The DigitalMillenniumCopyrightAct (DMCA) http://www.hrrc.org/html/DMCA-leg-hist.html A thought-provoking comment by MichaelSwaine can be found here: http://webreview.com/swaine/2002/02_04_02.shtml ''Link above is broken (shame on you, DrDobbs! ...of all sites to do that...) but the article was worth tracking down: http://www.drdobbs.com/legal-and-binding/184413233'' --CraigEverett ---- '''AlanCox E-mail''' The Digital Millennium Copyright act is an Evil law set to stop mp3 sharing, etc. It, however, does more than that. Have a look at this: ''List: linux-kernel'' ''Subject: Linux 2.2.20pre10'' ''From: Alan Cox '' ''Date: 2001-10-22 10:21:49'' ''Things took a bit longer than intended with various security fixes needing to be done. If this tree tests out ok, it will be 2.2.20'' ''2.2.20pre11'' ''o Security fixes'' '' | Details censored in accordance with the US DMCA'' (http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=100374609914587&w=2) As you can see, the DMCA is censoring people from saying what they fixed. Can anyone say NineteenEightyFour? ''I am still trying to figure out why the DMCA stopped Mr Cox from publishing details of security fixes. An explanation, rather than a 'nudge-nudge' quote and accompanying lambasting would be nice. Mind you, I don't care much for the DMCA myself, but I still don't understand this whole bit.'' It's the whole thing with people being sued recently for publishing information describing security vulnerabilities in commercial software ("assisting the circumnvention of copyright-protection mechanisms"). The details presumably affect some commercial software in some way... or possibly DVD drives. I suppose looking at the diff is the only way to know. I wouldn't be surprised if AlanCox really had no reason to be afraid, but was just being sarcastic to make a political point. ''There was more than sarcasm behind Cox's action. See http://kerneltrap.org/article.php?sid=343 for some of the mails he wrote after the changelog. Alan also resigned from the Usenix ALS committee as a reaction to the arrest of DmitrySklyarov: http://lwn.net/2001/0726/a/alan-quits-als.php3''. Since I could not view the kerneltrap link, I tried digging up one that works. I dunno why the above link does not work, and I am not sure what article it is supposed to be pointing to, but here is a link that WorksForMe: http://kerneltrap.org/node/view/9 ---- For anyone who want to look at the dots and comma's, I eventually found the full text of the act here: http://www.legalarchiver.org/dmca.htm ---- CategoryEvil