Bug#154281: libdvdcss ITP

[Sam Hocevar <sam@zoy.org>]

On Wed, Jul 30, 2003, Robert Millan wrote:

> As for the legal advice, what do you mean? Do you suggest that we hire a
> lawyer to advocate in favour of libdvdcss?

   I suggest we hire a lawyer to tell us whether we may include libdvdcss
in Debian _or not_. This is roughly what we did for the crypto-in-main
issue.

> In case it is in doubt wether
> libdvdcss violates the DMCA, it is still pretty clear to me that the DMCA
> can not be (legaly) enforced outside the jurisdiction of the USA.

   Right. But nothing ensures us that there are no other DMCA-like laws
that libdvdcss may be infringing.

   It is also worth mentioning that most court cases involving DeCSS did
not use the DMCA argument at all.

> >    Anyway, be assured that if I uploaded libdvdcss to the archive at
> > this moment, no ftp-master would dare to accept it. I do not want to
> > waste their time.
> 
> Nor do I, but how can you assure it? Do you know if the ftp masters have
> ever pronounced on this? and do you know if there has been any "rejected"
> or "frozen" attempts at uploading libdvdcss?

   My vlc-css packages (CSS-enabled VLC) were never accepted, and I did
upload them to non-US, not main.

-- 
Sam.