[mythtv-users] Who needs to worry about copyright? CoreAVCforLinux removed from Google Code

Brian Wood beww at beww.org
Mon May 5 20:33:45 UTC 2008


On May 5, 2008, at 2:10 PM, Anthony R. Baker wrote:

>      What I understand is that their "counsel" told them to claim  
> infringement under the DMCA or risk weakening their claim of  
> ownership of the code and/or copyrighted material .They now see this  
> is wrong. Hence the line
> "The DMCA does allow for reverse engineering for compatibility  
> purposes and hence in the end no matter what the 'other points' are  
> the DMCA takedown request was wrongly sent."
>     Since they realized their mistake they are now assisting the  
> CoreAVC forLinux developer bring his code up to date with their  
> newest release. At least thats what I got out of it. But if I were  
> perfect I wouldn't need to be on any mailing lists and multi core  
> processors  would grow on trees.

One probable result of this sort of silliness is that more projects  
will start to be hosted by non-USA based sites operated by outfits  
that do not care about the DMCA.

Thus Google, which has done some good things for FOSS, will become  
less of a factor in FOSS development.

In the name of "enforcement" of the DMCA the transaction logs of US- 
based hosts might be subject to seizure, and lists of people who  
downloaded the code might be turned over to the complainers. If you  
don't think this is possible just look at what happened with telephone  
records of the major operators in the USA, and the current attempt by  
the government to grant ex post facto immunity to those operators for  
what was clearly a violation of the law (else why would they need  
immunity?).

Google is already hosting a lot of mail, and this will probably be  
reduced, or at least its growth slowed, as people begin to realize  
that their logs are subject to seizure by US authorities armed with  
the ability to grant retroactive immunity to service providers.

Whether any of this is good or bad I'm not sure.

beww

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