The Register: Linux update withholds security info on DMCA terror

“Citing a controversial U.S. copyright law, a top Linux
developer announced this week that Americans would not be given
details about the security fixes in an update to the open source
operating system, a first for a software development community that
prides itself on transparency.

An update to version 2.2 of the Linux kernel, an older version
of Linux that’s still in wide use, was released Monday,
conspicuously shorn of information about a number of security holes
patched in the software.

In an email to a Linux developer’s mailing list, U.K.-based
Linux guru Alan Cox wrote that the self-censorship was necessary to
avoid running afoul of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act
(DMCA), a law that makes it a crime to create or distribute
software “primarily designed” to circumvent a copy protection
scheme.”

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