I'm opposed to software patents as much as any European/. reader is, but I think there would probably be more of an impact in the EU if The Register were to close its website or at least put up a notice like this one.
Sorry if I wasn't clear. You aren't using your private key to send me e-mail. You are using my public key to sign the e-mail. In the system I describe, there are no secrets. Anything that is a secret, that gets you onto the "in" list will just create a black market.
Actually, I want incoming mail signed with the sender's private key so I KNOW who sent it. I can then trash everything that I can't verify from my "public key ring". Anyone can obtain my public key from the keyservers it's on... but only those having private keys that correspond to a public key on my ring can send me mail without getting filtered. Simple as that.
As for new legitimate correspondents, well, unidentifiable mail can go into a folder labelled "Unverified"... I can check the contents of that folder for false positives and pull the appropriate public key for the new correspondent from the keyserver.
Simple system, no challenge/response test... and impenetrable by spammers.
I was under the impression that the only way that publishing a "trade secret" was wrong was if the owner had entrusted you with it and you disclosed it.
I cannot see how Brunner can be found liable for publishing the DVDCCA's "trade secrets" when Johanssen's code was independently developed in a reverse engineering environment even more stringent than the classic "clean room." I may be incorrect on the facts, but as I understand the Norwegian case, Johanssen did not dismantle his DVD player, download the ROMs and then disassemble the code. Most of what he did involved examining the data on the disk and trying to find the decryption key by means of quasi-brute-force cracking.
I see no violation of "trade secrets" here primarily because neither Johanssen nor Brunner were ever entrusted with the "secret" by the DVDCCA in the first place. Johanssen discovered it by independent reverse engineering, which the US Supreme Court has already determined to be protected as "fair use."
I wasn't around at the time, but from what I read, Adolf Hitler's government certainly wasn't "instable"... until the United States kicked his ass.
You are right, but the government of the Weimar Republic that preceded Hitler's rise to power most definitely WAS unstable. It was also run on an economically unsound set of "progressive" fiscal policies that resulted in the "classic" case of hyperinflation (it's cited as such in almost every macroeconomics text I've ever seen). A similar situation existed in Italy at about the same time. In short, if I understand the point to which you are responding, Hitler and Mussolini were the "populist leaders with dangerous agendas" that came to power as a result of the chaos brought about by their unstable predecessor governments.
But, see, my logical argument is: if there's restrictions places on e-mail, then what's to stop people from silencing me using these restrictions? Suppose I send out e-mails from time to time to various people I have not talked to before but have seen online because I think they might be interested in my band.
I fail to detect any "restrictions" in the Louisiana statute. What I see is a "truth in labeling" law that requires specific wording in the subject line of a narrowly defined class of unsolicited commercial e-mail messages. All this law will do is make it easier for the spam recipient to filter the e-mail into the bit bucket automatically. It doesn't even help conserve bandwidth... all it does is allow an e-mail user to say, "I don't want to see that on my screen."
A "restriction" on the content of an e-mail message would quickly run afoul of the First Amendment to the Federal Constitution and (I am guessing here) the Louisiana Constitution because it would be a "prior restraint" (term of art) on the content of speech. Even though "commercial speech" (advertising) is not granted the same degree of protection as political and artistic speech are, prior restraints on the content of ANY speech are presumed to be unconstitutional unless they meet very narrowly drawn rules. Granted, the rules are somewhat easier to satisfy for commercial speech but they still have to be met if the restriction is to live.
In short, I don't see what your problem with this law is. Just as the on/off switch and the channel selector allows you to determine what comes into your house from the broadcasters/cable companies, this law allows internet users to control what does and does not appear in their in-boxes. I think this is a GOOD law (which surprises me since it's coming from Louisiana) even though enforcement will be difficult and probably sporadic.
They do however claim to have a contract with IBM that prevents IBM from doing some things (unspecified ones!) that IBM then went ahead and did anyway.
