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GPL 3 to Take Hard Line on DRM
sebFlyte writes "ZDNet is reporting that Eben Moglen, the FSF's lead lawyer and the co-authour of GPL3, has explained that DRM is 'fundamentally incompatible' with the aims of the FSF and will be given short shrift in the latest version of the free software licence, which bans the use of 'digital restrictions' in GPL3 governed software. In his words: 'I recognise that that's a highly aggressive position, but it's not an aggression which we thought up. It's a defence related to an aggression which was launched against the people whose rights are our primary concern... We don't want our software used in a way which batters the head of the user to please somebody else. Our goal is the protection of users' rights, not movies' rights.'" We discussed the new GPL on Monday.
I wonder if Sony's DRM screw-up and evidence that GPL'ed code was in their DRM software played any role in this rather firm approach.
I'm conflicted, to be honest.
As a writer, I'd like to be paid for my work. I'd rather not make it easy for people to redistribute my work without compensating me.
As a consumer, I'd like open access to the things I purchase.
Argh!
Shinma
I believe this is directed at would be future Sony' CD fiaso's.
Let us all pause and say "Hello Sony" at this point.
I bet Linus is grateful he didn't put ".. or later" in the Linux copyright. These kind of political doings seems like exactly the thing he'd be against.
Life is Reality
It's good to see someone with some amount of clout taking a stand against unreasonable constraint of fair use rights. I just hope that this becomes a catalyst in a chain reaction of rebellion against DRM, which manages access in the same way that a jail manages freedom (my apologies to the /.er who I took this .sig from - cant recall his/her name).
uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
Go study
So it won't be legal for someone to write a media player for someone else's media content that comes with DRM, and release this media player under GPL3? Sure, other licenses can be used for such things, but now such projects cannot benefit from other aspects of GPL3.
This is assuming Linus even likes the new GPL. As far as I can tell, he's not too sympathetic to RMS's values anyway.
I for one would be interested to know if this is enforceable in an actual court. The GPL is legally sound (so I have heard from lawyers), but could this provision pass the actual muster of a bought and paid for legal system?
Curb CO2 emissions: Kill yourself today!
Remember folks, a 100% correct hardware/software design could be released under the GPL3 and still be effective. So in a way this is just pushing forward the day such a system is deployed.
Democrat delenda est
I think that the main reason for this is that DRM is great in thoery but nobody can make it work in practice. There is nothing in GPL3 that will be allowed to hide information (like no sources) but nothing will prohibit use restrictions as long as the source code is provided.
He who makes little sense, makes the most.
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
I demand that Red Hat immediately hand over all their private keys!
Wrong. GPLv3 says that you need to provide all keys needed to make the software functional for its intended purpose, not the keys needed to make a bit-for-bit identical package.
Thus, if your piece of software is supposed to be able to read scrambled data, you cannot hide the decryption key -- but, you are free to sign the packages to prove they are untampered binaries produced by you. In the former case, the program wouldn't work, in the latter, it just will trigger a warning from the OS which says the user is about to install unsigned binaries. No one forces the user to heed the warning, and she can disable it if she wants. No functionality is lost.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
is easy to trash when your product is free.
Aren't file permissions in *ix and Windows systems a form of DRM? Does the GPLv3 distinguish between DRM that you control (file permissions and such), vs. DRM controlled by others (Hollywood's wet dream)?
Oh, no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!
I don't get the point... no company in their right mind would write open-source DRM software already, so other than idealistic sentiment, why is this addendum necessary? If the aim is to ensure that no GPL'd code ever makes it into DRM software, isn't this going against the whole notion of the GPL to start with? I thought the free software movement was about increasing the quality of code in the world by cooperation.
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
I'm sure many people who agree with the spirit of the GPL3 will use it to ensure that the fruits of their labors don't infringe on the rights of others.
For those who don't like the DRM language, the V2 is always available. Just specify which version in your dist package.
I know we all hate DRM but a lot of businesses see this as the future, if the GPL instantly cuts DRM out then the OSS community maybe limiting it's growth in the business world. I understand the GPL is a "play nice" style licence, but when you outright ban use of your software to any coompany using DRM you may well turn a lot of important areas away, so in the end you end up as a small time group instead of people who changed the world.
I like muppets.
Broaden the meaning of this question and there is no doubt - the recent explosion of news events regarding DRM, especially the Sony issue, has hardened the opinions of many of us. Perhaps the use of GPL code did not itself have an effect, but the whole mess certainly did
Using plain ol' text since 1968
The planned anti-DRM changes to the GPL are significant because the entertainment industry regularly uses Linux-powered computers in the production process, notably for special effects and animation. In general, movie studios support DRM technology.
It is a bit ironic that the same companies that don't want you to see their movies for free will use software that can be obtained for free to make their movies.
I guess the entertainment industry motto is: "Why pay for it if you don't have to?"
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Then get paid the first time you sell your DVD or book, and don't expect the same consumer to buy it again when you release the Bluray or Paperback edition.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Linus may stick with GPL version 2 for the simple reason that he may wish to equip Linux to be able to implement hardware-based DRM. Linus is pragmatic in the straightforward sense: many Linux users will want access to DRMed material... Hence version 2, not version 3.
Stallman is pragmatic in a more esoteric sense: the GPL version 2 has been increadibly successful. He is pitching the GPL version 3 to maximise freedom, and this blow against DRM will do exactly that. True, free software will have less penetration as a result, but the world will be a freer place for the compromise not being taken.
From a moral angle, this clause allows programmers to restrict how the fruit of their skills is to be exploited, which is naturally within their right, as long as copyright is recognised in law.
Wikileaks, no DNS
I thought the purpose of the GPL was to ensure that open source works weren't sold in a commercial product without providing the source-code at no added cost. I don't understand how that runs contrary to Digital Rights Management, which is, after all, just another kind of software product. Oh well, I guess you don't have to use the GPL in order to release an open source product if you don't want to.
If there was one hope for an acceptable DRM solution it was the OS community. Atleast there are still many other good licenses out there that don't ban and entire field of software development.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
but I always hear about the GPL being violated and not about actual punishments.
/. story about firmware, and even that looked just to be "we'll start releasing source code in our next version".
there was a recent
there need to be punitive fines, not just a constant fight just to make people agree to stop breaking the law next time.
In the world you are looking for there will be no Bluray or Paperback edition. Why should the content owner produce those if you won't let them recover their expense?
First of all, let me state for the record that I loathe DRM.
That said, I'm not sure this is a good idea. What they're saying is that there is absolutely, positively no good use for DRM, and there never will be, in free software.
To me, there's a huge difference between free software and free content, and it seems to me that this stance in GPL3 is essentailly saying that if you want to make the former, you've got to embrace the latter as well. It seems to me that it is forcing developers who would otherwise want to release their software under GPL3 to unnecessarily put restrictions (no DRM) on the content (i.e. the data) that their code may use, and I just can't see that as a good thing. What if Microsoft started programming Word so that you could never save a document that contained profanity? To me, this is pretty much the same thing. It bans the use of digital restrictions on the content? I thought the GPL was about freedom, but now it's imposing some of the very restrictions that it has traditionally railed against!
I've thought for some time that if there were some way for free software to somehow manage to be able to protect DRM'ed content without compromising the freeness of the software code itself, that organizations such as the **AA would be at least a little more willing to work with the community instead of being so hostile. I think that one of the reasons they're so belligerent right now is because even though the open source community is right about a lot of things, they're also generally insistent that the industries give away their content for free. In other words, the two sides are both extremist points of view, with no one willing to meet somewhere in the middle.
This article shows that those who wrote the GPL3 are simply digging in on one of the extremist sides, which will undoubtedly force the content industries to dig in yet further and commit further atrocities to harm consumers. The shame of it is that in the end, it is the users who will suffer. The content is owned by the content industry, after all, and if it is not conducive to them to work within the GPL3, they will simply not work within the GPL3, end of story. That means that all GPL3 software users and developers will forever needlessly be relegated to either continuing to operate within the fringe or living without popular content.
Thanks to moves like this one, the move to truly free licenses that companies use for their products and are willing to allow to be used internally will be accelerated.
Commercial BSD variants just got a little stronger today.
Hurray!
... if you intend to use GPL3 in your software.
