From ed8fb5a938fafc7c36fd44a2f6c8c3f470ebf877 2014-03-20 13:24:48 From: Bradley M. Kuhn Date: 2014-03-20 13:24:48 Subject: [PATCH] Reworked section describing how the DRM issue and the like relates. --- diff --git a/gpl-lgpl.tex b/gpl-lgpl.tex index 0d73e95e28e789713e823fb3924f2cd3caedd463..175a71aad3b6e514b6da41d4b1d56eea063701d3 100644 --- a/gpl-lgpl.tex +++ b/gpl-lgpl.tex @@ -2606,50 +2606,36 @@ serious civil or even criminal penalties to escape from these restrictions purpose in doing so is to restore the users' legal rights that the technology wrongfully prevents them from exercising. -% FIXME: Remove FSF specific parts - -As a digital rights organization, we would not be following our mission if we -did not oppose these injustices. But the reason our license must respond to -these practices at all is the result of a remarkable irony. Those who wish to -impose DRM on the public would like to do so by using software covered by the -GPL, a license that is intended to preserve the very freedom that they seek -to crush. They are not satisfied merely with publishing programs having -limited capability, which free software permits. They seek to go further, to -prevent the user from removing those limits, turning Freedom 1, the freedom -to modify, into a sham. - GPLv2 did not address the use of technical measures to take back the rights that the GPL granted, because such measures did not exist in 1991, and would have been irrelevant to the forms in which software was then delivered to -users. But GPLv3 must address these issues: free software is ever more -widely embedded in devices that impose technical limitations on the user's -freedom to change it. - -These unjust measures must not be confused with legitimate applications that -give users control, as by enabling them to choose higher levels of system or -data security within their networks, or by allowing them to protect the -security of their communications using keys they can generate or copy to -other devices for sending or receiving messages. These technologies present -no obstacles to the freedom of free software. The user is presented with -choices, and figuratively as well as literally retains all the keys to the -digital home. - -By contrast, technical restrictions that allow other parties to control the -user have no legitimate social purpose. In existing applications where the -user is not afforded the same degree of real power to modify the free -software in his system that vendors or distributors have retained, or have -conveyed to third parties, the software has been delivered in a fashion that -violates the spirit of the GPL, regardless of whether it complies with the -letter of the license. The freedoms the GPL grants have actually been -withdrawn by technical means. It may even be a crime for the user to modify -that free software to escape from those restrictions and regain control over -what is still, at least nominally, his own system. - -% FIXME: reference \S6 and \S3 stuff. - -We believe that these provisions, taken together, are a minimalist set of -terms sufficient to protect the free software community against the threat of -invasive para-copyright. +users. GPLv3 addresses these issues, particularly because copylefted +software is ever more widely embedded in devices that impose technical +limitations on the user's freedom to change it. + +However, FSF always made a clear distinction to avoid conflating these +``lock-down'' measures with legitimate applications that give users control, +as by enabling them to choose higher levels of system or data security within +their networks, or by allowing them to protect the security of their +communications using keys they can generate or copy to other devices for +sending or receiving messages. Such technologies present no obstacles to +software freedom and the goals of copyleft. + +The public GPLv3 drafting process sought to balance these positions of +copyleft advocates with various desperate views of the larger +Free-Software-using community. Ultimately, FSF compromised to the GPLv3\S3 +and GPLv3\S6 provisions that, taken together, are a minimalist set of terms +sufficient to protect the software freedom against the threat of invasive +para-copyright. + +The compromises made were ultimately quite reasonable. The primary one is +embodied in GPLv3\S6's ``User Product'' definition (see \S~\ref{user-product} +in this tutorial for details). Additionally, some readers of early GPLv3 +drafts seem to have assumed GPLv3 contained a blanket prohibition on DRM; but +it does not. In fact, no part of GPLv3 forbids DRM regarding non-GPL'd +works; rather, GPLv3 forbids the use of DRM specifically to lock-down +restrictions on users' ability to install modified versions of the GPL'd +software itself, but again, \textit{only} with regard to User Products. Large enterprise users of free software often contract with non-employee developers, often working offsite, to make modifications intended for @@ -2721,8 +2707,7 @@ software. This section shields users from being subjected to liability under anti-circumvention law for exercising their rights under the GPL, so far as -the GPL can do so. Some readers seem to have assumed that this provision -contains a prohibition on DRM; it does not (no part of GPLv3 forbids DRM). +the GPL can do so. \section{GPLv3~\S4: Verbatim Copying}