Patrik Stridvall wrote:
One intresting aspect concerning Wine is the DRM (Digital Rights Management) that Slashdot reported that Microsoft are going to add to Windows.
If we implement it is Wine we are not trying to circumvent it quite the opposite we are trying to to make it possible enforce it. ;-)
Of course a one line patch making a critical function always return TRUE or something might be able to disable it for people that don't like it. :-)
DO IT!
I think we currently have other more important thing to do for Wine 1.0.
What are they going to say, that because you can change the code that you are aiding in circumventing copyright protection.
It is actually much more intresting than that.
Let for arguments sake say that we do it they sue us and the courts rule that it is legal.
In that case if the full implementation is legal what about a partial implementation or a buggy implementation?
If we have a function CheckIfAllowed that are implemented as FIXME("stub"); return TRUE will it make it a circumvention device.
What if CheckIfAllowed is incorrectly used (intentally or by misstake) making things that are not authorized possible?
What if we have a full implementation and somebody distributes a one line patch that disable any protection Is that patch a circumvention device?
What if somebody says on the mailing list that if you make CheckIfAllowed return TRUE it will disable the protected. Is that _sentence_ a circumvention device?
What somebody says that it is really easy to disable just look in the source code? Is that _sentence_ a circumvention device?
What if somebody writes a perl script that takes parts of the Wine code and generates and compiles a tools useful for circumvention. Is that perl script a circumvention device?
The point that I'm trying to make is that if any program that does Digital Rights Managagement is legal as open source it is without any problem possible make a device that circumvents these rights.
This is the logical problem with DMCA unless it is totally draconian, ie everything even remotely related is forbidden, it is almost useless since even with a arbitrary line somewhere you can use whatever is legal and step by step, using steps that are themselves legal transform it to something that are on the other side of the arbitrary line.
If law was mathematics this would be sufficient proof that DMCA is logical inconsistant since it would mean that some actions were both legal and illegal.
In short no arbitrary line is possible either everything even remotely related is illegal or nothing is illegal.
If they go after you then you know for sure that they have the poorest of intentions.
Well, we already know that their only intention is more profit, so this will not really help us derive anything new.