Re: Linux 2.2.20pre10

Wayne.Brown
2001-10-22T17:25:28Z

It's highly unlikely that Alan withholding information from a handful of US
Linux users and developers will have any effect on US laws. Plenty of us have
complained already to our elected officials, without results. The number of
people who would care (or even know) about Alan's security boycott -- even if it
includes the entire US readership of linux-kernel -- is vanishingly small
compared to the general population, and no politician is going to pay attention
to such a small and dilute constituency. All a policy of secrecy will
accomplish is to punish US kernel hackers (who probably disagree with the DMCA
as much as the rest of you) and have no effect on the average citizen who
doesn't have a clue about either the DMCA or Linux. I'm seeing a disturbing
trend here; with all the talk about this topic and about EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL here
lately, I'm starting to think linux-kernel is more about restricting information
than disseminating it.

I believe the DCMA should be treated like firearms laws or any other bad laws:
Fight them where possible, and disobey them where fighting them is not possible.

Wayne

Rik van Riel <riel@conectiva.com.br> on 10/22/2001 11:03:53 AM

To: Wayne Brown/Corporate/Altec@Altec
cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org

Subject: Re: Linux 2.2.20pre10

On Mon, 22 Oct 2001 Wayne.Brown@altec.com wrote:

> Speaking as a US citizen, I hope that someone outside the US
> will grab that info as soon as it's available and make it
> accessible to everyone. (Not that I need it myself -- I have no
> interest in 2.2.20 -- but I like to see crap legislation like
> the DMCA subverted wherever possible.)

Yeah, lets keep up the status quo so bad laws never get
subverted and people like Dmitry Skylarov are the only
people suffering from bad US laws.

NOT.

Rik
--
DMCA, SSSCA, W3C? Who cares? http://thefreeworld.net/ (volunteers needed)

http://www.surriel.com/ http://distro.conectiva.com/