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On Wed, 2 May 2007 12:28:33 +0100 "Jonathan Roberts" <jonathan.roberts.uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > talking about how Ubuntu is illegal in the US due to DMCA, > > > > Untrue. Ubuntu makes it possible for a user to install stuff that could > > be deemed illegal to copy or distribute in the US but a lot of those > > problems are untested in court and Ubuntu does warn the user. > > > > I'm afraid I think you're wrong here - although I'm not certain! - the > DMCA as I understand it even prohibits providing information on ways > to circumvent copy protection, which is exactly what Ubuntu does. No cases have come to court and the interpretation of laws enacted by politicians is always subject to clarification by the law courts of the legislature within the area of jurisdiction. That is how the law works, even in the USA. That is why UK banks have been paying out on these overdraft charge claims, they don't want to let the courts set a precedent that would allow everybody to claim. Whilst an issue is untested, everyone is uncertain about exactly where the boundaries lie, so (in the "logic" of the big banks), people are less likely to make a claim because of the risk of losing - yet they always pay out because they figure that paying out is less expensive than letting it get to court. Bizarre. At the moment, the DMCA is untested in court (as is the GPL) and exactly what it means for MP3 and Ubuntu is simply not clear. If Ubuntu are liable under the DMCA then so could all ISP's, all search engines and all web archive systems. Even attempting to enforce such a all-embracing law is crazy. It is trying to enforce USA politics on sovereign states who are outside USA law. It wasn't so long ago that Debian stopped using the non-us repositories - it would be stupid to require those to be restarted. The DMCA proponents can claim what they want - see the earlier thread about DMCA and Digg that revolves around asserting that a pure number can be protected under "Intellectual Property" and therefore by the DMCA. As a number cannot be the property of any one legal entity then there can never be any case against Digg under the DMCA, it's as simple as that. MP3 codecs ARE patented but those patents are only enforceable in the USA - which is why software patents have been so vocally opposed in Europe and why the fight must continue to prevent them being introduced by other means. DVD region encoding is another issue in this area - the law is far from certain. If the "logic" of DMCA proponents is accepted then it would prevent Google from indexing pages that contain the libdvdcss code or the number at the centre of the Digg debacle. It is simply preposterous. The DMCA seeks to legally enforce security through obscurity. If it wasn't so $&%*&£!$$% serious it would be hysterically funny. The lesson is obvious - always encode in Ogg Vorbis. Converting mp3 to ogg is lossy and sub-optimal so this has the added bonus that in order to actually have listenable music in Ogg format, you need to have the original recording available for ripping. That generally means some form of purchased media rather than some warez site. Patents stink - even whilst they are unenforceable for us in Europe, we must do everything we can to further the use of non-patented codecs and non-patented systems to ensure that some form of free content remains available even if the patent idiots in the USA are allowed to peddle their dangerous lies about copying software being equivalent to piracy. Piracy requires theft and theft is defined in terms of property - software is not a physical thing, it does not exist in physical terms, it is merely stored on physical media sometimes. Software is not property and cannot be judged under crimes defined in terms of property. When you download a file from my website, you have not stolen that file - I still have the original - so how can that ever be deemed theft? THAT is why patented and proprietary code is SUCH a BAD thing for everyone with any hope of using free software in the future. > > That's separate from the much-discussed issue here of whether Ubuntu > > should make this stuff so easy to obtain in the first place. It is a > > deliberate decision within Ubuntu to make it easy - some will say that > > Ubuntu may yet regret that policy. > > Which is illegal in the US due to the DMCA...I think. Not necessarily. -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/
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