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 From : Sergey Lentsov                       2:4615/71.10   01 Mar 2001  18:11:45
 To : All
 Subject : URL: http://lwn.net/2001/0301/letters.php3
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    March 1, 2001
    
    
 Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 21:41:44 -0500
 From: JK <katz@jasperweb.com>
 To: letters@lwn.net
 Subject: GPL style music lisence
 
 In your Feb 22, 2001 edition you said "there may become a need for a
 more formal GPL style music license that allows material to be freely
 traded as long as it is never sold."
 
 But one of the brilliant things about the GPL is that it does indeed
 allow for the selling of Free software. This levels the playing field in
 a natural way: it lets all different sorts of motives become involved in
 the creation, distribution, and modification of software. How much money
 would Red Hat have invested in GNU/Linux if they'd been forbidden from
 selling it?
 
 More akin to the GPL would be a music license that would allow users to
 listen to the Free music, give it away, play live versions of it in
 concert, use the lyrics in a different melody, add a new middle part,
 reverse the meaning of the chorus, add a drum track, remove the guitar
 solo and add a new one, compile it with other Free songs and sell them
 on CD, sell downloads over the net, etc. (the possibilites are endless!)
 ... All, of course, under the condition that the "derived works" are
 also Free. In a way, isn't this what old, cultural, folk songs were?
 What Rap often aspires to be? What Napster is doing (without the
 license)? And what art should be about?
 
 RMS et al put a lot of thought into the specifics of software
 development when devising the GPL, and a simmilar effort may be required
 to customize a Free music licence. E.g., taping of concerts with Free
 works would, under the terms of the lisence, be allowd; Free music CD's
 would be, under the lisence, copy-able, including cover art and inserts;
 if multitrack music files are provided, then modified versions must be
 made available in multi-track form...etc.
 
 Artists could make money in both traditional and innovative ways:
 concerts, songwriter/player-for-hire (by musicians who make money from
 concerts or by venues), original music-for-hire for other media
 (soundtracks to custom-compliment other work), music lessons... but also
 though selling "official" value-added CD versions (think signed copies),
 attracting larger crowds by covering/modifying other songs... Free music
 would not necessarily make it harder to make money as a musician.
 
 Most interestingly, I believe, would be Free music's impact on
 "non-artists." We would be able to share more; we'd be able to devise
 new ways to make money (and our businesses could end up supporting
 musicians directly, though patronage or outright hiring, or by creating
 new marketplaces). We could also enjoy MORE of our favorite music: live
 concerts would be available on tape, new versions of songs we like by
 other performers would exist, interestingly modified ("improved")
 versions would become plentiful...
 
 Best of all, I think it may encourage all of us to experiment on our
 own. It would be easy to modify music files that were packaged in a
 friendly way, with multiple (commented) tracks, and
 Midi/sampling/recording software.
 
 If it hadn't been for the Internet, with its "View Source," I, who was a
 "non-technical" person, would never have learned about computers. (Now
 I'm the Technology Director of a web design company.) Many people call
 me a "non-musician" today...
 
 Jamie Katz
 
    
 Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 08:07:11 -0500
 From: Robert L Krawitz <rlk@alum.mit.edu>
 To: letters@lwn.net
 Subject: Allchin's comments
 
 Microsoft "clarified" Allchin's comments to be referring specifically
 to the GPL, rather than to open source in general (e. g. BSD license).
 In that context, I'm quite willing to believe that Microsoft is trying
 to create a cloud around the GPL; there's already enough
 misunderstanding of what the GPL does and does not allow so it's not
 hard for someone else to create even more uncertainty.  It's
 completely disingenuous, of course; nobody's forcing anyone to use
 GPL'ed code, and Microsoft's real point is that open source is OK as
 long as Microsoft can take it and use it in proprietary products with
 no strings attached.
 
 There might be another goal here, namely to create a split in the free
 source community.  There are already significant disagreements over
 the GPL over issues quite similar to what Microsoft raised in the
 clarification.
 
 --
 Robert Krawitz <rlk@alum.mit.edu>      [16]http://www.tiac.net/users/rlk/
 
 Tall Clubs International  --  [17]http://www.tall.org/ or 1-888-IM-TALL-2
 Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- mail lpf@uunet.uu.net
 Project lead for Gimp Print/stp --  [18]http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net
 
 "Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works."
 --Eric Crampton
 
    
 Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 12:00:53 -0500
 From: Bill Sneed <bsneed@mint.net>
 To: letters@lwn.net
 Subject: Jim Allchin, etc.
 
 To the editor:
 
 I think you're absolutely correct on this.  For the last decade,
 Microsoft has had it's way with Federal & State I.T. managers -- but
 this is changing.
 
