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Reworked section describing how the DRM issue and the like relates.

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Bradley M. Kuhn 2014-03-20 09:24:48 -04:00
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gpl-lgpl.tex
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@ -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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
% 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.
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}