Don't you mean...
that IBM then allegedly went ahead and did anyway... ?
Oh yes... I would DEFINITELY recommend industrial explosion-proof keyboards.
Ether is pretty much out of fashi9on as an anesthetic, but there are MANY other inflammable/explosive-vapor substances scattered all over a hospital. In fact, I would be surprised if one of the regulatory bodies governing hospitals didn't require that the entire system be explosion-proof (keyboard, mouse, monitor AND system unit).
Of course an added benefit of using an explosion-proof system is that any system that is vapor-tight is going to be inherently watertight so you can just hose it down to get rid of the goo then apply high-power short wavelength UV to sterilize.
Are you sure email follows the 'Current Resident' labelling? I see it more like a cell phone number. Your email is protected by a password (at some level), so it would be safe to assume nobody else would read it.
I go along with the 'Current Resident' model for resolving the legalities of this question. My plaintext e-mail is NOT protected by a password, my POP3 mailbox IS so protected. If I want the MAIL itself protected by a password, I should send it encrypted (privacy assured) and signed (authenticity assured).
Well, now, let's try correcting your misconceptions about the nature of "free software"...
Quoth the poster:
It's constantly amazing to me too how many of the Gnu-Uber-Alles folks don't really understand that they are [placing their work in the public domain]...
Hold on a minute... free software, whether GPL, BSD License, Artistic License or whatever, is NOT public domain IP. The term "public domain" refers to works that are UNOWNED. The fact that a piece of software is released under ANY license takes it out of the public domain by definition. It is a copyrighted work just like any proprietary software package is and the license defines the scope of the permissions the author gives to you when he releases it.
and can not reasonably expect anything in return. Not a salary, not an occasional trip, not even acknowledgement. [Public means public],...
and blue means blue (IOW, using self-reference in an argument means nothing), but "free software" doews NOT mean "public domain." If all the FSF was promoting was public domain software, there would be no NEED for the GPL.
... you can't expect jack in return. Those are the terms you choose when you use the GPL!
I don't believe anybody has said "the world owes FOSS developers a living... " If they did, I must have missed it, but overall I agree with your statement. The primary reward one is entitled to for working on an FOSS project is intangible. If Red Hat hires you to work on Linux 8/5, that's gravy.
Feeling otherwise really is just feeling proprietary, like the fruits of your work is your property and you can expect something in return.
If I write software and publish it (for free or otherwise) under a license of ANY kind you better believe that it's my property. That's explicitly stated in the "Title block" that good programming practice requires me to put at the top of each function I code up. When I type "Copyright <ME>, <YEAR> that has as much legal effect as a cattle rancher branding his newborn calves.
Sorry, that's not what the GPL is about, the GPL is about giving up any control you have over how the result is used or how (or whether) you are compensated (beyond the GPL).
You apparently have not read ANY of the FSF's position papers on the politics and philosophy of the GPL and the Free Software Movement. The GPL exists to allow people who WANT to develop software and give it away to do so without fear of some corporation snapping it up, including it a closed-source product (in essence stealing their work without compensation) and making money off of it. The GPL does not require you to release your code for free or even to release it at all! (I am talking about original code here, NOT modified code) It specifies that anyone to whom you choose to release it will have the write to redistribute, modify, copy, etc. the code and if they choose to distribute the original code and/or any modifications they may have made, then they MUST do so under the GPL. The GPL exists to protect the rights of creators to determine the fate of their work.
The "[publicdom (the grammar fairy just died)]" isn't for the creator of the new work, [it]
You are correct sir!... but you keep forgetting that licensed software is NOT public domain software. If you think otherwise, just check up on the record of enforcement of the GPL here, and here. The
Once the judgment becomes final and non-appealable, you get the clerk of the court to issue you a Writ of Execution on the judgment, then take that to the Constable for the precinct in which the company's offices are located. The Writ will cost you about $15 and the Constable's service fee will probably be somewhere around $50.00. The Constable will serve the writ and either bring back cash or seized property, which will then be sold at auction and you get your money from the Constable.
