Re: Results for Debian's Position on the GFDL
"Raul Miller" <moth.debian@gmail.com>
> On 3/19/06, MJ Ray <mjr@phonecoop.coop> wrote:
> > You're citing both wikipedia and USA law? That seems irrelevant.
> >
> > Wikipedia is not a credible supporting reference (because one could have
> > written it oneself) and in I didn't find "technical measures" on
> > that page at all.
>
> You're looking for an exact spelling?
That seemed the context in which it was cited.
> I pointed you at the wikipedia because you seemed to
> be unfamiliar with the law itself.
As a long-time campaigner against EUCD, IPRED and similar things,
I'm familiar with much of the law which applies to me. Studying
US law in detail unless relevant seems very dull to me. If it's
relevant, please direct me to which part applies, not just a
general hand-wave towards the entire legal code.
> > On the 14th, I posted the EUCD (my local DMCA-like law) definition of
> > the phrase to this thread's ancestor, which you seemed to refuse to
> > consider and claimed it covers silly things like the atlantic ocean
> > and brick walls if it covers file attributes!
>
> You seem to be referring to this post:
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2006/03/msg00194.html
>
> I did not say that the quoted definition refers to such things. I
> said that it would have to refer to such things to support the
> meaning you ascribed to it.
>
> Do you understand this distinction?
Yes. Furthermore, it seems the very same one I am making in
the paragraph quoted above: because it would need to apply
to such things, your argument that "technological measures"
means something literal seems absurd.
In any case: if we interpret the FDL with the legal definition,
FDL'd works fail DFSG; if we interpret the FDL with your
bizarre literal definition, FDL'd works fail DFSG. A null diff.
> > Indeed. My non-distributed copying is regulated by copyright law,
> > as I described under this Subject yesterday. So, I think distribution
> > is not important and the prohibition of technical measures will apply
> > to private copying in some situations.
> >
[...]
> During the normal course of execution of a program, you
> need to make numerous copies of a program. One for
> memory, one for swap, one for L2 cache, numerous
> small ones for L1 cache, ...
>
> But this seems to be outside the scope of the disputed
> sentence in the GFDL -- control of these copies seems
> to make no sense because the control involved is not
> legal control and does not involve copy rights. At least,
> the GFDL makes no specific requirements about how
> the document is transcribed to L2 cache.
Are you saying that such copying to L2 cache is not covered
by copyright law? At least in England, I'm sure that's false
and it's covered by s50C of the 1988 Act as amended. If the
licence explicitly prohibits such copying, then 50C supports it:
50C.-(1) It is not an infringement of copyright for a lawful user of
a copy of a computer program to copy or adapt it, provided that the
copying or adapting-
(a) is necessary for his lawful use; and
(b) is not prohibited under any term or condition of an agreement
regulating the circumstances in which his use is lawful.
[END QUOTE]
AIUI, "lawful use" mostly means that you are licensed to do it, by EULA
or similar. There are analagous provisions for non-programs (since the
EUCD amendments, IIRC).
I think these are bad laws, but it also needs a bad licence like
the FDL to cause problems. We're trying to repair the bad laws,
but we can also work on repairing bad licences.
Hope that explains,
--
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/
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