I was contemplating the conundrum of open source digital rights management, and would like some feedback. If someone were to write digital rights software, eg. for downloading from iTunes, could they license it under a free software license like the GPL, with an added clause:
"If the Program is designed to uphold digital rights management pursuant to the distribution of copyrighted material, any modification to the Program to undermine the terms of distribution for that copyright will violate this license. All rights to publish, redistribute, and use the modified Program are revoked upon violation of this clause. Derivative works may not modify this license so as to remove this clause." Similarly, would such a clause violate DFSG? If this cannot satisfy DFSG, what changes are required to make it so? The hyperbole of this obviously leads to all sorts of non-free problems, where authors start contriving arbitrary restrictions. Is there a restriction that can be placed on open source software that prevents modifying digital rights management, and yet still satisfies DFSG? Regards, Brian Hunt