Actually, the Supreme Court's power to review and declare an act of Congress unconstitutional rests solely on the case of Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (Feb. 24, 1803), and, since it is based on case law, it is the purest form of a common-law rule. The Constution may establish the Supreme Court as an appeals court, but it says NOTHING about a power of constitutional review of legislative acts.
I no longer practice law, but don't try to argue law with a lawyer, you dom't stand a chance of winning unless you are also a lawyer.
Maybe it's just time for the US to move to get rid of this common law nonsense and assume legislation as the sole source of law.
And just who <COUGH!>CBDTPA</COUGH!> will oversee <COUGH!>DMCA</COUGH!> the legislature? <COUGH!>SBCTEA</COUGH!>
Eliminating the common law system would allow Congress and the Executive Branch free rein to trample our rights because doing so would eliminate the only one of the "checks & balances" with the power to declare a statute, executive order or other official act unconstitutional. Just how much do you trust your elected representatives to represent your interests over those of the large corporations who have the money to pay LARGE bribes^H^H^H^H^H^H"campaign contributions" into the "reelection" kitty.
Fragging refers to killing one's opponent in the first person shooter doom. It might have come out before that or might be an old military term but Doom was where I was exposed to that term.
Fragging came from the method whereby disaffected troops in Viet Nam rid themselves of officers with whom they had a MAJOR problem. You just rolled a FRAGmentation grenade into his hooch in the middle of the night.
Those of us who wore green suits and little metal bars during that era don't care too much for the term.
I mean you'd think someone on slashdot had paid for it before. They have much more to gain, and little to lose. They'll drum up business no matter what you, or Linus, think.
You forgot your </i> tag after the quote, but that's not the point of my responding to your flamebait instead of modding you down. Modding down stifles discussion, while responding stimulates it.
I have official boxed sets of several Linux distributions. I pay for them with my employers' money in order to support free software companies. (I'm a *n*x admin at a large university). My employer supports me in this practice. However, in truth, when I install a new Linux box, I boot up from the CD and install the distro over the 'net so that it comes up with the most up-to-date packages already installed.
That being said, I've never bought a SCO (nee Caldera) distro because I've never thought they had anything to offer over and above the base Debian distro they built from. Their recent behavior has put me in the frame of mind that even if they DID offer a significant improvement over the base Debian distro I would not buy their product, so, yeah, there ARE slashdotters who pay for Linux and who will NOT ever buy from SCO as a result of this lawsuit.
Well, not quite. It is a VERY strong defensive argument that by "seeking the spotlight" of beauty pageants she has made herself a "public figure." As such she has little in the way of "reasonable expectation of privacy." Ask Gary Hart how THAT plays out in court...
Wow! I guess maybe one guy writing his congressman can make a difference!
Well, I wrote to my State Senator about the Bill here in Texas and got a response like, "I received your e-mail and understand you are opposed to this Bill."
I then wrote to my State Representative, and wound up spending about 20 minutes on the telephone with him explaining just what the Bill was, how unnecessary it was and the damage it would do to the economy of the State by stifling the tech sector. I also talked with him about some of the privacy and civil liberties aspects of the Bill. I think he will oppose the Bill if it ever gets to the House floor.
So yes, one person who can write a well-reasoned e-mail to a Congressman can make a difference. Legislators have to act on hundreds of bills in every session. There is NO way they can be fully informed on the subject matter of every bill they consider. It is absolutely essential that their constituents who have special knowledge in various fields write to them and give them the benefit of that expertise or we will wind up with even MORE bad laws on the books than we currently have.
OTOH, IBM could play a helpless victim, settle with SCO for let's say 10 million (peanuts for them) and then all hell breaks loose for all the other players.
