Slashdot Mirror
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 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.
The GPL isn't, actually, a "play nice" style license as such - the entire concept is that it "guarentees freedom," trying to balance the freedoms of both the creator and the user. The Free Software Foundation is about the "right to tinker" (Stallman's words at the GPLv3 release), and that includes the right to tinker with a program's data files.
Stallman is, essentially, an idealist. He wants to save the world - and he seems to honestly believe that allowing DRM to exist would destroy free software. So he's taken a hard-line stance against DRM in the GPLv3.
It's sort of explained in the rational behind Section 3, which I'm just going to quote outright since it's so short:
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
The GPLv3 isn't finalized. The Slashdot blurbs haven't really made this clear, but the current version is a draft. It's allowed to have warts. If you have issues with it, comment on them! The GPLv3 is still a draft. Changes can happen. Get involved. Be heard. It's an open process.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
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
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?
I quit buying iTunes songs because of their DRM. My car CD player will play a disc full of MP3's just fine. I can fit around 12 hours of music on a CD by burning MP3's to it.
Apple's DRM only lets me make a Redbook-audio format CD, thus reducing my CD capacity by almost 90%. All becaues of ARTIFICIAL limitations. I could technically burn it to redbook first, then rerip back to MP3, but that hassle simply isn't worth it.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
When Symbolics, Inc. hired away almost all of his colleagues at the MIT AI Lab and had them make all their extensions to the MIT code proprietary, RMS went on an incredible hacking binge, single-handedly duplicating the work of an entire small company and making all his code free. At his peak, he demonstrated that he could out-code whole teams of world-class experts (as long as we're talking about Lisp coding). The problem is, at the time he hadn't thought of copyleft yet; the Symbolics people could use his code; he could not use their code.
He needed copyleft to be able to compete with proprietary software developers and have a chance of winning. Same deal with Linux.