-reversible > forms as "binaries" not "source" (= the preferred for for making > changes) solves this by forcing the person putting the free > software under copy protection to also provide an unprotected > copy of the source. > > 2. If a copy protection scheme relies on the inability of > users to change certain aspects of the programs legitimately > processing the format, then it becomes a legal impossibility to > provide or develop such programs as free software (because free > software by definition empowers the users to arbitrarily change > program behavior). While the previously suggested clause does > not deal directly with this issue, it may be part of a grander > scheme to create enough excuses for someone developing a new > DeCSS under the pretense of gaining access to free software > explicitly authorizing such activity in its license. Why is it a pretense? Why should copyright holders *not* be permitted to grant expansive permissions to access their works? I see nothing wrong with defanging the DMCA by promoting the widespread dissemination of works licensed such that using technologies that could be considered by some to violate the DMCA would also have plenty of so-called "legitimate" uses. -- G. Branden Robinson | I am sorry, but what you have Debian GNU/Linux | mistaken for malicious intent is branden@debian.org | nothing more than sheer http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | incompetence! -- J. L. Rizzo II
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