I don't. I find that GPL2 is more than adequate for my needs, and feel that GPL3 goes more than a bit overboard in many cases.
since every drm schemed is eventually going to be hacked, and therefore the protection removed, not only for the ubergeeks but for everyone through file sharing systems. Since current drm imply shady business with the OS (Sony rootkit) and rights restriction (copying music between all the devices you own etc), since DRM has been critized to assume the consumers where outlaws. Then why not make a jump. I'd suggest a DRM system based on a simple RDF file indicating what the user has the right to do with the file... this file is attached to the media content. Sure, it'll be extremely easy to crack, so easy it won't even be fun. Ethic media players would read the file and tell you, this is the 10th time you've read this file. I can't read it anymore you need to buy another lease, or buy the song entirely etc.... Maybe I'm just a dreamer... after all how many sharewares, most of whom where not based on restrictions, just on nag screens after a certain period, where registered? Well maybe it's different for music, I don't know... But after all, the current DRM situation is the same with a little more obfuscation that's it... so why not?
\u262D = \u5350
Don't follow him if you don't wanna, cowboy, but GPLv3 might be our last defence against corporations.
www.lemonodor.com A mostly Lisp weblog
I understand their reasons for not wanting anything to do with DRM, but I think they are making a mistake. The GPL should just stick to its roots and not get involved in deciding what is and isn't able to be covered. If they are going to take a hard-line against DRM then people will complain about other evils (child pornography being the biggest; I'm looking at you, Freenet!). Who is to say that one day GPL software won't be allowed in military use? Since nobody has done it yet I will:
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin
Disregarding the fact that the above quote is always misattributed to Benjamin Franklin, I think the FSF is going down the wrong path. Today it's DRM, tomorrow it's kiddie porn, then government, then whatever the hell they want. While DRM obviously goes against the entire movement, I think disallowing your license to be used for certain purposes goes against the very nature of the movement. Freedom for all, not freedom for some (miniature American flags for others!).
On the other hand, the GPL is now much more grey than black and white. This could possibly be a good thing since the world itself is full of grey. Time will tell.
Earth to Space Cadet 029 - 'new media' editions of things traditionally were for generating new sales to new customers not return customers getting a new media, that's just a bonus
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
I have the strong opinion that the word "rights" is being abused significantly by pretty much everyone inside and outside of industry. Rights to education, rights to health care, rights to fair use.
I'm not sure that the word "rights" should be used anymore, the meaning is lost.
To me, rights are something every person is born with -- inherent, God-given, natural, you call it what you want. I believe we are born as human, we have these rights -- American, Afghani, Zimbabwian. I believe the initial U.S. Constitution as very good about naming SOME of the rights that we're born with (no government can tell us what to say, which religion we practice if any, they can not search our body or our house without very specific details laid out to a public witness, they can't quarter troops in our homes, they can't make us testify against ourselves, etc, etc). These rights are the people's, all the people's, and they're not to be abridged by any government. These rights are also ours on our property to modify in respect to others (you have none of these freedoms when you are on my land).
The entire copyright issue is very complex for most people -- many loopholes and priviledges given to some but not others. I don't like unequal rules when they are put in the law. I especially don't like unequal rules that no one can understand with a lawyer. As some know here (and I really don't want to debate it on this forum), I am against copyright in every form -- I believe that once you have a physical item in your hands, you can do with that physical item what you want -- copy it, modify it, call it your own. The physical item is "protected" by inherent property rights as long as the original owner keeps it with him. It is like gold or diamonds. The minute they sell or barter away the physical item, it is now the new owner's item to do with as they please. PHYSICAL property can be protected, but intellectual property is thought, it is action, it is processing, updating and recreating.
Now we get to fair use. First, we the People give government the ability to lay down a monopoly rental to another person or corporation -- copyright. We let them control how we use a specific item, who we use it with, and what we can and can't do. This is a law, with force being used if we ignore it. Then we give "the People" the right to work around this rented monopoly, given some very peculiar reasoning. Copyright was intended to be useful for 7 years (which can be doubled) in order to further the arts -- it was not there to necessarily protect a profit or a demand complete control forever.
This is my big problem with "rights" today -- we can give them up and have to walk a very complicated path, but we also get some parts back in order to try to fix that complicated path but it just ends up being even more complicated.
If you won't agree with me that freedom is better than tyranny, how about you folks who love big government mandate a state-paid lawyer to follow around anyone who wants one, so we can live without the fear of jail or fines?
I wouldn't say nothing, because it underestimates how clever programmers can be. If someone told me years ago that there would someday be a way for someone to listen to a complete two-way conversation between computers capturing every single byte, and to have a detailed specification of what type of encryption was used and still be unable to decipher the message, I would have really scratched my head. Yet here were are, using secure connections today that exactly fit that description.
Never say never!
For those who aren't fond of the changes to the GPL from v.2 to v.3, why not just vet your complaints about v.3 with a structured rebuttal, and then go on developing v.2 software until it's fixed or something better comes along?
Also, there are plenty of "Open-Source" Licences. (MPL, LGPL, BSD, CopyCat, etc.) Is there something the GPL v.3 does that the others (GPL v.2 included) don't do?
-Pope Peter Porker, S.O.W., K.M.K.R., U.G.O.A., F.S.G.S.D.
...you cannot have drm in oss, it just is not possible. if your software can render it, which involves processing the drm (decrypt, etc) then you can remove the drm pretty much just as easily and since the rendering code is there for everyone to see, the is trivial to adjust the app to play to disk.
I'm as much against many of the DRM schemes (and more importantly the way they actually get carried out) as the next person.
That said, I think this is a mistake.
Under GPLv3 can I crate a xen node0 and tie it with hardware DRM so only that hypervisor boots? That's the path to a secure node0?
Could I use DRM type technology to avoid leaking client data I'm required to collect at my place of business?
What people forget is that DRM technology can be used in many ways. To destroy privacy and restrict rights, or to insure privacy and protect rights.
I can think of lots of areas (patents) that the GPL could have been improved / touched-up other than taking the hard DRM line.
Observations on DRM
After several years of thought, I like DRM for rental and subscription services... like the new napster. I'll accept DRM on purchased content if they aren't trying to stop me from burning a hard copy (this is configurable by content owners with Windows DRM). I find permanent rentals on one computer to be too much of a rip-off for me to buy into, but I don't have a problem with companies trying to use that as their business model if they want... don't think it will fly longterm. Sony rootkit? Now that's pure evil. I'd call that malware, not DRM.
Open Source DRM?That being said. I've been waiting for a good open source standard DRM for MPEG-4 to finally come out. Something with interoperability between different systems... be really cool to download some movies from one service, then switch services and have new licenses issued for the new service without having to download those same files again, because both companies already have rights to distibute that same material.
I can think of ways to develop the DRM system described above with proprietary systems, but all of the content services would need to use my license clearing house in order to make that work... so now we're talking about a proprietary implementation on a proprietary framework.... yuck.
I think an open source implementation of DRM would be more likely to lead to the creation of a system that's fair for content owners, content providers, and consumers, than proprietary solutions. I'm concerned that requiring DRM products to use a different license may hinder development from open sources. What do you guys think?
(waiting for the ubiquitous "unbreakable DRM is mathematically impossible" reply... which is true, but that's true anyway as long as we view content using light, and cameras aren't illegal)
I'm reading a bit too much along the lines of "ZOMG no 1 will use teh softwares with GPL3" or "there's politics in my software!".
Here's the dish:
You don't like GPL v3? Don't use it. GPL v2 will still exist. In fact, I'm betting Linux (the kernel) won't ever be available under the GPL v3. I would be happy to use the new GPL since I enjoy such a license. If you don't like the new stuff added in, feel free to use GPL v2 software. More licenses == more choices. I don't see the problem here. BSD and GPL currently co-exist just fine. I'm sure BSD, GPL v2, and GPL v3 will do just the same.
That dosn't mean I have the right to install software on your computer so I can be.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
The proposed restriction would affect software for the content encryption only, i.e. the server side of the DRM.
Suppose, someone made a GPL 2 compliant DRMed book reader. The reader comes with the source, so there is no possibility of security through obscurity, the source can be modified and recompiled. In order to read the DRMed content it must be decripted. That means a secret key has to be given to the user, and passed to the reader. The source for the reader is available and can be modified to save the key or the decrypted copy. Consequently, GPL2 is sufficient to make client-side DRM ineffective.
Client-side DRM software, at least in its present form, depends on the closed source software, on obscurity. GPL3 restriction would only affect content creation, the encryption part of the DRM.
Hardware-assisted DRM may be different, but I can't see it right now.
Indeed. Looking at the draft of the GPL3, I believe that the presence of GPL3 code in the Linux kernel would have prevented Sony from distributing the Playstation 2 Linux kit. The Linux kernel won't be contaminated with the GPL3, though. It is clearly incompatible with the GPL2 unless the "or later" clause is present.