The ambivalence of IBM is frightening, to say the least
I can't BELIEVE you would think that. IBM is going to litigate SCO into subatomic particles. Let me give you the legal meaning of all those so-called "non-responses" in IBM's Answer to SCO's complaint:
"Defendant denies the averments in paragraph... " means "This is false and we can prove it."
"Defendant lacks sufficient information to form a belief... " means "Prove it!"
IBM "Response" is exactly the answer needed. They have admitted everything that is true, they have denied everything that they can prove is untrue, and they have joined issue with SCO on everything else.
There is NO ambivalence in IBM's answer to the complaint. This is going to be VERY ugly for SCO before it's over now that Cravath, Swain and Moore have removed the case to federal court. That's THEIR playground. I would be very surprised if they do NOT move for a change of venue to New York as their next move.
It's "Walton and Johnson," and while they might not be PC, they most certainly ARE CC (type "Houston" in the search box) their lame-ass script won't return the URL of the search result).
Clear Channel owns 8 stations in Houston, every one of which is either the market leader in it's format or the ONLY example of it's format in the city.
... what you're not allowed to do is distribute devices that circumvent...
OR products that are PRIMARILY intended to permit circumvention. A book that provides instructions on how to circumvent a "technical means of protection" is, IMHO, IAAL, no different than selling a modchip until the "Felten issue" is settled.
Personally, I think that both books AND source are protected forms of speech, but Grampa might disagree. (OT sidebar comment: when I was preparing for the Bar exam (back when I thought it was possible for a solo practitioner to make a decent living practicing law within five years of licensure), one of the instructors in the Bar/Bri prep course I took said, "You want to know if something is unconstituional? Go ask your Grampa... if Grampa says it is, then the Supremes will probably agree with him.")
You may not agree with the DCMA, but as for now its the law. If you realy want to fight it you have to do it the legal way, telling people how to do it then saying fuck the dcma isn't the way to go.
Actually, at this juncture, that is the ONLY way to fight it. Congress has been bought and paid for (and we all know that an "honest politician" is one who STAYS bought), so the probability that legislation will seriously change the DMCA's more draconian provisions must be considered vanishingly small. The only REAL hope we have of getting rid of this monstrosity is the rather forlorn hope that a constitutional challenge will make it to the Supreme Court, that certiorari will be granted, and that the statute will be overturned for violating free speech.
I HATE to make it sound that bleak, but, in the immortal words of Paul Harvey "That's the way it is."
Errrmmmm... well, this was sort of the question that Ed Felten tried to get cleared up when he filed for declaratory judgment that his publication of a paper about how he cracked SDMI lead to C&D letters and threats of litigation under the DMCA. Anybody remember that one? Seems to me that I recall Ed's lawsuit was dismissed by the court... so this is STILL a live issue to be settled.
It's also the prime reason that Bruce (Perens) parted company with HP, IIRC. Anybody remember that one?
It IS a pity that someone has to martyr themselves to get these legal questions clarified... I DO hope the EFF (have YOU donated recently?) is ready to stand behind Andrew as he nails himself to the cross of free speech.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm opposed to software patents as much as any European /. reader is, but I think there would probably be more of an impact in the EU if The Register were to close its website or at least put up a notice like this one.
/. close down when The Reg doesn't?
Why should
While it is not shut down, the Debian website has a LARGE statement in support of the protest on it's home page.
I've also noticed that the anjuta website is closed.
Actually, I want incoming mail signed with the sender's private key so I KNOW who sent it. I can then trash everything that I can't verify from my "public key ring". Anyone can obtain my public key from the keyservers it's on
As for new legitimate correspondents, well, unidentifiable mail can go into a folder labelled "Unverified"
Simple system, no challenge/response test
Please don't tell that to my Ultra 10 that is quite happy running GNOME 2.0/Gtk 2.0 on top of Solaris 8.
I imagine any "fit & finish" problems Gtk might have had will quickly become history now that it is an official Sun "supported product."
I was under the impression that the only way that publishing a "trade secret" was wrong was if the owner had entrusted you with it and you disclosed it.
