On Sat, Jan 27, 2001 at 10:37:57PM +0100, Jakob B?hm wrote:
> Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> >
> >
> > This is wrong. If there is no problem exporting it from the
> > US, it shall be put on master proper (we don't care what the laws in
> > iran say, for example, when it comes to putting software on the sites
> > in the US).
> >
> > People, I know this apparent bias towards the US is galling,
> > but before you go half cocked trying to restore the balance. think.
> >
> > manoj
> > --
>
> Please reread my post from Sun, 21 Jan 2001 20:28:51 +0100.
>
> To summarize myself:
>
> The main archive is mirrored and copied around the globe both
> inside and outside SPI. Including anything which it would
> be illegal to post or copy anywhere in the world could get
> those mirrors and users in trouble.
>
> For ultra restrictive countries it may be reasonable to simply
> take down all Debian mirrors in those countries and warn CD
> people not to ship cds there, but for isolated issues like
> encryption it is more reasonable to place such packages in
> a special non-mirrored area of the archive, such as non-us or
> non-world if you prefer a different name.
I think there are two major reasons to increase the granularity by
which we specify legal problems with packages.
1) It may become necessary to locate different parts of non-us in
different places. For example, what if .nl prohibits DeCSS etc?
Would we want to move all of the crypto stuff (still legal in .nl)
somewhere else? At this point, it would be merely inconvenient, but
we should consider the possibilty that there may come a time where all
of debian cannot be legally located in any one location.
2) If Canada, for example, were to prohibit cryto exports, then non-us
could no longer be mirrored at ftp.ca.debian.org (leaving aside its
non-existance). However, they might still allow things patended in
the US to be distributed from there. So, what is the person running
the mirror to do? Currently, we provide them with just one option -
remove non-us. That doesn't seem like a good solution to me.
sam th
sam@uchicago.edu
http://www.abisource.com/~sam/
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