Now the marketing juggernaut of Harry Potter is another thing entirely, but that's not Rowling's creature. It's instructive to look at Rushdie's book Fury and the whole Little Brain sequence of events. It's very similar to what Rowling is going through, I'd imagine.
Your creation takes on a life of its own, a puppet master to soulless marketeers who have no connection nor empathy to the creation, only viewing it as a money making tool.
Clancy on the other hand. . . yeah. His Op Center stuff and the other crap he's been pulling (Tom Clancy presents. . . .) is really annoying. Shameful, even. Which is a shame, as some of his books (Without Remorse, Red Storm Rising to name two) are absolutely fantastic.
I'd look at Robert Jordan as another author who seems to be interested in the dollar rather than the story. That or he's simply lost control. Either way it amounts to the same thing, a story that gets progressively weaker and one I've lost any interest in reading. Give me the cliff's notes. I'll read the reviews about the final book and if it's overwhelmingly praised I'll consider reading the rest.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Aww. That's so cute! A digital restriction on your right to restrict rights digitally!
That'll show 'em, FSF. Use their own powers against them... or... something.
Wait. I don't get it.
Really. What's the point?
Open source under any GPL using DRM invocations is easily extracted and forked anyways. So, why would any developer mingle the two to begin with?
Philosophically speaking, RMS apparently believes oil is dissolvable in water. This clause serves no purpose and has the appearance more of ideology than impact. Practical examples to the contrary, anyone? RMS, come float back down from the clouds a bit...
Something we have simply by right of being alive is something we will hold cheaply and assume will always be there, like the air we breathe.
Our rights are not God-given or inherent to ourselves. Nor are they granted to us by the benevolence of our rulers. Our rights were taken from our rulers, by force. Among all our ancestors were rebels and traitors, terrorists and pirates, mutineers and heretics and unionists and blackguards and revolutionaries and blasphemers and barbarians, and it is their struggle that we have to thank for the freedom we enjoy today. They fought against kings and barons, against tycoons and industrialists, against priests and popes, and they set themselves and their descendants free.
When you give up a freedom to the state, or to the establishment, or to the company, you aren't giving up something that is yours to give away that you've had all your life and which you got for nothing. You're giving up something bought by the blood of countless rebels over the centuries. You're betraying the sacrifices made by your ancestors.
A right we think is inalienable we will neglect and soon lose. A right we know was won by our ancestors through hardship and struggle we will defend forcefully.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
What a great marketting move! I was starting to dislike GPLv3 with all its bad publicity but now I'm sold.
A lot of Linux and GPL advocates go on and on about freedom. But with restrictions like this "GPL3... which bans the use of 'digital restrictions' in GPL3 governed software", I have to wonder where this freedom is, where it is going and whose idea of "freedom" is this?
Meanwhile, the BSD licence remains simple and really does provide freedom on so many levels.
What are the FSF trying to do? Protect the free loving World? The free loving World is free to choose to reject DRM themselves. Each individually, combines into a greater message than following some foundations twisted idea of freedom, simply by running thier software. Are the FSF trying to link Linux and the GPL with the idea that copyright is always a bad thing?
If you don't like certain copyright terms, then too God damned bad. Same deal with some patents. Some people copyright some fantastic works or ideas which are thier own and good on them for that. Why should thier hard work or brilliance just be copied by some loosers who can't come up with something better?
Long time BSD user, with realistic ideas of what freedom really is.
BTW, don't paint me with a generic brush about this. I HATE Sony for what they have recently done and I think the music and movie industries are generally controlled by scum. But to hate copyright and patents wholesale is just wrong.
Thank goodness for the BSD's. Would OSX be so great without them?
The only thing having DRM clause in the GPLv3 will do, is reduce the usage of the GPL. Not because people looking at the GPL license will be interested in using it for DRM, but it will be yet another attempt to make the GPL more restrictive. The reason why the GPL gets such a bad rap in many circles is because its so complex and restrictive.
Adding more restrictions isn't going to encourage the proliferation of free software, it will just encourage people to choose another license. A license used by millions should not be modified on a whim based on the opinions of a handful of people.
Does not allowing digital restrictions mean that including copyrighted artwork, which is displayed digitally on the screen would be disallowed, too? If so, there won't be much support for GPL3, no icons, no images, no anything.
As in...what...you write books?
DRM won't protect you at all, anyway. Books don't come with DRM. GPL won't hit your sales at all either, since books aren't distributed under the GPL. Your copyright is good enough. The people who will REALLY harm your bottom line are, of course, the publishers. Good luck with that.
Or maybe you write comic books? Magazine articles? Same.
Or do you write online news articles perhaps? There may be some impact there...assuming that your site is already planning to make use of DRM to ensure that only people who have paid for a subscription can access your articles and that they can never copy them. However I would speculate that such a business model is doomed to failure from the start, anyway. Too many easier alternatives available.
Do you write music? Then DRM will limit the distribution of your works, and ultimately limit your sales. Keeping a plain old copyright (without any DRM attached) will prevent others from charging for a public performance, so you still have a monopoly on that, and the free distribution of MP3's will just serve as free marketing for your concerts (and t-shirts with your logo/art on them).
It will all work out. No worries.
I absolutely hate DRM and believe that the DMCA should be repealed. I also believe there should be laws stating that no one should be able to place digital locks on material that a user has certain rights to which the locks curtail.
However, I really don't know about this change in the GPL. I thought one of the things the GPL wanted to avoid were the extra clauses about what you could and couldn't use the software for. I seem to remember people who would write "free" software with the license almost identical to the GPL but then add things like "No one in the US Military is allowed to use this software." I was under the impression that people who truly wanted Free and Open Source Software to prevail were against these kinds of restrictions...
We always knew Comcast was corrupt, here's the proof: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1909890&cid=34545432
To me, rights are something every person is born with -- inherent, God-given, natural, you call it what you want.
The Creator doesn't give anybody any rights. They can't be inalienable because they don't exist. Does the lamb have a right not to be eaten by the lion? The caveman by the bear? The woolly mammoth not to be slain by the caveman? Nope. Quite the contrary. The setup in the natural world is carefully designed or naturally evolved (take your pick) to confer benefit to the strong, the clever, and the ruthless. Everywhere there is competition for scarce resources.
If the whale is to have a right not to be processed by man for food and other products, it can only be because man chooses to confer and protect this right. No deity has ever done so.
The baby born with a heart defect has no right to life conferred by nature or Creator. Without man's interest and intervention, it will die quickly.
If man is to enjoy rights, it can only be because man promulgates and protects these rights.
Knowledge "wants" to be free in a metaphysical sense, but it's not going to happen without the efforts of men to undo the efforts of other men to chain knowledge.
Some of the comments are nonsense like applying this to file permissions. So before you flame the decision, read it. Excerpt from the GPL:
As a free software license, this License intrinsically disfavors technical attempts to restrict users' freedom to copy, modify, and share copyrighted works. Each of its provisions shall be interpreted in light of this specific declaration of the licensor's intent. Regardless of any other provision of this License, no permission is given to distribute covered works that illegally invade users' privacy, nor for modes of distribution that deny users that run covered works the full exercise of the legal rights granted by this License.
In other words: This applies only to DRM that attempts to block copying of copyright material. Not Trusted Computing, not file permissions, not anything else.
Ok?
So.. it has come to this
That's why I considered it annoying. . . it's passed off as "Tom Clancy" but it's not really his.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Well, it's not really a change. In spirit, the GPL has always opposed DRM. DRM, like proprietary software, takes away the control and freedom of choice that an end user should enjoy, and gives it to someone else. The GPL has always stood against the effects of proprietary software, on behalf of programmers and expert users. Now, it stands against those effects on behalf of every computer user too. Companies have an ethical choice when it comes to DRM, and I do hope that the actions of the FSF will serve to highlight this.
You're an immobile computer, remember?
Anyone who thinks this will stop the entertainment companies from using DRM is mistaken. What this will do is drive those companies away from Linux, and demonstrate to the courts (if/when any lawsuits are filed) that the Linux community has intentionally excluding itself from receiving protected content. I think that will make them less sympathetic, not more. This also makes Linux unusable for certain medical purposes which require use of DRM technologies to protect medical records.
The result is that Linux can now be used in fewer places than before. Not a good thing, in my mind.
I for one consider this insane, or at least taking it way too far - making provisions like this to a [unreadable legal] document that many of us presumably rely on just for the sake of retribution against closed-source promoters.