I cannot see how Brunner can be found liable for publishing the DVDCCA's "trade secrets" when Johanssen's code was independently developed in a reverse engineering environment even more stringent than the classic "clean room." I may be incorrect on the facts, but as I understand the Norwegian case, Johanssen did not dismantle his DVD player, download the ROMs and then disassemble the code. Most of what he did involved examining the data on the disk and trying to find the decryption key by means of quasi-brute-force cracking.
I see no violation of "trade secrets" here primarily because neither Johanssen nor Brunner were ever entrusted with the "secret" by the DVDCCA in the first place. Johanssen discovered it by independent reverse engineering, which the US Supreme Court has already determined to be protected as "fair use."
But, then again, I MIGHT be wrong on that.
You are right, but the government of the Weimar Republic that preceded Hitler's rise to power most definitely WAS unstable. It was also run on an economically unsound set of "progressive" fiscal policies that resulted in the "classic" case of hyperinflation (it's cited as such in almost every macroeconomics text I've ever seen). A similar situation existed in Italy at about the same time. In short, if I understand the point to which you are responding, Hitler and Mussolini were the "populist leaders with dangerous agendas" that came to power as a result of the chaos brought about by their unstable predecessor governments.
I fail to detect any "restrictions" in the Louisiana statute. What I see is a "truth in labeling" law that requires specific wording in the subject line of a narrowly defined class of unsolicited commercial e-mail messages. All this law will do is make it easier for the spam recipient to filter the e-mail into the bit bucket automatically. It doesn't even help conserve bandwidth
A "restriction" on the content of an e-mail message would quickly run afoul of the First Amendment to the Federal Constitution and (I am guessing here) the Louisiana Constitution because it would be a "prior restraint" (term of art) on the content of speech. Even though "commercial speech" (advertising) is not granted the same degree of protection as political and artistic speech are, prior restraints on the content of ANY speech are presumed to be unconstitutional unless they meet very narrowly drawn rules. Granted, the rules are somewhat easier to satisfy for commercial speech but they still have to be met if the restriction is to live.
In short, I don't see what your problem with this law is. Just as the on/off switch and the channel selector allows you to determine what comes into your house from the broadcasters/cable companies, this law allows internet users to control what does and does not appear in their in-boxes. I think this is a GOOD law (which surprises me since it's coming from Louisiana) even though enforcement will be difficult and probably sporadic.
Don't you mean
that IBM then allegedly went ahead and did anyway
I could NOT agree more.
Oh yes ... I would DEFINITELY recommend industrial explosion-proof keyboards.
Ether is pretty much out of fashi9on as an anesthetic, but there are MANY other inflammable/explosive-vapor substances scattered all over a hospital. In fact, I would be surprised if one of the regulatory bodies governing hospitals didn't require that the entire system be explosion-proof (keyboard, mouse, monitor AND system unit).
Of course an added benefit of using an explosion-proof system is that any system that is vapor-tight is going to be inherently watertight so you can just hose it down to get rid of the goo then apply high-power short wavelength UV to sterilize.
Just my admittedly inexpert opinion.
I go along with the 'Current Resident' model for resolving the legalities of this question. My plaintext e-mail is NOT protected by a password, my POP3 mailbox IS so protected. If I want the MAIL itself protected by a password, I should send it encrypted (privacy assured) and signed (authenticity assured).
BTW, IAAL
Quoth the poster:
Hold on a minute ... free software, whether GPL, BSD License, Artistic License or whatever, is NOT public domain IP. The term "public domain" refers to works that are UNOWNED. The fact that a piece of software is released under ANY license takes it out of the public domain by definition. It is a copyrighted work just like any proprietary software package is and the license defines the scope of the permissions the author gives to you when he releases it.
and blue means blue (IOW, using self-reference in an argument means nothing), but "free software" doews NOT mean "public domain." If all the FSF was promoting was public domain software, there would be no NEED for the GPL.
