Re: Anti-DMCA clause (was Re: GPL v3 Draft
On Thu, Jan 19, 2006 at 01:58:08PM -0800, Walter Landry wrote:
> > Accordingly, no program licensed under this License is a
> > technological measure which effectively controls access to any
> > work."
>
> Again, writing this sentence into the license doesn't make it true.
> It is decided by external factors, such as whether the people
> implementing the scheme know how to do decent crypto.
There seems to be some rift between the law and reality, though. If the
law is taken literally, it's a no-op: it forbids writing software that
can't be written (if you write software for an effective protection
scheme, then, well, it's not effective). If the law is being enforced
anyway (which it is, of course), then it's being interpreted to mean
something a little different--where "effective" means something other
than what it does in English. In that case, anti-DRM clauses, and
evaluations of their potential effectiveness, need to be done while
under the influence of the courts' private version of the language.
(Unfortunately, I don't speak that language ...)
--
Glenn Maynard
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