Hey, Josh, next time please keep me CC on such emails to avoid uncoordinated work. I hadn't seen this and also wrote -legal for insight (and CCd you), which might be a bit redundant.
On 15/10/12 00:23, Jonathan Nieder wrote: > I think we can justify this under the grounds that if a large portion > of the archive starts to imitate this feature of Transmission then it > would lead to a poor user experience. Playing devil's advocate for a bit, I don't think there are that many packages dealing with such touchy subjects as peer-to-peer file transfer, where we see governments budging to lobbyists and blaming basically everyone involved, including software. That being said: IANAL, but I personally don't believe this sort of click-through disclaimer does any good. It's just that this sort of "what-if" argument doesn't seem strong enough for a case where upstream believes it has legitimate grounds for worrying. > I'm surprised that the maintainer seems to be looking for support to > raise this upstream before just asking them why the change was made, > though. Don't most platforms' user interface guidelines discourage > unnecessary dialogs already? I believe my hesitation is explained in my mail to -legal [0]: judging by my previous exchanges with upstream about non-technical and non-clear-cut issues, it's better to come fully armed with as many arguments as possible, otherwise there's a big chance of it being dismissed outright. I don't think interface guidelines would be enough do dissuade them of their liability disclaimer, if they believe it really mitigates anything. > Perhaps it would be possible to put the > disclaimer in the main window when there are no downloads running, so > users would have an opportunity to learn about what the law permits > that way. I guess it all comes down to this: if this sort of disclaimer really mitigates liability (IMHO unlikely), then it probably has to keep this "users MUST read it" format. Otherwise we can just get rid of it completely. Making it less intrusive would diminish its worth as a disclaimer and therefore miss the point entirely. (again: I'm arguing this from the point of view I expect upstream to take) Cheers [0] https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2012/10/msg00002.html -- Leo "costela" Antunes [insert a witty retort here]
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