On Wed, 2007-05-02 at 07:41 -0400, Marty wrote: > The recent media debate over a released HD-DVD key, and resulting DMCA take-down > notices, got me thinking about a broad range of questions regarding Debian > policy about "IP rights" in general, and specifically about numbers as > copyrighted "intellectual propery." Any piece of digital "content" is a single > number, so the issues raised by the copyrighted key apply to any other type of > binary data, including images, audio recordings, "ebooks," object code, etc. > > Like the banned key, an HD-DVD image is a single copyrighted number. Losslessly > transcoded copies, as reversible mathematical transforms, would probably be > covered by the same copyright. Some lossy transforms may also covered, but an > interesting exception is the HDTV broadcast flag, which applies a lossy > non-reversible tranform, presumably resulting in a public domain copy. It begs > the question, at what level of transform lossiness does the copy lose its > "protection" and become public domain? One cannot copyright numbers. The issue with the key, is that it is being used to circumvent a copy protection scheme, which is a violation of the DMCA. > > I have long questioned whether copyright can be clearly enough defined to be > generally enforceable. To be a useful, it must be very narrowly defined. It was > initially limited by available technology, and the original purpose was to > protect the investments of book publishers, indirectly protecting society's > access to books. Now copyrights have been expanded and interpreted as broadly > as possible, with clearly adverse effects on society's access to information. > In one extreme example, copyright was used to keep popular folk songs out of > Girl Scout song books. The HD_DVD key seems to yet another example of the abuse > of copyright laws. > > I wonder how Debian policy is shaped in this area, and how it's applied to the > free/non-free designation of various programs? Is there a democratic way to > determine policy? If Debian lawyers are involved, which country's laws are > followed? Is there any place where these policies are clearly publicly stated? > http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ -davidc -- gpg-key: http://www.zettazebra.com/files/key.gpg
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