Re: Anti-DMCA clause (was Re: GPL v3 Draft

[Glenn Maynard <glenn@zewt.org>]

On Fri, Jan 20, 2006 at 10:30:29PM -0500, Jeremy Hankins wrote:
> If you want to be charitable, you might say that "effective" here is
> being used in the sense of "effectively, it's a security mechanism".
> But whether you want to be charitable or not, it's clearly not being
> used in a way that requires the mechanism to be robust.

I thought about "effectively", but that just means "in reality".  If I
post my password to the internet, it is no longer, in reality, a security
mechanism.

In any case, it's not my interpretation, or a rational interpretation, that
counts, it's the court's--which was my original point.  Evaluations of anti-
DRM clauses need to bear in mind the reality of the laws, not just the
literal word.  Walter says, I think, that merely stating "GPG isn't an
effective encryption software" doesn't make it true.  That's so--but if it's
not actually the effectiveness of the security mechanism that the law cares
about, but something else (such as stated intent), then the apparent "simple
untruth" of the statement may not indicate that it won't be effective (and
taken in context of the interpretation of the law, may not be untrue).

If the authors of the statement have done some research into this (which I
would hope), it might be interesting to hear their rationale in more detail,
even if it's "we don't know if this will work, we're just throwing darts at
the courts" (which is fine with me, as long as the clause seems harmless).

-- 
Glenn Maynard