Red Hat possibly in violation of the DMCA?
Hey folks. I haven't seen this posted here yet, and it was an interesting read when I found it, so I thought I would share. The story can be found here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/27636.html
here are a couple of excerpts from that article:
Quote:
Red Hat has struck a small blow against the DMCA, by publishing a security patch which can only be explained fully to people who are not within US jurisdiction
Quote:
... when we asked Red Hat about it we got an official comment which at least partially explains it: "RHSA- 2002-158 is an errata kernel which addresses certain security vulnerabilities. Quite simply, these vulnerabilities were discovered and documented by ppl outside of the US, and due to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act legislation in the US, it is potentially dangerous to disclose any information on security vulnerabilities, which may also be used in order to circumvent digital security - i.e. computer security. For this reason, RH cannot publish this security information, as it is not available from the community in the first instance. The
www.thefreeworld.net site allows for accessing this information, but requires you agree to terms which protect the author and documenter of the patches from being accusations that they themselves have breached DMCA."
Got that? In some instances at least,
the very act of explaining what has been fixed by a security patch could be construed as explaining how the security of a product could be breached, and hence could be viewed as a breach of the DMCA.
So what's your thoughts on the DMCA now? I know there have been some fairly spirited discussions about this topic before, but this article really drives home how archaic, heavy handed, and just plain wrong the DMCA really is.
El Diablo
