See also: last week's Letters page.

Letters to the editor

From:	 "Robert A. Knop Jr." <rknop@pobox.com>
To:	 letters@lwn.net
Subject: The Boston CD Party
Date:	 Thu, 13 Sep 2001 07:18:48 -0500

If the SSSCA, the law mentioned in the September 13 issue of Linux
Weekly News which would require all computer hardware and software to
have federally regulated copyright-protection measures, does get
introduced in any form to the House or the Senate, free software
advocates across the USA should gather in Boston to throw CDs, DVDs,
eBook readers, and other products of the "digital copyright industry"
into Boston harbor.

Given the environmental and waste management problems that this would
cause, I am not seriously advocating this.  But we need to do
*something* to raise public awareness of what is going on.  Most people
in this country don't use free software, and won't think a law like this
(which would effectively outlaw Free Software) is such a big deal.  They
read in the newspapers the copyright industry's outlandishly inflated
estimates about the losses which "piracy" is causing them, and
misguidedly think that anybody who would object to this law is probably
just a thief anyway.  The digital copyright industry has many,
well-funded lobbyists in Washington, D.C. pushing their dangerous point
of view, while the best most of the rest of us can do is write letters
to Congressmen which will be filed and ignored by staffers.  Only one of
our legislators (Rick Boucher) seems to have a clue.  It really sounds
like there is no hope, and that soon the only real option that people
such as myself will have will be to flee this country.

How ironic and sad would it be if, after the terrible events on
September 11 we refuse to let the fear of terrorism weaken our resolve
for freedom, yes we let one industry's fear of *possible* copyright
violation sell out our freedom?  It would be a direct insult to the
memory of the people who gave their lives on September 11.

Anybody who cares about these issues and understands them needs to write
letters to Congressmen and Senators now.  A few will make no difference,
but if they get enough letters, especially from constituents, it will
start to matter.  We all have to do our part by writing our one small
letter, knowing that even if one won't matter, we have to write it for
there to be any hope of there being enough letters.  We also need to
write letters to the editors of newspapers.  Heaven knows that most
people don't read such letters printed in newspapers, but perhaps the
editorial staff of local newspapers will begin to see how significant
this issue is if they receive a large number of letters on the issue,
and will begin to run articles accordingly.

The time for action is now.  We have to make ourselves heard.  The DMCA
is already a terrible law, a law which may have future historians
looking back on 1998 as the year in which the USA finally started
dismantling its experiment with freedom.  That real Senators are
planning to propose a law which is many, many times worse should chill
us all to the bone.  If we do not want to lose the computational
freedoms we take for granted now, we all have to start doing something.

For those of us out there who may not be experienced programmers, or
don't know how to break into the large Free Software projects, this is
our opportunity to make a real contribution to Free Software.  Any
efforts made in convincing our lawmakers not to pass laws such as the
SSSCA will be just as an important and valuable contribution to free
software as the programming performed by the core developers of projects
such as Linux, Apache, Mozilla, and countless others.  This cannot be
overemphasized.  Indeed, I would like to see publications such as
LWN.net and Linux Journal begin to recognize the efforts of people who
perform such political activism right alongside the recognition of the
efforts of Free Software's programmers.

-Rob Knop

-- 
-=-=-= Rob Knop =-= rknop@pobox.com =-= http://www.pobox.com/~rknop =-=-=-

   Free Skylarov!  Repeal the DMCA; preserve free speech in the USA
              http://www.freesklyarov.org

From:	 Seth David Schoen <schoen@loyalty.org>
To:	 letters@lwn.net
Subject: Re: Would LiVid be safe from the DMCA
Date:	 Thu, 13 Sep 2001 13:16:58 -0700

Richard Corfield asks whether projects like LiVid are safe from the
DMCA because they are non-commercial.  I think he's misunderstood what
others were saying.

The DMCA provides for both criminal and civil penalties.  In a
criminal case, the government is the plaintiff, and the penalties can
include jail; in a civil case, a private party can be a plaintiff, and
the penalties are normally money damages or injunctions.

The DMCA's criminal penalties apply only to commercial infringement
(although the definitions of "commercial" may be quite broad); the
civil penalties apply to any infringement.  That's why previous DMCA
cases and threats, before Dmitry Sklyarov's case, have been civil
matters.  A civil lawsuit is still extremely serious; it's easy for
defendants to lose everything they own.

Until recently, no part of U.S. copyright law provided criminal
penalties for any non-commercial infringement.  In 1997, after the
acquittal in criminal court of David LaMacchia, who was alleged to have
infringed copyrights from non-commercial motives, Congress passed the
"No Electronic Theft Act", which provides criminal penalties for both
commercial and non-commercial copyright infringement.  Its name also
misleadingly suggests that copyright infringement is like theft, a
view which has been seeping into popular culture, possibly doing much
more damage than NETA itself.

The court in LaMacchia's case suggested that

	Criminal as well as civil penalties should probably attach to
	willful, multiple infringements of copyrighted software, even
	absent a commercial motive on the part of the infringer. [...]
	But, it is the legislature, not the court, which is to define a
	crime and/or ordain a punishment.

