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Re: [LUG] Ubuntu and Dell could be illegal in the US

 

I'm with you on the patent issues and I take your point regarding it
not having been tested in the courts :D

Jon

p.s. sorry for the top-post.

On 02/05/07, Neil Williams <linux@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 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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>

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