From: "David Schwartz" <davids@webmaster.com>
To: <knobi@knobisoft.de>, <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: RE: Binary Drivers
Date: Tue, 26 Dec 2006 11:12:44 -0800
Message-ID: <MDEHLPKNGKAHNMBLJOLKIEGNAJAC.davids@webmaster.com>
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Combined responses:

> > If I bought the car from the manufacturer, it also must
> > include any rights the manufacturer might have to the car's use.
> > That includes using the car to violate emission control measures.
> > If I didn't buy the right to use the car that way (insofar as
> > that right was owned by the car manufacturer), I didn't
> > buy the whole care -- just *some* of the rights to use it.

>  just to be dense - what makes you think that the car manufacturer has
> any legal right to violate emission control measures? What an utter
> nonsense (sorry).

That's why I said "insofar as that right was owned by the car manufacturer".
The example of emission control measures wasn't mine. I'm responding to a
silly hypothetical.

> So, lets stop the stupid car comparisons. They are no being funny any
> more.

They were never intended to be funny. They only become stupid when people
deliberately pointed out the cases where the examples differ from the case
we're realling interested in. I agree that examples involving cases where
there are specific laws (such as emissions control) are silly.

The point is that any rights the manufacturer may have had to the car should
have been sold along with the car, otherwise it's not a normal free and
clear sale. A normal free and clear sale includes all rights to the item
sold, except those specific laws allows the manufacturer to retain.

All the issues about whether the manufacturer has the right to break the law
or whether the manufacturer has to help you break the law are not in any way
relevant to the hardware issue we were discussion. Someone brought them up
just to sidetrack the analogies.

That's a very good way to make an analogy seem irrelevent, but it's
cheating. So long as you stick to the issues that relate, the analogy is
nearly perfect. See, for examlek, James C. Georgas post.

--

>Solution (a) involves denial of point (1), mostly through the use of
>analogy and allegory. Alternatively, one can try to change the law
>through government channels.

One doesn't need to change the law, just enforce it.

I simply do not accept the argument that it is lawful for a manufacturer to
sell a physical object in a normal free and clear sale and then refuse to
disclose the knowledge necessary to use it. (And by that I mean necessary to
use it any reasonable way, not just the way the manufacturer intended it to
be used.)

This same issue has been pressed in other areas and I think it's time it be
pressed with graphics cards.

DS


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