The case of tivo [presumably, potentially] making closed-source hardware that only runs certain builds of open-source applications so that they technically comply with the GPL but in effect stop any attempts to make use of modified code is an interesting one - perhaps the interaction with closed-source systems is a place to focus GPL3 attention.
However restricing a software developer to a free-to-mofdify-for-all application behaviour is bound to have side effects. For example consider some software written to monitor detained individuals - certainly the detainee is a stakeholder (although not someone who bought the software) - should they be able to change application behaviour? How about a telephone hand-set - would GPL3 imply that if open-source software is used in the handset, the user is entitled to try and cheat the telephone company in any way they can by altering the hand-set?
What next? would the application service providers be required to give out administrator passwords just because the database they use is GPL3?
And it hardly helps promote GPL software or GPL idea if render farms that create special effects in animated films that will be first shown at a cinema, then offered as dvd rental and then sold per view on internet with drm restrictions would have to switch to a closed-source os...
RMS started his crusade long before anyone heard of Microsoft when a printer manufacturer wouldn't give him the source code for a printer driver so he could fix the bugs that were preventing it from working on the computer he was using. RMS is about preventing artificial limits on a computers ability to meet the needs of its users.
Over the years the artificial limits have included the unavailability (hoarding in RMS-speak) of source code and patents. Adding DRM is the next logicial addition.
This is a boring sig
The thing I like least about the GPL (especially GPL3), is that it's more of a political manifesto than a software license.
I read
Ermm, the GPL has nothing to do with Linus. He's just one of many consumers of it. Linux is NOT the only thing that uses GPL licensing -- not by a long way. Also, Linus has no particular say in even the Linux source code, since many other people have contributed to it under their OWN license terms, or without stating their terms, in which case most of us would probably assume "GPLv2 or higher", which is the most common set of licensing terms.
I believe the GPLv3 is saying that "if your GPLv3'd media player will play back DRM'ed content, you have to include all source code and all keys that do the DRM unlocking."
Thus, your media player can't have a "black box" which does the DRM decoding. It has to include the keys and the algorithms.
If the GPL's goal is to "guarantee freedom" and the use of GPL code to create DRM goes against that, what about other uses of code that restricts freedom? Suppose the Great Firewall of China was a giant ring of Linux boxes running legitimate GPL network filter apps to suppress the freedom of the citizens of China. Isn't this more repressive of freedom than DRM? Shouldn't the GPL instead outlaw the general use of GPL software for "repression of freedom" rather than just target a subset of repression (DRM)? If not, why has just DRM been targeted by GPL?
It appears to me that Qt is licensed under the GPLv2-only (as opposed to GPLv2-or-later). KDE is licensed under the LGPLv2-or-later, but since it links to Qt, it cannot be changed to LGPLv3 and still link against it. It follows then that all KDE applications are in reality LGPLv2-only. This means that any library that any KDE application links against cannot be GPLv3.
So If I were making a library, why would I ever choose to use GPLv3 or LGPLv3, when it completely removes the possiblity of being used in any Qt/KDE application?
Microsoft have their own definition of "domain" -- an active directory domain. It's very different from the wider IT industry (ie, non-microsoft user/admin)'s understanding. I think Microsoft deliberately confuse the two, to give the impression to inexperienced windows admins that they can't have an internet company without Windows Server running it.
The distinction is particularly crucial here, I think. It sounds like their intent is to make DRM'd media/content/MS Office docs only readable on a Microsoft windows machine that's tied into an MS Windows network, with a DRM (probably + licensing) server.
I can think of a test that distinguished "good" DRM from "bad" DRM.
"Good" DRM is where the rightful administrator of a computer is in full control of what happens on that computer.
"Bad" DRM is where someone who is not the rightful administrator of a computer attempts to restrict what happens on that computer without informed consent from, or in a manner that cannot be overridden by, the rightful administrator.
{I'm purposely restricting my comments to the administrator, and not mentioning users here. Whatever power struggles are going on between administrators and users are a matter for them to sort out between themselves. In the case of a Personal Computer, the administrator is the user anyway.}
chmod(1) and friends are good, because the administrator is in full control. The administrator who chmod'ed a file can always un-chmod it back again. A hammer isn't just used for putting nails in: it can be used for taking them out as well.
iTunes is bad, because someone other than the administrator {Apple} seeks to prevent the administrator from doing something in a way that the administrator cannot override. If you want to, say, transcode your files from AAC to OGG Vorbis, even for some legitimate purpose {for instance, I have permission from the band Ocean Colour Scene to make unlimited copies of their back catalogue and future work, in any medium now known or to be invented, for personal listening}, Apple won't let you do it.
That's the difference.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
It's Stallman's own equivalent of the Ten Commandments. What he is essentially saying with this is that any software licensed under the GPL now also falls under his philosophical jurisdiction.
It's been his attitude for a while now that anybody who uses Linux is supposedly on his turf by default, whether they like it or not...that he as a single individual deserves most (if not all) of the credit for the fact that Linux exists, and that if you don't essentially want to become an intellectual clone of his, then you have no right to use Linux. People are going to think I'm insane here, sure...After all, DRM itself is a bad thing, right? DRM however is not the point. Stallman always claims to value principles...I do too...and here's the principle at stake here:- That Stallman thinks he is entirely able and fully justified to make whatever decrees he wishes to people who use GPL licensed software. He might not have (blatantly) done it yet, but I have no difficulty believing that in the next version of the license, (if not this one) he will start attempting to attach conditions and decrees which have nothing to do with software licensing whatsoever, but are to do with the way people *think.*
What is also typical is Moglen's abdication of responsibility...claiming that they're simply reacting to the behaviour of others. That's always been Stallman's line; demonise the opposition, make himself out to be a martyr or a saint, and then use that as justification for behaviour that is itself fanatical and authoritarian.
I have genuinely wanted to make this post sound less fanatical, profane, and reactionary than others I've written about Stallman in the past; I'm not using foul language, but my point still remains that as someone who not only values freedom on an instinctive level, but who also (unlike some people) does not simply see the word freedom as euphemism for other people doing what I want, I cannot in good conscience advocate the philosophy, attitudes, or behaviour of Richard Stallman. The reason why is because despite what he says, I do not believe (based on my observations of his behaviour) that advancing the cause of individual freedom is genuinely his primary motivation; but rather that he is motivated primarily by a need for adoration and intellectual conformity from his followers.
...and not try to stand in its way. If we just leave DRM alone, it will not work (like the Sony fiasco), users and artists will reject it and society will evolve towards another compensation model that works for everyone and benefits from the current state of technology.
If the FSF tries to redefine free software in order to fight DRM, it will make GPL3 commercially unpopular and undermine the strengh of the free and open source software movement as a whole
Copyright doesn't prevent anyone from stealing.
Maybe I'll just copyright my house and remove the locks. Problem solved!
DRM is trying to do the old object-oriented technique of encapsulation on the data it protects. GPLv3 is preventing this. I wonder if it's possible to interpret GPLv3 to prevent use of encapsulation in a GPL'd program :-) Many programs might be affected, if somebody implemented a new feature to encapsulation in C++, where you could open the encapsulation (not by using casts but) using an encryption key!
If a movie studio uses open source software in the production of a
movie then it should be illegal for them to distribute that movie
in digial format with a DRM wrapper. IE: if you use GPL software
to make YOUR software, you CANNOT DRM your software without being
in violation of the GPL. Now how would that play out in court?
In fact, it's worse than that. Although TiVo provide the source code, they don't provide the keys required to sign the binaries so they'll run on the hardware. Hence even though I theoretically have the freedom to tinker with the software on my TiVo, I don't actually have that freedom. And that's without even considering whether there's DRM on the content--I'd quite like to just be able to program the thing via command line or web interface.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
...free as in speech.
DRM is fundamentally incompatible with open source software anyway (GPL or otherwise). It is simply impossible to have an open sourced DRM implementation (at least one that's purely software-based) and expect it to work.
Open source encryption works. Why? Because, while the algorithms are known to everybody, the decryption key is only known by the intended recipient. Therefore an attacker cannot (feasibly) read the content because he doesn't have the key.
DRM is different than traditional encryption in one key aspect - the attacker and the recipient are the same person! They must have the key in order to be able to read the protected data, and if the source is open, they can add a hook in to extract the data after it's been decrypted. There is simply no way to implement a secure DRM system if the source code is open, because the decrypted data has to be handled in there somewhere.
That's what I love most about it. =)
While I'm against the concrete form choosen in version 3, DRM is a real problem for the GPL, as the DMCA goes against the very spirit of the GPL.
I could use GPLed software and create a DRM program with it. Normally, everybody can modify it, right?
