Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote:
Brian M Hunt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
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."
That isn't DFSG-free, no.
To properly ground that in the DFSG: According to DFSG #3, in general,
restrictions on modification are not free. While certain types of
restrictions are allowed by other clauses (such as not allowing
modifications that share the same name as the original work, only
allowing derivative patches), and tradition allows certain other
restrictions (such as requiring derivative works to maintain warranty
disclaimers), this addition goes well beyond that.
It is arguably in violation of DFSG #6, since it discriminates against
those who wish to modify the software for research or critical purposes.
(Such as someone looking for security bugs in another DRM piece may
want to throw very large buffers into the datastream)
I'd also say that it is almost a reverse of DFSG #9, in that actions
taken with respect to another work's license (the DRM-protected work)
can terminate your license for the DRMreader work. It's almost as if
DRMreader is contaminated by the license for all DRM-protected work.
Finally, permission to "use" the work (particularly referring to
computer software) is not regulated by copyright law, so it can not be
revoked by a violation of the copyright license.
--Joe
