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Relevant text from FSF's "DRM" as published circa late 2006-07,

Browse source 
(around time of GPLv3 Second Discussion Draft)

I (Bradley M. Kuhn) carefully went through FSF's "DRM", which appears to have
been published on Wednesday 2 August 2006 (a few days after the second GPLv2
discussion draft published on Thursday 27 July 2006), and merged in any
relevant text and descriptions that might be of use in this tutorial.

However, since the patent provisions changed some much over the drafting of
GPLv3, there was not much text useful to bring in on this one.

The raw material used for this commit can be found here:
    http://gplv3.fsf.org/opinions-draft-2.html
Specifically, a copy of the LaTeX sources are here:
    http://gplv3.fsf.org/drm-dd2.tex

As I merged in this text, I added FIXME's where it seemed the text was
incomplete or referred to parts of GPLv3 draft text that disappeared in later
versions.

Finally, note that this material was originally copyrighted and licensed as
follows:

  Copyright © 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

  Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article are permitted
  worldwide, without royalty, in any medium, provided this notice, and the
  copyright notice, are preserved.

However, I am hereby relicensing this material to CC-By-SA-4.0, with the
verbal permission from John Sullivan, Executive Director of the FSF, which
was given to me during a conference call on Wednesday 12 February 2014.  I
also confirmed that relicensing permission on IRC with johnsu01 today.
This commit is contained in:
Free Software Foundation, Inc 2006-08-02 13:39:05 -04:00 committed by Bradley M. Kuhn
parent af63358d30
commit da7e0da128
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@ -2492,6 +2492,67 @@ run the program is terminated if the licensee brings a patent infringement
lawsuit against anyone for activities relating to a work based on the
program.
% FIXME: new section here, just to talk DRM before the other section.
Technological measures to defeat users' rights --- often described by such
Orwellian phrases as ``digital rights management,'' which actually means
limitation or outright destruction of users' legal rights, or ``trusted
computing,'' which actually means selling people computers they cannot trust
--- are alike in one basic respect. They all employ technical means to turn
the system of copyright law, where the powers of the copyright holder are
limited exceptions to general freedom, into a prison, where everything not
specifically permitted is utterly forbidden, and indeed, if the full extent
of their ambition is realized, would be technically impossible. This system
of ``para-copyright'' has been created since the adoption of GPLv2, through
legislation in the United States, the European Union, and elsewhere that
makes it a serious civil or even criminal offense to escape from these
restrictions, even where the 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.
\section{GPLv3~\S3: What Hath DMCA Wrought}
\label{GPLv3s3}
@ -2509,6 +2570,22 @@ distributed as part of a system for generating or accessing certain data, the
effect of this paragraph is to prevent someone from claiming that some other
GPL'd program that accesses the same data is an illegal circumvention.
% FIXME: this needs rewritten
In section 3, which has been retitled as well as redrafted, we have
specifically stated the rule, previously implicit, that modes of
distribution that establish limitations on use or modification that
are inconsistent with the terms of the license are not permitted by
the license. In addition, we have added disclaimers, based on advice
of counsel from nations that have enacted para-copyright provisions
akin to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the US or pursuant to
the European Union Copyright Directive. We believe these disclaimers
by each licensor of any intention to use GPL'd software to stringently
control access to other copyrighted works should practically prevent
any private or public parties from invoking DMCA-like laws against
users who escape technical restriction measures implemented by GPL'd
software.
\section{GPLv3~\S4: Verbatim Copying}
% FIXME: there appear to be minor changes here in later drafts, fix that.
@ -2666,6 +2743,29 @@ program might not have the keys.
% FIXME: installation information
% FIXME: this came from Section 1 but is now mostly in Section 6
In section 1, we have tried to limit as precisely as possible the situation
in which an encryption or signing key is part of the Corresponding Source
Code of a GPL'd work. Where someone is provided a GPL'd work, he must
receive the whole of the power to use and modify the work that was available
to preceding licensors whose permissions he automatically receives. If a key
would be necessary to install a fully functional version of the GPL'd work
from source code, the user who receives the binary must receive the key along
with the source. The requirement of full functionality, which we have
illustrated with examples, is no more optional than it would be if GPL'd
software were redistributed with an additional license condition, rather than
a technical limitation, on the uses to which modified versions could be
put.\footnote{There is a clear distinction between this situation and the
situation of authenticated modules or plug-ins distributed as part of a
multi-component software system, so that instances of the software can
verify for the user the integrity of the collection. So long as the
decision about whether to run a modified version is the user's decision,
not controlled by a preceding licensor or a third party, the vendor's
authentication key would also not qualify as part of the Corresponding
Source under the language we have adopted for Draft 2.}
%FIXME: publicly documented format
\section{Understanding License Compatibility}