 The first thing I did after reading Allchin's remarks was to visit
 most of the Web sites for the D.O.E.'s national laboratories.
 The level of Linux infiltration is quite astounding. NASA's use of
 Linux, and Open Source in general, is well documented.
 
 Such non-high tech undertakings as a centralize "command post" for
 forest fire fighting in the Western U.S. is Linux-based.
 
 The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's office in Raleigh, N.C. proudly
 proclaims its wide use of Linux -- even on a laptop!
 
 Some of the D.O.D's largest private-sector contractors are now
 using Linux, e.g., Lockheed-Martin
 
 Check out the Federal Computing News and search on Linux.  While
 there's not a tidal wave of stories regarding Linux the numbers are
 increasing and the stories are increasingly favorable.
 
 We've got the N.S.A. building a (supposedly) secure version of Linux
 and underwriting all kinds of interesting research at the Univ.
 of Utah based on Linux.
 
 Similar levels of Linux use are a little harder to document at
 State and local government levels but I have no reason to believe
 you won't find the same Linux-creep there as well.
 
 Is Microsoft worried?  You bet they are because the end of the
 gravy train is in sight -- and it's about time.
 
 ...Bill Sneed, Prospect, Maine...
 
    
 Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 15:39:14 -0800
 From: "Jonathan Day" <jd9812@my-deja.com>
 To: letters@lwn.net
 Subject: Jim Allchin, Microsoft, and Ancient Rome
 
 Dear sir,
 
     By now you're probably sick of hearing Jim Allchin's name, let alone of
 what people think of him. However, I'll throw in my 2 cents worth.
 
     It has been standard military tactics, by all conquerors, to divide
 their enemies. The more their enemies fight amongst themselves, the less
 the conquerer has to do.
 
     In light of Microsoft's history, as revealed in the DOJ court case, and
 in light of the recent Microsoft press release, claiming that Mr Allchin
 was only referring to GPL/LGPL software, it does not take a rocket
 scientist to deduce what is happening.
 
     We are being invited to destroy ourselves. Either we can accept, or we
 can refuse. And I mean 'we'. Open Source / Free Software is only truly
 stable (and truly enforcable) at larger scales. Splinter too much, and
 Microsoft'll have breakfast, lunch and dinner all nicely lined up, and
 there won't be a damn thing anyone can do to stop them.
 
 Yours,
 
 Jonathan Day
 ------------------------------------------------------------
 --== Sent via Deja.com ==--
 [19]http://www.deja.com/
    
 Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 07:15:20 -0800 (PST)
 From: John Jensen <jjens@primenet.com>
 To: letters@lwn.net
 Subject: common ground
 I have to admit that I enjoyed the rough-and-tumble of the last week as
 much as anyone.  The comments by Microsoft's Mr. Jim Allchin set of storms
 of righteous indignation ... one person's indignation feeding the next.
 Everybody had fun dumping on their favorite bogey-men, and expressing the
 differences they felt with "the other side."
 
 The interesting thing for me is how lightly anyone has touched upon the
 common ground.  In the clarification of his comments, Mr. Allchin and
 Microsoft, apparently endorsed the BSD License for use in government-
 funded software development(1).  At what many might consider the other
 "extreme", Richard Stallman endorses the same license as "free" and
 "useful to the free software community"(2).
 
 It strikes me that the big missing story of the week was the common ground
 reached between (broadly speaking) open source and proprietary software
 developers.   Did "everybody" just agree that open source can be an
 appropriate choice?
 
 1 - [20]http://weblog.mercurycenter.com/ejournal/2001/02/19
 2 - [21]http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html
 
 John Jensen
 --
 33М 39' 44N   117М 45' 06W
 
    
 Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 14:36:08 +0800
 From: Leon Brooks <leon@brooks.fdns.net>
 To: Hemanshu Nigam <MPAA23@pacbell.net>,
 Subject: Unauthorized Distribution of Copyrighted Motion Pictures
 
 Good morning, Hemanshu Nigam!
 
 Re: Your email posted at
      [22]http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery/mpaa-threat-feb2001.txt
 
 Having perused this email, I am wondering about several aspects of it,
 and how they may impact my websites.
 
 First, I want to consider your statements to and about Dr Touretzky.
 
  > Date of Infringement: 1/31/2001 3:09:19 PM EST
 
 As the email relates to ``Unauthorised Distribution of Copyrighted
 Motion Pictures'' and there does not appear to be any copyrighted motion
 picture nor a significant section of one, nor even a still frame from
 one on Dr Touretzky's website [in particular see ref 1], is not the
 subject misleading, possibly even libellous, since you seem to be
 implying by this that Dr Touretzky has distributed or is distributing
 copyrighted motion pictures without authority?
 
