Anarchism FAQ?! WTF?...

[Eric Dunbar]

On 14/02/07, Jan Claeys <lists at janc.be> wrote:
> On di, 2007-02-13 at 22:11 -0500, Eric Dunbar wrote:
> > As for the distinction between IP prosecutions and political
> > PERSECUTION -- I think that's a fairly self-evident comparison. The
> > one is trivial and relates to REASONABLE legal limits and the rule of
> > law within the confines of human rights and freedoms protections [1]
> > whereas the other is subject arbitrary detention without the
> > protection of law operating within the confines of strong human rights
> > and freedoms protections.
>
> Unfortunately those "political" laws exist, and not only in countries
> with a non-democratic government.
> E.g. including a package that contains the text of "Mein Kampf" could
> result in the Ubuntu package archives to be blocked for German users.

In all likelihood it would not be blocked for those users. Oftentimes
the prohibition of Mein Kampf is in the context of sales and/or in the
promotion of hatred or of war. Also, the consideration there is that
there arguably quite legitimate given the history of those materials.
Plus, people in these situations are protected by strong due process
laws.

Freedom of expression is not absolute!

> > [1] However much one may disagree with IP rights and protections,
> > GNU/BSD/whatever your OSS poison may be COULD NOT EXIST without strong
> > IP rights protection -- what would prevent a company from co-opting a
> > GNU-protected program and never releasing the code if users could
> > legally and ethically decide to ignore IP rights.
>
> Most people think "IP laws" like the DMCA & EUCD are quite unreasonable,
> but we don't include libdvdcss2 because they exist...

I suspect "most" is not an accurate description. Whatever the faults
of DMCA and EUCD, the flipside is also the case. Without strong IP and
copy right protection the GNU GPL would not be enforceable either.

> I _don't_ want to exclude packages for those reasons though; but we
> might have to host such packages only in countries with less insane
> laws.  That would maybe also allow the Ubuntu project to e.g. provide
> things like the DVD CSS decryption library in some countries...

I find such things as DVD protection problematic when it prevents the
owners of the physical DVD (for e.g.) from making legitimate backups
(in the absence of an inexpensive way for individuals to request
replacements if their DVD is damaged). However, much (and I do not at
all hesitate in saying this) of the DVD "copying" efforts are not for
fair use and for backing up but for straight up piracy. Yes, it's a
three way battle -- pirates - legitimate users - production companies.
Pirates screw regular users by screwing the production companies.
Anyway, however much I find the DMCA (and its ilk) distasteful, in the
absence of a perfectly lawful society or an alternative distribution
mechanism for the production companies, it is a necessary evil.
Unfortunately, as with every necessary evil, other legitimate
enterprises get caught in the middle (e.g. divulging unfixed security
flaws).