On Tue, 16 Dec 2003, Sergey Spiridonov wrote: > General question: is it true, that if distribution of the package XXX is > illegal in the country YYY, but legal in ZZZ, Debian will not include > XXX? > > Shouldn't it be better (in theory), that if package XXX will be excluded from > servers in country YYY, but still be available on server in ZZZ? Unfortunatly, I'm not sure that we are exempt from prosecution in the cases where YYY=US, as SPI (and therefore Debian) is primarily an US entity. [I haven't looked up case law on this one though, so feel free to cases opposing my understanding.] The conservative approach is clearly to comply with US law, and the law of the locality where the servers are located. However, if a package was illegal to distribute in a country where YYY!=US, and no members of Debian were involved in that package's distribution who were in YYY, it should be ok to distribute in ZZZ. [But that should probably be up to the mirror administrators, and those files should almost certainly not be part of the standard distribution (at least in the case where YYY is a country where major mirrors are located.)] Furthermore, I'd be surpised if you were unable to find a country YYY that felt that its jurisdiction covered acts in other countries contrary to its own laws... so this might need to be looked at on a country by country basis. Don Armstrong -- This can't be happening to me. I've got tenure. -- James Hynes _Publish and Perish_ http://www.donarmstrong.com http://www.anylevel.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu
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