[ale] Redhat patch and DMCA

[John Wells]

If someone were stupid enough to try and prosecute you, I suspect you'd
never pay the first dime out of your pocket.  The EFF makes a point of
fighting ridiculous law suits such as this.

John

> On Wed, 6 Nov 2002, John Wells wrote:
>
>> Michael,
>>
>> Fight the power.  Read the notes.  If someone ever decided to bring
>> charges against a person for reading those Red Hat notes, it'd be the
>> biggest strike against the DMCA yet, and very convincing grounds for
>> challenging its foundations in a court of law.  Noone will pursue you,
>> because it would force them to acknowledge how silly/sad the DMCA is.
>> I think this was exactly Red Hat's point.
>
> Ok. And how much could this wind up costing me??? I mean above and
> beyond  the possiblility of jail time. The current DOJ seems quite
> willing to  stomp hell all over the Constitution as I understand it, and
> I'm finding  my funds just a little short to pay for lawyering.
>
> Yes, I'm sounding like a cheap, chicken-livered, yellow-belly coward.
> Partly because I am.
>
> OTOH, I rather wish it were otherwise - DMCA and other measures need to
> be  thrown out.
>
>
>>
>> <rage against the machine background music> F the Establishment </rage
>> against the machine background music> ;-p
>>
>> John
>>
>> > I was reading through a Infoworld article and they get
>> > into a kernel patch that redhat released for some
>> > security issue.....but you can't read the release notes
>> > because it may be a breach of the DMCA.  So what does
>> > one do?  Just patch w/o reading the notes?  Couldn't
>> > the descriptiveness of the notes be vague enough to
>> > give those wanting to patch their kernels some
>> > information.  Here's the site I went to to see the
>> > notes but I decided I didn't want to go to jail for 5
>> > years and pay a fine of $500,000.
>> >
>> > http://www.thefreeworld.net/non-US/
>> >
>> > Michael Smith
>> > AIM: MikAtlanta
>> > MSN: MikeAshtonSmith
>> > email: msmith at mikeandmel.com
>> >
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>
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