Sorry folks, I CC'd: -devel instead of -legal. God I hate Reply-To:s :) On Fri, 5 Sep 2003 12:03:59 -0400 David B Harris <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Thu, 04 Sep 2003 21:55:07 -0400 > Richard Stallman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > This clause has a direct effect on all users, > > restricting the use of e.g. encrypted filesystems. > > > > That's a new one on me. I don't think the GFDL restricts > > the use of encrypted filesystems. > > I have mentioned it at least a half-dozen times myself, and at least > once to you explicitly. (I believe you also responded to that mail, > though not addressing the point in question.) > > As Jamin mentions, in section 2: > > "You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading > or further copying of the copies you make or distribute." > > I'll also mention the first half of the sentence of section 4: > > "You may copy and distribute a Modified Version of the Document under > the conditions of sections 2 and 3 above ..." > > Please don't think that I'm quoting that out-of-context. I assume that > anybody who will respond to this message has read the GFDL as fully as I > have, and will instead point out other sections or clauses which render > the above sentence irrelevant (I wasn't able to find any myself, and I > looked quite hard). > > Taken literally (ie: should a copyright holder take a distributor to > court over this point), the clause forbids _anything_ which might > obstruct the reading or futher copying of the copies you make or > distribute. Thus, we may not host the GFDL document on a > password-protected portion of a web site. Nor may we use SSL to transmit > any of the text. Nor may we store any text on an encrypted filesystem. > An anonymous FTP server that requires USER and PASS would also fall into > this category (regardless of whether the USER is "anonymous" or not). > > I've asked a couple of lawyers, and they strongly feel that a case could > be made (though not so clear-cut as the above examples) for copying the > document to a place that's already protected in some form (a $HOME > that's not world-readable for instance, or on a machine that has a > firewall), or distributing the document in a format that may be > extraordinarily well-documented and not patent-encumbered, but for which > the only reader implementation is non-Free. > > To RMS specifically: I have always assumed that this was simply a bug in > the license, but it _has_ been brought up a lot, by myself as well as > others, sometimes in messages you replied to. Now that you've noticed > the point in question, I'm trying to present the rationale for the > conclusion. It's not meant in a combatitive manner, nor is it meant as a > personal attack against yourself. If for whatever reason somebody > interprets as either of the above, I apologise and will correct that > person if they're pointed out to me. >
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