Many people felt that LaMacchia had escaped punishment because of a
loophole, which NETA was supposed to close.  However, the DMCA still
draws a distinction in this area.  See

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/1203.html
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/1204.html

-- 
Seth David Schoen <schoen@loyalty.org> | Its really terrible when FBI arrested
Temp.  http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | hacker, who visited USA with peacefull
down:  http://www.loyalty.org/   (CAF) | mission -- to share his knowledge with
     http://www.freesklyarov.org/      | american nation.  (Ilya V. Vasilyev)

From:	 "Zenaan Harkness" <zen@getsystems.com>
To:	 <letters@lwn.net>
Subject: licenses
Date:	 Thu, 13 Sep 2001 16:41:43 +1000

Hello, I would like to request that you make a greater effort to distinguish
between Open Source and Free Software.

When you use the phrase "open source" (no capitals), eg in todays LWN:

"On2 Technologies open sources VP3 codec. On2 Technologies announced that
the source code and open source license for their VP3.2 video compression
algorithm can now be accessed at www.vp3.com. According to the press
release, both RealNetworks and Apple have added support for VP3.2 in their
video players."

it is not possible to know whether you mean proprietary or Free, as both can
be open source. Open Source with capitals should imply a license compatible
with the Open Source Definition (also DFSG) as defined by the Open Source
Foundation (and Debian, for DFSG). But even this may confuse some people.

This would be appreciated and would certainly add to your excellent
publication.

Regards
Z

From:	 Leon Brooks <leon@brooks.fdns.net>
To:	 letters@lwn.net
Subject: Bleak? Blerk. What you lose on the swings you get back on the roundabout.
Date:	 Thu, 13 Sep 2001 21:44:11 +0800

DOOM AND GLOOM

>From various part of the 13 Sep 2001 LWN - front page:
> With the Linux world crumbling around us, due mostly to a
> difficult economic condition and companies finding it difficult
> to make business plans function, we began to wonder just what
> could make it worse.

Front page again:
> In other words, this is a law that would ban free software.

Front page again:
> The real fear is that the next layer of struggle, at the
> network layer, will have a profound tilting effect away from
> open source projects. If that is true then open source won't
> continue to provide an opportunity to check improper power.

Security:
> security advisors are recommending that now is a good time to
> be on the lookout for cyber attacks, which have reportedly
> increased by an order of magnitude.

This all looks doom and gloom, but conside this:

* Linux does not exist to make money. Linux exists as the result
  of scratching an itch. Linux will not go away even if *all* of
  the money goes away, if RedHat and Mandrake and SourceForge
  and so on all die, Linux will continue. There is Debian, and
  most distributions are entirely open source, so it's not
  difficult for Joe Random SysAdmin to pick one up from a mirror,
  enlist a few dozen good (wo)men and keep it current.

* Business tried to adopt the GPL as if it were just another
  business method. Oops. Businesses failed, but neither Linux
  nor the GPL have done any less than they expected to.

* The bottom is falling out of the entire IT market. In the light
  of that, Linux's doom and gloom can be seen to be relative.

* So cyber-attacks are on the rise. Who has the best track-record
  of surviving this, among the ``world domination'' candidates?

* If the US government is sufficiently hell-bent that it outlaws
  Open Source, more fool them. The rest of the world *is* out
  there and will continue to spin without the US until after the
  economic collapse resulting from an inability to compete in any
  IT market. I think the French would be delighted to firewall off
  the entire US to block the storm of outbound probes and trojans
  when CodeRed-n hits within a 100%-Microsoft network monoculture.

BTW, This is an argument Microsoft use: that the world would practically stop 
spinning if we were inhibited from cheating. How does it look when it's 
turned around like this?

Also, in amongst the sadness there were a few gleams of promise as well. Even 
in the business world.

Kernel:
> Linus has suggested [...] that, once the merge with Alan
> is complete, the 2.5 series will begin

Commerce:
> IBM says Linux is "Ready for Business".

..and other reports in today, including HP shipping Mandrake-Linux 
preinstalled on workstations and some maniac mathematician fitting a live 
ELF32 executable version of the DeCSS broken-encryption-decoder software into 
a prime number.

LUNATICS WITH KNIVES, GLOBAL COMMUNITY

I think that for many US citizens, the NIMBY [Not In My Back Yard] bubble has 
been devastatingly burst. Some are learning, at an enormous cost, that all is 
not smiles and open arms outside their view of the universe. That there is 
much more to the story than they have ever been told, and some of it is very 
unpleasant.

However, they also see that in their first time of great need in a long 
while, there are also many in the world who will rush to help them, history 
be damned.

The few who get to read Uwe Thiem's message of support might think a bit 
better of us than the ``computer vandals'' association which the name 
``hackers'' normally provokes. Print it out, post it on noticeboards, get it 
read.

The readers might think even more about how well this brotherhood based on a 
common purpose rather than manipulation works. Yes, we do bicker. Yes we do 
have hard-heads in our midst. Yes, it all works in ways that the commercial 
world can't imagine, that politicians can't imagine, primarily because it's 
not all caged in and forced along and regulated into the ground. Yes, we have 
Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Atheists, all manner of faiths; we have a 
rainbow of skin colours; we have a Babel of languages; we have girl geniuses 
and great-grandfathers on our programming teams - and generally we don't 
care. It doesn't matter.

Hackers are doing what the UN cannot. There's a message in that.

(See http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001-09-11-014-20-NW-CY-KE 
for a copy of Uwe's post)

BROADCAST 2000

> Unfortunately, due to DMCA lawsuit issues, Broadcast 2000
> is no longer available for download

I have a copy of Broadcast 2000c from a recent Mandrake SRPM and will upload 
it to a project named hev-E (High End Video Editor) on SourceForge, if they 
approve my application, with an eye toward picking up development of it (it's 
GPL). Given the way things are going, at least one mirror would be good. 
Volunteers...?