RE: Worst Case Scenarios - SPI and Lawsuits

> Ok. But what if that non-profit gets sued (say as a result of
> some large
> corporation's dislike of certain multimedia software on
> http.us.debian.org
> or a dangerous cult group with a vendetta and a friendly judge) and a
> judgement gets entered for some huge amount of money. Since
> the domains are
> the non-profit's only asset, wouldn't they get sold at a
> bankrupcy auction?
> We haven't solved the problem, but rather just moved it...

It depends on who is being sued. If non-profit 1 is doing the bad stuff, and non-profit 2 owns the domain names and licenses them to non-profit 1, then non-profit 2 is not at risk, unless it was involved with the bad stuff. Put another way, if I own a domain name and license it to you, and you decide to slander someone on the website that the domain name points to, I can't be sued for that unless I asked you to slander them, or made slandering them a condition of use for the domain name.

I would also recommend avoiding doing stuff that will get you sued. SPI and Debian have more important things to do than be a test case for a dispute over intellectual property rights. I'd like to see Linux put a serious hurt on Microsoft, among other things. If you are aware of anything that is going to cause a large company heartburn, let me know so we can decide whether it might result in the kind of lawsuit that SPI wants to avoid.

For example, Linux no doubt is a major concern to Microsoft, but doing Linux in general is safe unless you start incorporating something that Microsoft has a patent on. I don't recommend doing a patent clearance search on Linux, but if you are aware of something significant, let me know. We all know that the copyright owners of audiovisual content are very concerned about their ability to protect their assets - I would recommend that SPI/Debian have stated policies that do not cause those
copyright owners concern. For example (and I do mean example, I am not trying to characterize anyone's views on the matter), a policy that says it should be okay to use DVD technology as long as patent or copyright rights are not being infringed or violated is not going to alarm them, whereas a policy that says that DVD patent rights and audiovisual content copyrights are morally wrong and that we have a duty to infringe and violate them is certain to draw their attention and fire. Although
SPI has the following corporate goals:

To create, form and establish an organization to formulate and provide software systems for use by the general public without charge;
to teach and train individuals regarding the use and application of such systems;
to hold classes, seminars and workshops concerning the proper use and application of computers and computer systems;
to endeavor to monitor and improve the quality of currently existing publicly available software;
to support, educate and promote the creation and development of software available to the general public;
to provide information and education regarding the proper use of the Internet;
to organize, hold and conduct meetings, discussions, and forums on contemporary issues concerning the use of computers and computer software;
to foster, promote and increase access to software systems available to the general public;
to solicit, collect and otherwise raise money and to expend such funds in furtherance of the goals and activities of the corporation;
to aid, assist, cooperate, co-sponsor and otherwise engage in concerted action with private, educational and governmental organizations and associations on all issues and matters concerning the use of computers and computer software;
and generally
to endeavor to promote, foster and advance interest in computers and computer software by all available means and methods.

I believe that we should make certain that the positions SPI advocates allow it to pursue those goals and avoid disputes that will endanger the existence of SPI, even if being involved in such a dispute might further one or more of these goals.

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On Fri, Jan 11, 2002 at 09:57:00AM -0600, Rourk, Chris wrote:
>
> I would also recommend avoiding doing stuff that will get you sued. SPI
> and Debian have more important things to do than be a test case for a
> dispute over intellectual property rights.

Surely this is a prudent policy. But we can't take it too far. Today we're
omitting sofware DVD players because end users might use them to infringe
copyright or modify them into "circumvention devices." Will we be dropping
useful things like p2p clients, other compressed audio/video players, GNU
fileutils, and GDB tomorrow?

I don't want to see us being so paranoid about getting sued that we don't do
our job of providing a complete system of quality Free Software that's
usable for both software engineering and day-to-day personal computing
tasks.

> I'd like to see Linux put a
> serious hurt on Microsoft, among other things. If you are aware of
> anything that is going to cause a large company heartburn, let me know so
> we can decide whether it might result in the kind of lawsuit that SPI
> wants to avoid.
>

There's hundreds of such packages in Debian.

Which is why I'm concerned about preemptive action to protect the continued
operation of Debian should SPI get sued. I'm not advocating this as a means
to allow Debian to recklessly disregard the law, but rather as a means to
add a margin of safety if and when we ever decide to stand our ground on a
particular issue.

I know there's plenty of people (myself included) who would donate a machine
or two if all of Debian's hardware got sold at a SPI bankrupcy auction. But
problems like losing a domain name are a lot more difficult to solve.
Immagine the mess that would result if a hostile third party suddenly became
copyright proprietor for parts of Debian and started sending DMCA notices to
mirror sites and so on...

--
Brian Ristuccia
brian(at)ristuccia(dot)com
bristucc(at)cs(dot)uml(dot)edu

On Fri, Jan 11, 2002 at 12:36:43PM -0500, Brian Ristuccia wrote:
> Surely this is a prudent policy. But we can't take it too far. Today we're
> omitting sofware DVD players because end users might use them to infringe
> copyright or modify them into "circumvention devices."

We are doing no such thing. For a start, there's
pool/main/x/xine/xine_0.4.3.orig.tar.gz
in main, on ftp-master. What we are doing is refraining from distributing
software that appears to come directly under the provisions for a
circumvention device, without need of any modification at all.

Regards,
aj

--
Anthony Towns <aj(at)humbug(dot)org(dot)au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred.

The daffodils are coming. Are you?
linux.conf.au, February 2002, Brisbane, Australia
--- http://linux.conf.au/

On Sat, Jan 12, 2002 at 12:14:01PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 11, 2002 at 12:36:43PM -0500, Brian Ristuccia wrote:
> > Surely this is a prudent policy. But we can't take it too far. Today we're
> > omitting sofware DVD players because end users might use them to infringe
> > copyright or modify them into "circumvention devices."
>
> We are doing no such thing. For a start, there's
> pool/main/x/xine/xine_0.4.3.orig.tar.gz
> in main, on ftp-master.
>

That version of Xine plays very few DVD videos because it doesn't understand
CSS.

> What we are doing is refraining from distributing
> software that appears to come directly under the provisions for a
> circumvention device, without need of any modification at all.
>

Last time I experimented with it, even CSS enabled versions of Xine wouldn't
make unencrypted copies of DVD videos. Calling the CSS playback capability
in Xine a circumvention device is a stretch.

I agree that we shouldn't distribute things like DeCSS. Even ignoring the
fact that distributing proprietary 'doze software is outside the scope of
Debian, enough folks have received nasty lawyer letters over it that we can
be pretty sure we'll receive one too. I agree that we should think twice
about distributing software that causes nasty threat letters to pour in.

However, the videolan folks have yet to receive any nasty lawyer letters at
all about their CSS capable DVD player, from which the CSS support in Ogle
and Xine are all derived.

--
Brian Ristuccia
brian(at)ristuccia(dot)com
bristucc(at)cs(dot)uml(dot)edu