DRM is a bit of a red herring. [LWN.net]

DRM is a bit of a red herring.

Posted Feb 12, 2007 2:57 UTC (Mon) by mmarq (guest, #2332)
In reply to: DRM is a bit of a red herring. by drag
Parent article: Recommendation: no GPLv3 for Solaris

"" In other words it's against the license to disable functionality if it detects modified code. In the GPlv3 draft they gave two examples, one example was online services. ""

Confess i havent read those. But it dosent. At least from the client side, from that TIVO box it never will. If you have only somehow unrestricted acess to Online Services, you will never have acess problems from your modified TIVO box.

GPL v3 can say that no license will hold, if the covered code is used to restrict functionality upon modification.

But nevertheless i cant see how the GPL can impose legally on Online Services Providers an authentication method. If those acesses require a token in the form of a DRM checksum, simply by modifying the code it will generate a different checksum... TIVO will say that is not their fault... i dont know but it seems complicated...

Specialy because that DRM token restricting funcionality, will not be most probably generated from any v3 covered code, but from the BIOS level. Watch next bios capable of playing online games while you load an online OS ftp://download.intel.com/technology/efi/docs/pdfs/IDF04li...

DRM is not about security, is about control, and protected by the DMCA. If that security BS message is passed sooner or later there will be huge FUD campaingns stating that because all the source code must be available, GPLv2 or V3 makes systems easely crackables, in fouling an Online Service, by any expert "kid".

In the general matter i'm on the side of FSF and RMS, but i belive the rug has been pulled out off their feet on this, and i cant see clearly how they gonna prevent this legally by means of a licence !...

That is why i sugest the provision of making those DRM features turn off upon user whish, that is, mandatory as an optional feature because v3 holds also for every "online" binary covered... but would that be DMCA legal ?... and inclusion of LinuxBIOS as an integral part of a Linux System... would vendors buy it ?

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DRM is a bit of a red herring.

Posted Feb 12, 2007 17:37 UTC (Mon) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

"""GPL v3 can say that no license will hold, if the covered code is used to restrict functionality upon modification.

I don't understand everything your aiming at.

But if you want to use GPLv3 in a machine you want to sell to people that you want to impliment DRM then bypassing the userland and going straight to firmware is a perfectly valid way to do it and it wouldn't conflict with the GPLv3. Also running non-GPlv3 code along side GPlv3 code in order to impliment DRM is valid also.

The goal of the GPlv3 here isn't to eliminate DRM or make GPlv3 software incompatable with DRM, it's just to make sure that people don't use DRM to circumvent the GPL license and limit 'four freedoms' that are suppose to be garrenteed for Free software.

As long as a paticular form of DRM does not require that software be unmodifiable to work then there isn't any problem with it being used with GPLv3 as far as the license goes.

DRM is a bit of a red herring.

Posted Feb 12, 2007 23:50 UTC (Mon) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link]

"" I don't understand everything your aiming at. ""

.-Means tivoization will continue

.-It will be possible to disable functionality, if modified code is detected, most notorious on Online services, because those most logicly, not implementing the specific restrictions by using GPLv3 code, are not bond to the distribution licence terms... IANAL, but it seems logic to me.

But though, im getting confused myself. 3 pertinent questions arise on these tivoization and functionality clause:

Why isnt installing or replacing a binary program, or a binary derivative (plugin, library...) also be considered a modification upon the original program, which must be allowed to run ?

Just following the precedent question here providing key for "in sito" compilation and signature is completely wortless, as is i belive, transfer that key and source code to a 3th capable part without transfering the machine which that key is exclusively attributed ?