I don't believe anybody has said "the world owes FOSS developers a living ... " If they did, I must have missed it, but overall I agree with your statement. The primary reward one is entitled to for working on an FOSS project is intangible. If Red Hat hires you to work on Linux 8/5, that's gravy.
If I write software and publish it (for free or otherwise) under a license of ANY kind you better believe that it's my property. That's explicitly stated in the "Title block" that good programming practice requires me to put at the top of each function I code up. When I type "Copyright <ME>, <YEAR> that has as much legal effect as a cattle rancher branding his newborn calves.
You apparently have not read ANY of the FSF's position papers on the politics and philosophy of the GPL and the Free Software Movement. The GPL exists to allow people who WANT to develop software and give it away to do so without fear of some corporation snapping it up, including it a closed-source product (in essence stealing their work without compensation) and making money off of it. The GPL does not require you to release your code for free or even to release it at all! (I am talking about original code here, NOT modified code) It specifies that anyone to whom you choose to release it will have the write to redistribute, modify, copy, etc. the code and if they choose to distribute the original code and/or any modifications they may have made, then they MUST do so under the GPL. The GPL exists to protect the rights of creators to determine the fate of their work.
You are correct sir! ... but you keep forgetting that licensed software is NOT public domain software. If you think otherwise, just check up on the record of enforcement of the GPL here, and here. The
Once the judgment becomes final and non-appealable, you get the clerk of the court to issue you a Writ of Execution on the judgment, then take that to the Constable for the precinct in which the company's offices are located. The Writ will cost you about $15 and the Constable's service fee will probably be somewhere around $50.00. The Constable will serve the writ and either bring back cash or seized property, which will then be sold at auction and you get your money from the Constable.
That's all there is to it.
BTW. IAAL
Actually, the Supreme Court's power to review and declare an act of Congress unconstitutional rests solely on the case of Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (Feb. 24, 1803), and, since it is based on case law, it is the purest form of a common-law rule. The Constution may establish the Supreme Court as an appeals court, but it says NOTHING about a power of constitutional review of legislative acts.
I no longer practice law, but don't try to argue law with a lawyer, you dom't stand a chance of winning unless you are also a lawyer.
And just who <COUGH!>CBDTPA</COUGH!> will oversee <COUGH!>DMCA</COUGH!> the legislature? <COUGH!>SBCTEA</COUGH!>
Eliminating the common law system would allow Congress and the Executive Branch free rein to trample our rights because doing so would eliminate the only one of the "checks & balances" with the power to declare a statute, executive order or other official act unconstitutional. Just how much do you trust your elected representatives to represent your interests over those of the large corporations who have the money to pay LARGE bribes^H^H^H^H^H^H"campaign contributions" into the "reelection" kitty.
Fragging came from the method whereby disaffected troops in Viet Nam rid themselves of officers with whom they had a MAJOR problem. You just rolled a FRAGmentation grenade into his hooch in the middle of the night.
Those of us who wore green suits and little metal bars during that era don't care too much for the term.
You forgot your </i> tag after the quote, but that's not the point of my responding to your flamebait instead of modding you down. Modding down stifles discussion, while responding stimulates it.
I have official boxed sets of several Linux distributions. I pay for them with my employers' money in order to support free software companies. (I'm a *n*x admin at a large university). My employer supports me in this practice. However, in truth, when I install a new Linux box, I boot up from the CD and install the distro over the 'net so that it comes up with the most up-to-date packages already installed.
That being said, I've never bought a SCO (nee Caldera) distro because I've never thought they had anything to offer over and above the base Debian distro they built from. Their recent behavior has put me in the frame of mind that even if they DID offer a significant improvement over the base Debian distro I would not buy their product, so, yeah, there ARE slashdotters who pay for Linux and who will NOT ever buy from SCO as a result of this lawsuit.
