[ale] Redhat patch and DMCA

[tfreeman at intel.digichem.net]

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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