Well, perhaps not : as it is a protection measure, I can try to sue everybody that does modify it under the DMCA, claiming that any modification to my software lessens the protection, and therefor infringes the DMCA (IANAL, so I'm not sure if this could succeed). So, by declaring my software to be a DRM, I could basicly prevent anybody from modifying it.
Worse, not only I, but if it is a general purpose DRM system, any author of content protected by this DRM could sue you if you modify the software.
The DMCA creates a huge mess : normally illegal actions done with software (even if it is modified GPL-software) are, of course, illegal. But with the DMCA, modifying software itself can be illegal, even if no other illegal act is commited (exemple : excercising fair use rights).
So, the GPL would like to say that modifying (and using) GPLed software is never illegal in itself, only if another illegal act is commited.
Why I'm against the form choosen in the GPLv3 : it only adresses the DMCA in it's current form (and even then, I'm not sure, if it will stand up in court), but with a new law, modifying GPLed software can become illegal again. And the licence will always be behind the law.
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof for my post which this sig is too small to contain.
To quote myself: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=164248&cid=137 15878
"If I cannot do with the content what I want to do with the content, I will not buy the content. If I cannot buy equipment that will let me do what I want with the content, I will not buy the equipment. DRM cracked or not, if the products (content and content players) restrict me from doing what I want, the producers will lose me as a customer.
There are vast numbers of ways to spend my time that I will not sacrifice my freedom at the alter of entertainment. Maybe I will end up in the minority from the mindless masses. That's my choice. But they (entertainment industry companies) face two dilemas getting this to come about.
1. The content producers and content player companies will always be at odds. The producers want more enforced control but the player companies know that less control will increase sales. This will not change. Even Sony's movie and music arms can't fully bring the electronic side in line.
2. Even "average" users expect to be able to move content around and watch it without having to jump through hoops. There are [few] examples of content and products with hard DRM that have been a success. iTunes and DVD do not have hard DRM. No one I know, for example, wants to buy a song that can only be played on one computer and not moved to a player or a new computer like some music services do.
I, therefore, feel pretty comfortable that full control DRM will not succeed in the marketplace. This is why those that want it are trying to get laws passed to mandate it."
In the long run, I don't think DRM will win. In the mean time, I can do without "popular" content. I already do without it anyway since most of it is not worth my time.
No time to go into details now. Jist:
- Driver writers for GPL3ed OSes can't support DRM features of devices.
- Manufacturers of such devices could be prosecuted under the DMCA if they give driver writers any information that might be useful to write a driver to support their devices without supporting the DRM features.
So their partners who own the DRM tech - and Microsoft - will have an additional lever to use to block any assistance to Linux device-driver writers and maintainers: The power of the state.
(Even if this analysis is wrong, or governments might not chose to prosecute, the threat alone is probably enough to scare off a corporate exec.)
From the adoption of GPL3 on, count on having to reverse-engineer any DRM-enabled device.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
You just contradicted yourself. If you believe DRM is good, then Linus and stuff like BSD is right up your street. Otherwise, you would be best supporting GPLv3 and projects that favour it ASAP.
One problem with the GPL-3 is that it's starting to have a political agenda that's outside the "software wants to be free" agenda.
Today it's DRM. Tomorrow it may be military or government applications. The next day it could prevent use in any commercial application.
Why?
Originally, the GPL was created so you could use software in an unencumbered manner. Now that same software is being used to encumber the uses of the software. This is exactly what the GPL was designed to prevent. It shows how far the FSF has come, I guess, that they've lost their focus.
The various GPLs are mostly about stopping anyone from restricting anyone else's rights. Hence, it makes perfect sense.
If I read this correctly the GPL states that the current and any future versions apply to it. Since certain GPL's libraries that are often linked to in firmware, kernels, many pieces of software and codecs have this license. Wouldn't that mean anything built with, linked to or containing these products would now fall under this new license? Seems to me that in certain cases the DMCA protections on certain devices and software used by the RIAA and MPAA just got retroactively revoked. I am not sure they have any grounds to stand on either as the license is clear that any future versions of GPL would apply. Unlike Linux which does not have that clause from the GPL for just that reason these products do and the meaning is unambiguous. Could someone clarify this?
Of course it does. It makes it illegal. If that law isn't being enforced, then it's policing that is at fault. DRM users are taking the law into their own hands, which is akin to vigilantism, and should itself be against the law. So, unless you're advocating a wild-west approach to the digital age...
Burn the protected M4P to "Redbook audio CD format", the use iTunes to rip it back into MP3. OMG, you'll have to waste a CD-R and five minutes of your life.
Even better: if you have a Mac, use Automator to do this for you...
The above poster has no idea what they are talking about, or is deliberatley spouting bullshit.
First the GPL cannot restrict use. Even if it literally said "movie studios cannot redistribute GPL code", a movie studio could still use Linux all they want. If somebody there fixes the Linux code, they could only use the fix in-house and not give it to anybody, though.
More importantly the GPL3 does not say anything about writing DRM. You can write all the DRM software you want under any license whatsoever. Doing so does not violate the GPL3 copyright (since you are not using that GPL3 code at all). It is impossible for the GPL3 to stop this even if RMS wanted it to, because otherwise the GPL would be a contract instead of a license.
You can even use GPL3 code to write your DRM. All it does is say you cannot claim it is an "effective copyright enforcement". This means that anybody outwitting your DRM cannot be sued under the DMCA, because you are forced to state that your software is not covered by the DMCA. The DMCA and obscurity are the only defenses for DRM code, so it does make it difficult (but not illegal) to write DRM software. If you can actually figure out how to make working GPL DRM code (probably using key pairs with one key embedded in hardware) the result would be almost impossible to break and would probably instantly be the standard for all media. However you would be unable to sue anybody who does break it.
In the PDF 1.6 specification, chapter 1.5 are written rules under which you can use the Adobe copyrighted list of data structures and operators. A part of them:
Is this DRM, or not?
XPDF author writes about this here
http://www.foolabs.com.nyud.net:8090/xpdf/crackin
The above poster either has no idea what they are talking about, or is spreading FUD.
There is no such clause or anything like it in the GPL3.
Even if there was, it could not prevent use of Linux, it could only prevent the company from modifying Linux and selling/distributing it to others.
Okay, now see, that's a useful technical distinction, whatever your personal comfort level on, say, iTunes is (personally, I'm fine with it), -- there's good DRM and there's bad DRM. But notice that it's still all DRM, and also note the FSF seems reluctant to draw distinctions between Good and Bad DRM, instead referring to DRM in exclusively negative, monolithic terms. While the GPL v3 draft doesn't really appear to put any teeth into this position, beyond an attack on the DMCA, I'm struggling to see how the FSF can be seen to be opposing all DRM, even the good kind, and not run afoul of the standard security provisions we all expect.
"Just once, I'd like to meet an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets." -- The Brigadier, Dr. Who
I think the idea of the DRM-clause is as follows: If someone uses GPL'ed code in DRM'ed product, they are agreeing that the DRM on their product is not a "strong technological protection". What does that mean? It means that they can't use DMCA to sue users who circumvent the DRM. DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent "strong technological protection". If they use GPL'ed code, they are saying that their DRM is not strong, and therefore circumventing that DRM is not against the DMCA.
It's brilliant, really.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
There are those who would utterly abolish copyright. To be honest I'm almost in agreement with them. The balance has swung over to absolutely ridiculous extremes.
* Music: Music has existed since the dawn of civilisation. Those who enjoy music enough will continue to produce it whether or not people will pay them handsomely for their efforts. If they no longer make more money in a day than a surgeon in the emergency room makes in a whole year, well, somehow I find it hard to feel sorry for them.
* Software: Some software needs can be met with open source software. More specialist "unsexy" software will again continue to be needed. Whoever needs it enough can enter into a contract with someone to develop it, under as strict a set of safety standards as is necessary for things like aircraft and nuclear reactors if needs be. Isn't the vast majority of all software written for internal use? If this software gives you a critical edge over a competitor it can be protected as a trade secret instead.
* Books: Same as music, even moreso. Anyone with a word processor can potentially be an author, although if you look at the volume of utter drivel on say fanfiction.net it might become a bit hard to sort the wheat from the chaff for a while. Again, better to have geniunely good material float to the top than have the usual pop crap pushed down everyone's throats because it's a lazy man's substitute for taste.