Just my $0.02
Well, not quite. It is a VERY strong defensive argument that by "seeking the spotlight" of beauty pageants she has made herself a "public figure." As such she has little in the way of "reasonable expectation of privacy." Ask Gary Hart how THAT plays out in court
Just my USD0.02
Show your proof that it's false, ... or have I been trolled?
Well, I wrote to my State Senator about the Bill here in Texas and got a response like, "I received your e-mail and understand you are opposed to this Bill."
I then wrote to my State Representative, and wound up spending about 20 minutes on the telephone with him explaining just what the Bill was, how unnecessary it was and the damage it would do to the economy of the State by stifling the tech sector. I also talked with him about some of the privacy and civil liberties aspects of the Bill. I think he will oppose the Bill if it ever gets to the House floor.
So yes, one person who can write a well-reasoned e-mail to a Congressman can make a difference. Legislators have to act on hundreds of bills in every session. There is NO way they can be fully informed on the subject matter of every bill they consider. It is absolutely essential that their constituents who have special knowledge in various fields write to them and give them the benefit of that expertise or we will wind up with even MORE bad laws on the books than we currently have.
I can't BELIEVE you would think that. IBM is going to litigate SCO into subatomic particles. Let me give you the legal meaning of all those so-called "non-responses" in IBM's Answer to SCO's complaint:
"Defendant denies the averments in paragraph
"Defendant lacks sufficient information to form a belief
IBM "Response" is exactly the answer needed. They have admitted everything that is true, they have denied everything that they can prove is untrue, and they have joined issue with SCO on everything else.
There is NO ambivalence in IBM's answer to the complaint. This is going to be VERY ugly for SCO before it's over now that Cravath, Swain and Moore have removed the case to federal court. That's THEIR playground. I would be very surprised if they do NOT move for a change of venue to New York as their next move.
Now it's "Ronson and Johnson"
It's "Walton and Johnson," and while they might not be PC, they most certainly ARE CC (type "Houston" in the search box) their lame-ass script won't return the URL of the search result).
Clear Channel owns 8 stations in Houston, every one of which is either the market leader in it's format or the ONLY example of it's format in the city.
LOVE the sig
OR products that are PRIMARILY intended to permit circumvention. A book that provides instructions on how to circumvent a "technical means of protection" is, IMHO, IAAL, no different than selling a modchip until the "Felten issue" is settled.
Personally, I think that both books AND source are protected forms of speech, but Grampa might disagree. (OT sidebar comment: when I was preparing for the Bar exam (back when I thought it was possible for a solo practitioner to make a decent living practicing law within five years of licensure), one of the instructors in the Bar/Bri prep course I took said, "You want to know if something is unconstituional? Go ask your Grampa
Actually, at this juncture, that is the ONLY way to fight it. Congress has been bought and paid for (and we all know that an "honest politician" is one who STAYS bought), so the probability that legislation will seriously change the DMCA's more draconian provisions must be considered vanishingly small. The only REAL hope we have of getting rid of this monstrosity is the rather forlorn hope that a constitutional challenge will make it to the Supreme Court, that certiorari will be granted, and that the statute will be overturned for violating free speech.
I HATE to make it sound that bleak, but, in the immortal words of Paul Harvey "That's the way it is."
Errrmmmm ... well, this was sort of the question that Ed Felten tried to get cleared up when he filed for declaratory judgment that his publication of a paper about how he cracked SDMI lead to C&D letters and threats of litigation under the DMCA. Anybody remember that one? Seems to me that I recall Ed's lawsuit was dismissed by the court ... so this is STILL a live issue to be settled.
... I DO hope the EFF (have YOU donated recently?) is ready to stand behind Andrew as he nails himself to the cross of free speech.
It's also the prime reason that Bruce (Perens) parted company with HP, IIRC. Anybody remember that one?
It IS a pity that someone has to martyr themselves to get these legal questions clarified
Just my $0.003 ($0.02 adjusted for inflation)