Re: Linux 2.2.20pre10

David Weinehall
2001-10-22T22:50:54Z

On Mon, Oct 22, 2001 at 05:12:53PM -0400, Tom Sightler wrote:
> > On Mon, 22 Oct 2001, Alan Cox wrote:
> > > > Everyone wants to bring up the Sklyarov case, but he didn't just
> expose the
> > > > weakness of the code, his company actively sold a product for
> financial gain
> > > > that circumvented the protection. While I still don't think the
> Sklyarov
> > > The Felten case is the more relevant one.
> >
> > decss as well -- strange how people forget that one so easily
>
> Not forgotten, just trying to understand relevance. How do these cases,
> which all revolve around breaking commercial products and cause damage to
> the corporations that push them, apply to security in the open source Linux
> kernel to which the public is given all rights.

For me, DeCSS is an application that has a purpose for watching DVD:s
when I boot my G4 into Linux instead of MacOS.

And even those that actually use DeCSS only to gain their "copyright"
(that is, provide you with your right to copy what you have purchased,
for backup-purposes, for instance) or indeed those that illegaly copy
DVDs, seldom do so to break commercial products and cause damage to the
corporations that push them.

As for the Sklyarov-case, I'm pretty sure he'd been arrested even if his
program had been an open source program under the GPL, freely
distributed etc.

[snip]

/David Weinehall
_ _
// David Weinehall <tao@acc.umu.se> /> Northern lights wander \\
// Project MCA Linux hacker // Dance across the winter sky //
\> http://www.acc.umu.se/~tao/ </ Full colour fire </