* News: Tricky. "the blogosphere" these days is mostly about juvenile navelgazing, and I personally would certainly not rely on it. Still, if News Corp et all fell into the dust, if something big caught on fire I imagine many people would be giving consistent reports of the fact within minutes online, as opposed to front page articles of who's fucking who in the celebrity world as we usually have (although we wouldn't see quite so many celebrities in the first place; see above).
* Cinema: There are lower barriers to entry these days thanks to powerful commonplace audio/video hardware and the obscene computing power of a medium-sized pile of desktop PC's these days. Still, this could be tricky. You would need some sort of wealthy societies to bankroll massive cinematic productions. You wouldn't get too many projects like Lord of the Rings springing up because a bunch of people down the pub with 1000 of their highly qualified mates decided it might be fun to set up tons of production equipment and render farms down in New Zealand for a laugh...
On balance though I'm having trouble seeing the benefit of copyright other than the fact that it makes a small group of people with an arguably marginal contribution to society disproportionately rich. Considering the recent abuses of the copyright lobby (DMCA and such) we do seem to be making some ridiculous "tradeoffs" as of late.
I'm glad we have such a benevolent leader to hand down a list of freedoms that software developers should and shouldn't have. After all, consumers are sheep who can't be asked to make their own choices as to what types of software they will use or avoid. We need RMS to tell us. All hail to our leader for defining what freedoms we are allowed to have.
Vote for Pedro
You certainly CAN write DRM software, including software to decode DRM content. Please stop spreading this FUD.
What you cannot do is declare that your DRM software that is using GPL3 code in it is an "effective copyright measure" and thus you cannot declare that breaking it is a DMCA violation. Thus if somebody circumvents it you cannot sue them under the DMCA.
Declaring that it is "not effective" has nothing to do with whether it really is effective. It's just legal mumbo jumbo. In fact a working GPL DRM scheme, probably using hardware-embedded key pairs with a central repository to list "legal" keys (since anybody could make their own new key pair, content producers would use this registry to make sure a key is actually one where the other key is known to be secret), would be very effective.
This will signify the end of the GPLs evolution.
It will cost companies money, but they will figure out ways to use licenses that don't prevent them from engaging in a legitimate business model (DRM).
I am profoundly disappointed that this has happend. It has made the GPL no longer only relevant to the agreement between software producer and user/reuser, but tries to control how people use the software.
It is draconian.
I hope all open source supporters realize that this is bad (even if you do have 60GB of pirated content on your hard drive). It will only prevent strong advocates like Tivo and Google from being able to use GPL'ed software. It will force them to use other licenses (BSD, MS EULA, etc.) to accomplish their business goals.
Amazing magic tricks
DRM is about controling copyright, and that's seeming to be something people are experimenting with music and movies and software, but what about books? Aside from the infringement of Google Print, you should see what's happening in publishing. I was reading at http://www.printerboard.com/ and about self-publishing. Sure you own the copyright, but we own the files. You can't do anything without us. Now there's a one sided solution! Brasspen
They would have something to say if you used a copy of their performance of the Hindu chant. You are free to go out and record your own performance of said Hindu chant, and do whatever the hell you like with it, including giving it away for free.
And how exactly do you police someone's hard drive?
If you want to play X, you need to install Y. If you're not willing to install Y, don't play X. Nobody is forcing anything on you.
...FSF seems reluctant to draw distinctions between Good and Bad DRM,..
Of course it does - it's all summed up in the statement that goes something like "...that the user cannot turn off..."
IOW, "good" == USER (administrator) controlled, "bad" == controlled by someone other than the legal owner of the computer
This is definitely something I will welcome. It is crucial that someone takes action to protect consumers from the painful curse of digital rights removal. People should be free to do what they want with content that they have purchased. When you buy a car, do you expect it to be monitored by the Police so that you don't commit an armed robbery in it? When you buy a bread knife from the supermarket, do you expect it to contain a program to prevent you from using it to stab someone? I think now. Digital Right reMoval is equally ridiculous. Not everyone is a criminal, and media companies would be far better served by concentrating their efforts on producing better quality content, instead of irritating their customers into seeking pirated copies of their content, free of worthless restrictions that can be defeated by anyone determined anyway.
Unfortunate reality is that DRM is a necessity to many companies. When a studio dumps $100,000,000 into a movie, times 100 movies a year, DRM is going to happen whether us end users like it or not. Total elimination of DRM from a movie studio is not an option; switching from Linux to Windows to keep DRM is an option for them.
... aka GPL3.
As Godel noted, there is an unresolvable issue in every system. As you note, the unresolvable issue in Stallman's GPL3 is the "no DRM anywhere ever" vs. "DRM is a fact of life - cope" vs. "no OSS for you" - pushed to its logical limits, Stallman's ideology makes it untenable in the real world. Getting banned from playing in sandbox A because you play in sandbox B discourages people from playing in B
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Anyone who would spend $30K on a home stereo would be a fool to download music from iTunes, given its 128kbps encoding. Surely you would be able to hear the limitations of that format on that kind of equipment.
Good post, sir.
My bicyles
I'm not speaking about the precise language of the v.3 draft, which as noted has very little to say of substance about DRM except for the DMCA issue, but about comments from FSF spokespersons, such as Moglen, or Stallman, where I haven't seen any attempt to distinguish between good and bad DRM -- or even acknowledge that such a thing as good DRM might exist. And the statements use of of the word "user" is unhelpful too: I'm a user on an email system, but I can't turn off the good DRM that stops me from reading everyone else's mail. If user is really meant to mean "owner or administrator", why did Stallman deliberately leave out support for the 'wheel' group in the GNU implementation of su?
"Just once, I'd like to meet an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets." -- The Brigadier, Dr. Who
Except users will no longer have the freedom to build DRM software using GPL'd code.
What is the difference between the GPL and the modified BSD license, or the MIT license? Some groups claim that the latter two licenses are more free than the GPL. In one sense, they are correct. The GPL puts certain restrictions on redistribution, whereas the other two licenses put virtually no restrictions.
You are correct that RMS has previously argued that there should be no "anti-suchandsuch" political clauses in the GPL. RMS believes that users should be free to do anything with the software. Thus, your view is correct, but not complete!
In fact, RMS has always stated that users should be free to do anything with the software, except restrict other users' freedom to do anything with the software. That was the whole point of the restrictions in the GPLv2.
When you look at it in this light, you realize that forbidding effective DRM is in fact consistent with the philosophical aims of the GPLv2, because DRM is nothing more than a way of restricting a user's freedom to do whatever he wants with the software. However, this draft of GPLv3 makes this explicit, because DRM-protecting laws like the DMCA have become so dangerous to Free Software.
Furthermore, your basic premise is in fact false. This draft of GPLv3 still allows programmers to write software that encodes or decodes DRM-wrapped file formats. However, this draft of GPLv3 legally defines any such software as not "an effective technological protection measure". These words have a specific legal meaning. The DMCA legally forbids a user from circumventing an effective technological protection measure; as such, if a piece of GPLv2 software implements a DRM-wrapper, it would be illegal under the DMCA to modify the software, even though the GPLv2 otherwise grants you that right. With this draft of the GPLv3, by defining the software legally as not "an effective technological protection measure" the DMCA will never be invoked, and the user is free to excersize his freedom by modifying the software.
The preceding comments reflect the author's personal opinion and are public domain, unless explicitly stated otherwise.
Because, as it stands, GPL violators can restrict their work to US distribution only and hide their violations behind DRM, to leave any who discover it vulnerable to a counter-claim of violating the DMCA?
I'm confused here, is that supposed to be a "good" thing?
FWIW, GPL v3 contains a clause better explaining the "or later" bit. The licensee (not the licensor) has the option of which license they wish to accept. This ensures that the FSF can only grant further freedoms and never take them away, because you could always accept an earlier version of the license, bypassing new restrictions. It further allows the copyright holders to migrate to new versions, or repudiate them. At "worst" the FSF could make a BSD-style license out of the GPL by granting too much freedom. At that point, the copyright holders could choose not to offer their work under that particular license any longer, or if it was a better license, they could offer only GPL version or later for their own works.
IANAL. If you want legal advice, get one. Copyright law for works on the internet involves international law as well as many national copyright laws. It's damn hard even to stay an informed layman. You need a lawyer for any dispute involving it.
To me, there's a huge difference between free software and free content, and it seems to me that this stance in GPL3 is essentailly saying that if you want to make the former, you've got to embrace the latter as well.
Your argument is built on a fallacy.
You imply that content is either DRM or is free. There can be no such thing as content that is simultaneously non-DRM and non-free.
Yet today we have CDs, for example, which are non-free, but simultaneously non-DRM.
