If GNOME is planning to operate servers, GNOME needs to consider when it is good or bad to encourage people to use servers.
In the US, if you receive a subpoena to hand over data, you have the opportunity to plead in court to quash or reduce the subpoena. Success is not guaranteed; the court may insist on getting the information. But sometimes it agrees to reduce or cancel the subpoena. Around ten years ago, the FSF received a subpoena in the SCO lawsuit, demanding a broad range of data that would have taken us a long time to collect. We went to court and successfully argued that it was improper and unnecessary to demand all this from us. The court eliminated most of the subpoena (maybe all -- I don't recall). If a server business receives the subpoena for your data, maybe it has the same opportunity to go to court to quash it. But the business may not care enough to make the effort. You might care to do it, but you won't have the option, since the subpoena is not on you. In addition, if the legal criteria are weaker (IANAL but I think they are), the business could be subpoena'd for your data in cases where you wouldn't get a subpoena at all. This is why I say that, even with the good will on the server operator's part, you lose some of your rights by keeping the data on a server. And therefore, we should think twice before inviting people to keep their data on a server, even if we run the server. _______________________________________________ foundation-list mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
