Re: Need of non-germany-tree in Debian?
* Sven Hoexter:
> Florian Weimer wrote:
>
>> * Malte Hahlbeck:
>>
>>> Today the upper House of the German Parliament (Bundesrat)
>>> decided to declare Security Software like nmap, nessus etc.
>>
>> nmap (and probably Nessus as well, which is non-free these days
>> anyway) are unlikely to be covered by the new law. I'm less sure
>> about packages such as john.
> Well the wording of the law is so vague that it needs to be seen
> against whom and what kind of software it will be used. While it
> should have created legal certainty it looks like it's going to be a
> huge mess which has to be cleaned up by judges.
Law tends to be technology-neutral, which has obvious benefits (and
some downsides). What's causing people headaches is not a
technological weakness, but a legal one ("abstraktes
Gefährdungsdelikt" has tons of unwanted implications).
>> Technically, this is nothing new. Keep in mind that we haven't got
>> permission to distribute most games in Germany, either.
> This issue might come up again if some plans for a new revision of
> those laws in question would be approved.
Huh? Distributing computer games without the necessary permission
under applicable youth protection laws is already forbidden.
> And this time it could get interesting to see if someone has the
> will to argue about Q3A based games.
planetpenguin-racer is affected as well. It doesn't matter whether
the game is violent or not. There's only an exception for mostly
educational games.
> A security researcher or network admin might even argue that the law
> is against our constitution because it limits his free choice for a
> profession in an over exaggerated way.
Well, a pimp could claim that as well. Keep in mind that most
security researchers aren't.
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