The GPL is taking no such stance. You can embrace free software, and free content, and non-free software, and non-free content. While some people may not tolerate software or content unless it is free, the GPLv3 itself does not require you to swear any such allegiance. If I release something under GPLv3, I do not have to swear such an allegiance.
Another nit. Instead of "embrace free content" you should say "reject non-free content". I can embrace free content and embrace non-free content at the same time. They are not mutually exclusive.
You say a lot about extremism. Either we have DRM or we don't. Either we have freedom or we don't. Either I have control of my own hardware, and physical media, or I don't. Is it extremist to not provide the very tools that might be used to take away our freedom? Someone else said that the DRM side would just switch to non-free software in order to take our freedom. Would you rather that I beat you with your lead pipe, or should I get a lead pipe from some other source in order to beat you with it? Don't be extremist, just give me your lead pipe to use against you.
The price of freedom is eternal litigation.
"... she can disable it if she wants..."
Are males not allowed to? Here is an obvious case were gender neutral language is more appropriate - using they instead of she would be a lot better, and less disracting to the main point.
-Nivag
Thanx guys, now my boss wants to know why the firewall is not "an effective technological protection"?
A glacier?
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
I can't fix any errors that I've made so far...
Wikileaks, no DNS
RMS understood {or guessed incredibly luckily, but I'm a shameless romantic} that a freely-available OS would inevitably be used in the future on inexpensive hardware: eventually, small groups of enthusiasts -- or even individual home users such as you or me -- would be in a position to make use of GNU on cheaply-acquired hardware. In such an environment, the "wheel" group would be less important anyway; all users ideally would be both sufficiently technically competent and sufficiently respectful of one another's rights to be trusted with the power of the root account.
And, precisely because GNU su is free software, there is nothing at all stopping someone from re-creating the functionality of requiring a user to be a member of a particular group before acquiring root privileges, if they so desire {nor stopping someone else disabling that functionality again}. At the end of the day, you have to pick a default for any behaviour that can be changed -- even if the default is to force the user to choose, one option will be listed first, or otherwise have some greater but irrational appeal as compared to the other{s}. RMS just decided to choose the default behaviour of allowing any user to become root, which certainly fits in with the GNU political agenda of empowering individual users.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
I don't know what you think it means, but it doesn't make sense in your sentence. 'Short shrift' means that something is hardly touched on, handled carelessly, or otherwise almost ignored. That is the opposite of what you wanted to say.
"In fact, RMS has always stated that users should be free to do anything with the software, except restrict other users' freedom to do anything with the software. That was the whole point of the restrictions in the GPLv2." Thank you- I was about to abandon this thread because I was being disheartened by all of the comments that seemed to be based on very little actual thought behind their kneejerk reactions. Your post gave me hope afterall. Well said (not just the quote I used in my reply, but the whole post)- I had to pull that quote out of your post because that seems to be the least understood point. (based on the number of comments similar to the one you replied to) Again,thanks.......and to some of you out there: finish your coffee and get fully awake and THINKING before abusing your keyboard and our patience. :)
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
http://www.againsttcpa.com/tcpa-faq-en.html
"People believed that the GPL made it impossible for a company to come along and steal code that was the result of community effort. This helped make people willing to give up their spare time to write free software for the communal benefit. But TC changes that. Once the majority of PCs on the market are TC-enabled, the GPL won't work as intended. The benefit for Microsoft is not that this will destroy free software directly. The point is this: once people realise that even GPL'led software can be hijacked for commercial purposes, idealistic young programmers will be much less motivated to write free software."
"....(s)he can disable it if (s)he wants...."
and cover all your bases.
Does someone have a problem with RMS?
In the long run, FOSS (the many) will outsmart closed source software (the few), and RMS role must not be neglected - just get over it.
Linus, as Linux kernel manager, can do whatever he think it could be fair. The community, of course, also freely, take a look to the GNU/HURD option.
The freedom is also the possibility of choice. Get it, Linus.
According to FSF's own definition of free software, for software to be considered free, users must have the "freedom to run the program, for any purpose," and "to adapt it to [said user's] needs."
If users are not free to use GPL3 software as or adapt it for use as a component of a digital rights management system, it is not free software.
Frankly, I don't expect GPL3 to catch on; GPL2 really doesn't have serious problems, and the provisions of BSD-type licenses are much easier to understand.
But the difference between public and private is purely contextual, external to any technology involved: there may be a big difference between using a video camera in your home and the use of surveillance cameras in public spaces, for example, but the basic technology is the same. And so, any blanket approach to DRM, which fails to take into account the context in which the technology may be applied, raises significant questions as to its general applicability and utility.
But you're right: the market will choose: the proof here will be in the rate of adoption of v.3 licenses and software. Personally, I suspect v.2 software will be alive and kicking for some time. Just as most people do choose to use ISPs that enforce DRM on email users, and do rely on DRM-enabled systems to maintain their security and privacy, and look dimly any system that doesn't enable DRM, a la Stallman's apparantly cherished ITS.
"Just once, I'd like to meet an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets." -- The Brigadier, Dr. Who
This is the real and only reason why Linux will remain GPL2. Unless, of course, someone rewrites it all.
To do list for Windows
As much as I would like working Anti-DRM clauses, they might pose a serious problem with Debian. According to the social contract, a license is only acceptable to Debian, if (among others) it does not discriminate against groups of users or fields of usage. A clause forbidding use in DRM apps might therefore preclude GPL3 software in Debian?
IANAL & INADD (... Debian Developer)
isnt that the situation where groklaw and electronic frontier foundation usually come in with the knights in white shiny armour ?
This is stupid. This impulsive, reactionary move will do nothing but cripple it's usage in any commercial application. Forget about tivo and the millions of titles that have CD-ROM protection through safedisc or macrovision, but this cuts out any possible commercial media delivery to GPL'd software. No iTunes, no DVDs, HD-DVDs, or any of the new wave of on-demand or streaming media. Great idea FSF, why don't you do an encore of punching yourself in the nuts?
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
I have read through a lot of comments, but it seems noone has raised one issue:
What if a company make a GPL program that contains DRM, only to then have a signature of the binary someplace that confirms it "authenic"?
That only Suse, Redhat, Mandriva etc. can get "approved" in their distribution.
Wouldn't this technicly be GPL still, under its current version, even if in practice you couldn't compile it and expect it to work?
At least this is my view on how GPL and DRM might clash.
I've asked this before but so far have not recieved a response..
Does someone mind explaining to me the deal with GPL and linking? AFAIK, you can only link GPL'd programs to GPL'd programs.
But what is the inherent difference between linking and communicating with a program in another manner?
If my code communicates with a GPL program via tcp/ip, or via function calls the only logical difference i can see is speed?
Nah, don't mod me up. I'm only the messenger. As I said, it's been said up-topic a bit. I'm redundant.
I think this page explains quite well why the gpl exists
k /ch01_02.html
...
and is a nice history lesson to explain where this all started.
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/debian/chapter/boo
"Two Bell Labs software engineers, Ken Thompson and Dennis Richie, worked on Multics until Bell Labsbwithdrew from the project in 1969. One of their favorite pastimes during the project had been playing a multi-user game called Space Travel. Now, without access to a Multics computer, they found themselves unable to indulge their fantasies of flying around the galaxy. Resolved to remedy this, they decided to port the Space Travel game to run on an otherwise unused PDP-7 computer. Eventually, they implemented a rudimentary operating system they named Unics, as a pun on Multics. Somehow, the spelling of the name became Unix.
As word of their work spread and interest grew, Ritchie and Thompson made copies of Unix freely available to programmers around the world. These programmers revised and improved Unix, sending word of their changes back to Ritchie and Thompson, who incorporated the best such changes in their version of Unix. Eventually, several Unix variants arose.
What Ritchie and Thompson had begun in a distinctly non-commercial fashion ended up spawning several legal squabbles. When AT&T grasped the commercial potential of Unix, it claimed Unix as its intellectual property and began charging a hefty license fee to those who wanted to use its Unix. Soon, others who had implemented Unix-like operating systems were distributing licenses only for a fee. Understandably, those who had contributed improvements to Unix considered it unfair for AT&T and others to appropriate the fruits of their labors. This concern for profit was unlike the democratic, share-and-share-alike spirit of the early days of Unix."
So two geeks wanted to play games and created C and unix so they could. More geeks contributed to unix then corperations hijacked it...
makes you think thou if GPL had been in place would SCO be battling it out in court trying to prove ownership and copyrights in Linux for things supposedly taken from unix which was taken from the free software world in the first place.
when you can look back and see how unix was taken from the people who developed it. It suddenly becomes clear why the GPL is important and needed.
