The Register: If I Tell You That I’ll Have to Kill You: Red Hat Fights the DMCA

“Red Hat has struck a small blow against the DMCA, by publishing
a security patch which can only be explained fully to people who
are not within US jurisdiction. The company’s position here seems
to be not altogether voluntary–according to a spokesman ