On 21/11/06, Geoffrey S. Mendelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Tue, Nov 21, 2006 at 11:30:14AM +0200, Shachar Shemesh wrote:
> Hearing you talk about it makes it sound as if there is actual
> infringing code. There is no actual infringing code. It's all just
> patent related vapor. Sometimes patent related vapor materializes into
> costly law suites, but that doesnt' change the fact it's vapor.
I never said there was, in fact in my original posting, I said there
probably was not. However the DMCA changes a lot of it. For example
SAMBA would have violated the DMCA had it been in effect when it
was developed. Therefore it would have been legal in Australia where
it was developed, but not in the U.S.
However when was the CIFS file system added to Linux. If it postdates
the DMCA it may well be illegal.
Frankly, the Americans deserve to suffer from their recent stupid
laws. Soon they will outlaw any can openers whose serial number
doesn't match the number on the can :-).
Seriously though, you exaggerate the scope of the DMCA. It does not
forbid reverse engineering in itself. Just studying a protocol and
publishing a book describing it (the first half of "clean room"
reverse engineering) is still a completely legal way to discover trade
secrets. If you step beyond describing and analyze the protocol for
weaknesses, things become a bit murky.
What the DMCA forbids is "circumvention of access control measures"
and distribution of "devices" that can be used for circumvention.
Almost anything can be argued to contain an "access control measure"
and software is considered a "device" for this purpose. When
applicable this can lead to a very sad situation where even
distribution of source code can put you in jail :-(. However, Samba
is not in the role of DeCSS - it doesn't circumvent any access
control: you still have to provide the same password you provide with
Windows. Without a clear use case for cracking Windows networks with
Samba, I don't see how the DMCA could apply.
The ironic conclusion is that the DMCA only threatens implementations
of of badly insecure protocols :-).
It should be noted that most of the DMCA's damage to research and FOSS
comes from the chilling effects of threats to invoke it rather than
actual cases.
IANAL,
Beni Cherniavsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (I read email only on weekends)
=================================================================
To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with
the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command
echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