  > Dear dst@cs.cmu.edu
 
 Actually, the man's name is Doctor David S. Touretzky. Is it legal to
 address someone by a string of symbols rather than their name? David
 could allow practically anyone to use that email address, has no legal
 obligation to use it or protect it himself, and could choose to use
 another, at any instant. Likewise the ISP. Not only can you not be
 certain that David has received any communication from you, but there is
 not the slightest guarantee of confidentiality in any unencrypted email
 you send.
 
  > We have received information that you are unlawfully
  > offering product at the above referenced web site.  We
  > have notified your ISP of the unlawful nature of this
  > web site and have asked for its immediate removal.
 
 Now this *has* to be unconstitutional! You have ``received
 information,'' you have not *proven* or *established* anything, and here
 you are offering what is likely to be a libellous statement about Dr
 Touretzky to his ISP. Whatever happened to the presumption of innocence?
 
 Even if the nature of certain files on Dr Touretzky's website had been
 established as illegal, the most you would have been permitted to demand
 by law is the removal of the specific files deemed to be illegal.
 
 Now I would like to consider your email to the hostmaster of Dr
 Touretzky's ISP (in this case, a node within Carnegie Mellon University).
 
  > We have received information that the above referenced
  > Internet site is providing a circumvention device commonly
  > known as DeCSS.
 
 DeCSS code cannot be a circumvention device, for it is only software. In
 order for Dr Touretzky to be providing a circumvention device, he must
 be providing a device capable of performing circumvention - which in the
 case of a programmable device includes a program which actually does the
 circumvention.
 
 Unless Dr Touretzky's webserver has an interpreter installed which will
 run one of the languages in which code is published on his website, or a
 compiled (binary) version of one of the sources displayed, his webserver
 cannot be a circumvention device in itself. I see no evidence on the web
 page that his (Unix) webserver has any of those installed. Nor can I see
 any evidence on his site of circumvented protection, no proof at all
 that what he is publishing actually circumvents CSS or any other
 protection or encryption scheme.
 
  > DeCSS is a software utility that decrypts or unscrambles the
  > contents of DVDs (consisting of copyrighted motion pictures)
  > or otherwise circumvents the protection afforded by the
  > Contents Scramble System (CSS) and permits the copying of the
  > DVD contents and/or any portion thereof. As such, DeCSS is an
  > unlawful circumvention device within the meaning of the
  > Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Title 17 United States
  > Code Section 1201(a)(2)(3).
 
 Ah! So if make a movie, copyright it and encrypt it using something
 simple like ROT13 or a single-character repeated XOR, every piece of
 ROT13-capable or XORing software in the USA immediately becomes subject
 to control under the DMCA? How about if I encrypt the movie using PGP or
 GPG, publicly-available and widely used encryption programs? How about
 if I or someone else sends the movie across an encrypted network, such
 as PPTP or Free/SWAN? This sounds like a great little money-spinner.
 
  > We therefore demand that you [the ISP] take appropriate steps
  > to cause the immediate removal of DeCSS from the above
  > identified Internet site,
 
 The ISP now has a legal dilemma. Even if the charges as laid out are
 proven, what of the material on Dr Touretzky's website is DeCSS? If the
 ISP removes material which is not DeCSS, they may cause an actionable
 loss to Dr Touretzky or to other parties relying upon the service
 provided by the website. Not to mention losing a significant amount of
 goodwill, and accountable asset, amongt their clientele. If the ISP
 fails to remove material which later is proven to be DeCSS, they may be
 vulnerable to action by you.
 
 This is all assuming that the ISP has the right to tamper with any
 service offered to Dr Touretzky, or data belonging to Dr Touretzky.
 
  > along with such other actions as may be necessary or appropriate
  > to suspend this illegal activity.
 
 Yet you still haven't established precisely which activities of Dr
 Turetzky's, if any, are actually illegal.
 
  > We also request that you:
 
  > 1. maintain and take whatever steps are necessary to prevent
  > the destruction of all records, including electronic records,
  > in your possession or control related to this Internet site,
  > account holder or subscriber, and
 
 So if the ISP's hard disk currently contains copies of DeCSS and/or
 movies possibly decrypted, possibly using DeCSS, being material
 ``related to'' the website, are you here demanding that they make copies
 of this material, that is, to ``import[...] provid[e], or otherwise
 traffick[ in]'' this material?
 
 OK, now let's discuss the applicability to my websites.
 
 I have a copy of and intend to publish much of the educational and
 entertaining material available as at now from
 [23]http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/ - but I would like to so without putting any
 of the potential hosting agencies at risk.
 
 One of the sites will be hosted in Australia, where reverse engineering
 is protected by law, so a communication such as the one from you which I
 have quoted above is likely to fall under the legal category
 ``threatening letters demanding money [compensation] with menaces
 [threats of legal action]'' - so it may actually work out to be highly
 lucrative for an Australian ISP to host the site.
 
