Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 02:53:40 +0200 (CEST)
From: Luigi Genoni <kernel@Expansa.sns.it>
To: Craig Dickson <crdic@yahoo.com>
cc: <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: Linux 2.2.20pre10
In-Reply-To: <20011022163536.B19715@crdic.ath.cx>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0110230243470.31211-100000@Expansa.sns.it>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org


On Mon, 22 Oct 2001, Craig Dickson wrote:

> There have been a lot of messages from a number of different people
> about this "censored changelogs" issue. Rather than reply to various
> points separately, I just want to sum up my views in one message.
>
> I simply don't believe that Alan Cox is at any risk of prosecution, and
> what's more, I don't believe that he believes it. He's just making a
> dramatic political statement that will have no effect on the law, will
> never even be noticed by American legislators, and serves only to annoy
> US-based Linux users.
your own opinion
>
> The words "Felten" and "Sklyarov" keep coming up in this discussion. The
> parallel between Alan Cox's situation and those cases are simply not
> valid.
>
> Felten conducted research on how to break DRM systems that were being
> considered for commercial use (the proposed SDMI standards).
>
> Sklyarov developed (or helped develop) a product that breaks Adobe's
> commercial DRM scheme for PDF files.
>
> Note that both Felten and Skyarov developed and publicized (or announced
> an intent to publicize, in Felten's case) ways of compromising
> commercial, third-party DRM systems, thus embarrassing and antagonizing
> the wealthy corporations that had invested time, money, and prestige in
> those DRM systems. This has no real similarity with Alan Cox's kernel
> work.
Ans so, if a company makes a vulnerable product, I am not free
to publish the bug?

ahh, simply nonsense.

> All Alan is doing is fixing bugs in a system that he has every
> right to work on, and has a long history of contributing to. He is _not_
> reverse-engineering someone else's copyright-protection scheme and
> publicizing how to circumvent it. And anyone who's ever actually _read_
> his changelogs should know that they do not in any way amount to attack
> recipes.
>
> What's more, nobody sued or prosecuted Felten. The RIAA made threatening
> noises, but backed off the instant they were called on it, insisting
> that they had never had any intention of suing anybody, and they fully
> supported Felten's rights as an academic researcher, blah blah blah.
Yes, Felten has the right to do what he did, period!
and, by the way, Sklyarov had the right to write its code in Russia, and
to seel it to a russian company. Then the company could do what it wants.
USA has no right to do something against Sklyarov.

Luigi


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