I mean as programmers we learn from our peers and then what hoard our little knowledge pile and claim it as our own...
click on the link and read
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
So I think this draft of the GPL v3 is a little badly-worded, because it mentions DRM -- a specific technology for restricting what users can do with their own computers. But it is not the final document, so there is a chance to make it clearer that the end is what counts, and restricting what can be done with a computer is what is not on. In the specific case of a personal computer, the User and Administrator are the same person; shared machines, particularly where there is a customer-supplier relationship, are in practice a different case. However, I don't doubt that, with careful wording, the situation can be got around: just making reference to a user of a computer and not the User is a start. The administrator is by definition a user; so the rule just needs to be as long as a user can perform certain acts. Then, as long as the Administrator can perform those acts {which, in a given situation, might not be appropriate for ordinary Users to be allowed to perform -- such as reading other people's e-mail on a shared server}, the requirement is satisfied. Is that weaselling out? Maybe, but that's the purpose of releasing a draft for comment.
You also have to remember that Stallman is a man of very high ideals: men and women with a similarly-fanatical devotion to God to RMS's devotion to Free Software go on to become monks and nuns. He would not compromise his own ideals directly by making it easy for administrators to restrict users' use of a computer; but so strong was his belief in Freedom that he allowed any of us to change his work to do the very thing he opposed.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Basicly, they are saying in GPL v3 that if you release code under GPL v3, you cannot sue someone else for looking at your code and using either the code or the information to read, write, encode, decode, encrypt, decrypt or otherwise work with the data files your code works with.
Meanwhile, a large number of sites, including the popular search engine Google, have been defaced by hackers claiming to come from a team called Micros^H^H^H^H^Hammon.
First, kudo's on your careful quoting, you just don't see that enough on slashdot. Secondly, I guess we're in broad agreement on the key points: total bans against a technology per se is dumb and the GPL v.3 needs to be better worded.
I think though I can imagine non-evil situations where it would be good for even an Administrator to accept 3rd party restrictions on data: for example, a distributed computing project where the 3rd party project mangers wanted to guard against data tampering or duplication. SETI@home solved this problem in other ways, for example by leveraging its huge user base to process blocks multiple times, but you could imagine that DRM might help with that. Or giving researchers limited access to medical data: after an ethics committe approves their project, a research team could be sent a DRM'd copy of $Hospitals complete medical records to data mine, but they can't pass those records on to another unapproved group, except in piecemeal fashion, or perhaps access could be automatically expired at the end of the investigation, reducing the likliehood of a privacy leak.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that even trying to specify non-technical effects and ends might prove horribly difficult and perhaps better suited to other forums, such as legislative efforts, than the GPL.
I think it's also worth noting that at CES, there was a panel of congressmen discussing digital rights issues, all of whom happened to be Republicans, and all of whom seemed to agree the DMCA was flawed, in that it didn't accomodate Fair Use properly, and were thinking about legislative changes, so the GPL v.3 language may end up being moot anyway.
"Just once, I'd like to meet an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets." -- The Brigadier, Dr. Who
or use invented pronouns like 'ey can disable it if ey wants'.
Debian is planning to fire back about this. The GNU FDL already has this problem, and their developers will be voting soon on a project-wide statement to include a statement that this makes a licence non-free.
I certainly hope that GPLv3 doesn't disagree with the Debian Free Software Guidelines.
OK, so I didn't read the article. Debian isn't dealing with this issue, but if it's as the article says, then it's going to be even more blatantly non-DFSG free.
Yuck.
From my understanding of it this GPL3 draft wouldn't prevent DRM technology from using it as a license. As an example of what it could potentially do is make it so that if someone uses GPL'd code to apply CSS encryption to a DVD then that DVD is automatically free, and clear of DMCA restrictions on trying to play back the content on that DVD regardless of if the key was given to play it back.
I'm not sure that the GPL could prevent creation of code that locks content without also preventing code that implements essential encryption technologies such as GPG, SSH, SSL etc. It just ensures that you cannot prosecute someone for trying to unlock that content if that content was locked using GPL'd code.
DRM is nothing more than providing a secure time-dependant keyfile for accessing an encrypted container, the same as TrueCrypt.org does, or the commercial DriveCrypt product. Such encryption has valid uses without limiting the user/owner's access to the information.
It seems to me that by specifically forbidding the use of GPL software with DRM technologies that we're imposing a limit on the what the software can be used for. This is distinct from prior versions of the GPL, which specifically were designed to prevent such limitations.
I for one would stick to GPLv2. I agree that the *AA plans for DRM are draconian and should be illegal, but that's an abuse of a perfectly useful technology and we shouldn't ban technology just because it can be abused.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
This new development is dripping with irony, as the GPL itself is DRM. It legally dictates what I can and can't do with the software.
a) Most other licenses don't have the GPL's requirement on distributing source with binaries. Some do, sure. That isn't necessarily a problem for some things, but GNU reactionaries tend to be well-versed in Stallman's rhetoric, and unyielding in their entirely autonomic refusal to use anything without said requirement.
b) The aforementioned reflexively pro-GNU sheep comprise a fairly large demographic of Linux's userbase, which is exactly what Stallman wanted. The man may not display much *wisdom*, but he is intelligent in the sense that it's the above element (copyleft) that gives it the viral element and causes it to be self-perpetuating. Hence, it would be very difficult to get rid of from an entrenched base.
If Stallman goes increasingly rogue, the only real alternative is going to be to migrate to one of the BSDs, and to come up with a new source-with-binaries license which doesn't however try and have Stallman's onerous demands to comply with his worldview.
is that richard stallman would have to take a bath to show up in court. that ain't gonna happen people.
DRM is totally incompatible with free software.
Hell, it is incompatible with freedom of speech too.
The only way you can stop streams of bits from being freely copied around is a combination of legislation and cryptographic hardware (treacherous computing) which (assuming it would work) effectively would take the flow of ALL information into the control of some entity (the guys who have the root keys to the world trusted hardware).. probably a private, unelected entity that national jurisdictions would have a lot of trouble controlling.
A real "trusted computing" environment, on the other hand, where the owner of the computer can choose which software is allowed to run and enforce it with digitally signed binaries verified by hardware, is just good security. The GPL3 draft does not stop anyone from doing this.
Look closer, and you find that the deeper principle of capitalism as codified by common law (that is the natural evolution of law according to the rule of precident, rather than industry lobbies), is far closer to a principle of maximum freedom, than the application of an axiomatic set of rules.
Additional to this, it is worth noting why "fair use" rights exist in law: real value, and freedom is won, in particular by creating derivative works. The restriction of rights that is property can create an incentive, but also creates restrictions, that impede the creation of derivative works in particular. The creation of "intellectual property" clearly has costs and gains to freedom, and in particular to the creative freedom that is the root of the creation of wealth, with is a far vaster concept than money (in truth, the real wealth will be more than the money wealth, for that "imbalance" is what causes the trade to be made in the first place). Inventment selects ideas to build on; it is our creativity that causes them to be. To undermine creativity so as to provide "an incentive" is to get things back-to-front.
Personal use is just the tip of the iceburg. Furthermore, you don't get that companies simply don't want to provide fair use. It gets in the way of the greater plan to deny the user as much property as possible, so as to extract more of the value that would otherwise accrue to the customer by eg. having the file in several formats, or playable after a licence runs out. If fair use can be undermined by DRM "so much the better!"
I agree that we already have limited rights of ownership, but the principle that underlies law and practice should still be that of maximum freedom, that is: allowing the right degree of property and enforcement, so that positive freedom (incentive) and negative freedom (lack of obstruction) are in balance. As long as there remains profit in production, negative freedom is worth having. What's more, it's not worth trading freedom so as to ensure the security of the creation of wealth beyond a certain point. Besides, as you must be well aware, the connection between the abuse of freedom through copyright infringement, and the loss of income ot artists is tenuous. It might affect the income flowing to music companies, though, but there are evolving far more efficient distribution mechanisms, that can give the artists more 'cake' in absolute terms, even though the whole cake is smaller. Think of the savings in eliminating wasteful administration!
No. The real issue is that of maintaining old business methods and practices. One that will keep certain sectors of industry in business, rather than protecting the creative output that is the economic purpose of these companies. The entire argument about "capitalism" and "communism" is a smokescreen for a far more old-fashioned and tradition argument: the special pleading of outdated industries against forces that threaten to displace then, which require convenient restrictions of freedom.
Wikileaks, no DNS
Now a JE!
Wikileaks, no DNS