 However, one of the sites in question will be hosted in the USA, so I
 need to know which of the items on David Touretsky's page is actually
 DeCSS (if any: the source code to produce DeCSS may not qualify as
 DeCSS, in the same way that plans or machine-tool tapes for an object
 are not that object). It also seems likely that even if plans for DeCSS
 were ruled to _be_ DeCSS (law often seems loathe to follow common
 sense), some of those plans may be exempted as works of art, lampoons of
 the original CSS decoder, or fair academic use of maerial.
 
 I understand that Dr Touretsky has also contacted you with similar
 questions, but that your answer may be somewhat constrained by impending
 threats of legal proceedings. However, the purpose of this communication
 is to *avoid* legal proceedings.
 
 If you would be so kind as to lay out the legal reasons for including or
 excluding specific items from Dr Touretsky's collection, I could also
 publish that list on my sites as a separate issue from Dr Touretsky's
 case, which would help to protect your intellectual property by
 encouraging others only to publish such related art as is legal. If I
 receive no list within a reasonable time, say two weeks, I can safely
 assume that none of the items in the collection are legally offensive to
 you or to the DMCA, and publish them all (subject, of course to the
 permission of any involved copyright holders).
 aTdHvAaNnKcSe
 
 Leon RJ Brooks
 Computer Consultant
 Western Australia
 
 [1] Touretzky, D. S. (2000) Gallery of CSS Descramblers. Available:
 [24]http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery, 27 February 2001.
 
 --
 "If thine enemy wrong thee, buy each of his children Windows."
      -- Redmond proverb
 
    
 Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 15:25:53 -0500 (EST)
 From: "Steven W. Orr" <steveo@world.std.com>
 To: <letters@lwn.net>
 Subject: Regarding the demise of Maximum Linux.
 
 I am not going to mourn the death of Maximum Linux. I received a copy and
 thought that it would be nice to add yet another magazine to my intake. My
 standard is that if I can get just one good idea from somthing, then it's
 worth the read, and the cost of any magazine subscription is never much of
 an issue. I found that they were targeting a *very* specific audience:
 
 1. They had to be very young and hip.
 2. They had to be brand new to Linux.
 
 Somehow they took these requirements and felt that speaking in a young and
 hip manner allowed them the artistic license to be inaccurate. There were,
 on average, one or two falsehoods, made-up stuff, incomplete thoughts,
 etc.  on every page of the magazine. This flavor was not limited to any
 one writer. It seemed to be a requirement for all contributers.
 
 I wrote to the editor with a complete list of these inaccuracies and was
 told that this style was needed to hook the target market they were
 looking for.
 
 There's so much good material out there. It's too bad they couldn't have
 learned from the ones that are doing well.
 
 --
 -Time flies like the wind. Fruit flies like a banana. Stranger things have -
 -happened but none stranger than this. Does your driver's license say Organ
 -Donor?Black holes are where God divided by zero. Listen to me! We are all-
 -individuals! What if this weren't a hypothetical question? steveo@world.com
    
    
                                                                          
    
    [25]Eklektix, Inc. Linux powered! Copyright Л 2001 [26]Eklektix, Inc.,
    all rights reserved
    Linux (R) is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds
 
 References
 
    1. http://lwn.net/
    2. http://ads.tucows.com/click.ng/pageid=pageid=132-000-001-001
    3. http://lwn.net/2001/0301/
    4. http://lwn.net/2001/0301/security.php3
    5. http://lwn.net/2001/0301/kernel.php3
    6. http://lwn.net/2001/0301/dists.php3
    7. http://lwn.net/2001/0301/desktop.php3
    8. http://lwn.net/2001/0301/devel.php3
    9. http://lwn.net/2001/0301/commerce.php3
   10. http://lwn.net/2001/0301/press.php3
   11. http://lwn.net/2001/0301/announce.php3
   12. http://lwn.net/2001/0301/history.php3
   13. http://lwn.net/2001/0301/bigpage.php3
   14. http://lwn.net/2001/0222/letters.php3
   15. mailto:letters@lwn.net
   16. http://www.tiac.net/users/rlk/
   17. http://www.tall.org/
   18. http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net/
   19. http://www.deja.com/
   20. http://weblog.mercurycenter.com/ejournal/2001/02/19
   21. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html
   22. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery/mpaa-threat-feb2001.txt
   23. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/
   24. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery
   25. http://www.eklektix.com/
   26. http://www.eklektix.com/
 
 --- ifmail v.2.14.os7-aks1
  * Origin: Unknown (2:4615/71.10@fidonet)
 
 

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