Re: [Sheflug] Alan Cox and the DMCA

[Alex Hudson <xxxxx [at] xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Monday 22 October 2001 6:31 pm, you wrote:
> Does anyone have the slightest clue what Alan Cox is up to?
>
> From the little that I have read so far, it seems Alan is blowing this
> whole "it's a circuvention device" line up too much for a UK citizen.

Alan's absolutely right, AFAIAC.

Though, reading hashsnot.org might make you think otherwise.

Essentially, the situation is this. We make the assumption, first, that the 
filesystem ownership and rights system could be used to create a content 
protection system (although kind of shakey, I think this is true - think of 
the case where you're a user accessing a public system, and what you can 
access is controlled by the filesystem). Whether or not you think this 
assumption holds basically dictates whether or not you agree with Alan.

Now, let's say we have some security bugs. (I'm making this bit up now, 
because I don't know what Alan's fixes are - I'm _guessing_ this is his 
reason) that are in the filesystem. In particular, they're bugs that allow a 
user to escalate their privilidge level within Linux, or otherwise get around 
file system permissions. And let's also say we have the fixes for these bugs.

We're going to fix the bugs, but we have a choice whether or not we publish 
the information on the security holes. Alan's point is this: if he publishes 
the information to the (US-based) LKML, he's potentially publishing a means 
of circumvention. Hence, violation of DMCA. However, that _doesn't_ stop him 
publishing the fix in source form and not publishing the method of getting 
around the controls (although, a source diff would probably help if someone 
really wanted to know :). So, that's what he did.

Why all the fuss? Alan's a UK citizen! Well.... that didn't stop them 
grabbing Dmitry....

Cheers,
				Alex.
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