[Mailman-Developers] Re: Opening up a few can o' worms here...

[Jay R. Ashworth]

On Thu, Jul 18, 2002 at 12:34:37PM -0500, David Champion wrote:
> * On 2002.07.18, in <20020718102426.48111@scfn.thpl.lib.fl.us>,
> *	"Jay R. Ashworth" <jra@baylink.com> wrote:
> > 
> > You obviously have not been following the activities of Senator
> > Hollings, D-Disney, whose SSSCA indeed wants to make the very *design*
> > of Linux illegal.
> 
> How does this conflict with the design of Linux (or, presumably, any
> other operating system)? Why is it not possible to integrate DRM support
> into Linux?

Because the open design of Linux makes it impossible to *hide* the
things which the law would required be hidden.

I didn't make this stuff up; look here:

http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/opinions/3813/1/
http://www.troubleshooters.com/tpromag/200111/200111.htm#_SSSCAsBitterHarvest
http://old.lwn.net/2001/1025/
http://www.sonic.net/~rknop/rant.html#sssca

and a whole lotta buncha stuff here:

http://dmoz.org/Society/Issues/Intellectual_Property/Copyrights/Consumer_Broadband_and_Digital_Television_Promotion_Act/News_and_Media/

one of the pieces in which is exceptionally good:

http://www.networkcomputing.com/buzzcut/bc24sep01.html

> > Please, nobody tell Hollings about CS First Boston and the NYSE, not to
> > mention a large chunk of the backbone.  I wanna see what happens when
> > everyone just shuts their Linux boxes down because they've been
> > declared illegal.
> 
> Existing systems are grandfathered. It's not clear (to me) whether this
> applies only to hardware devices, or also to software; or whether a
> device wishing to be grandfathered needs to be sponsored by some legal
> entity.

The final outcome will be that no one will manufacture non-SSSCA
compliant peripherals like, oh, *hard drives*... and since Linux will
not be able to talk to the encrypted ones, it won't *matter* that it's
considered a "circumvention device", it just won't be able to run at
all.

> Not that I support the SSSCA; I just think it pays better to fight on
> fair terms.

So do I.

In consequence of which I'm not sure what you mean by that.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra@baylink.com
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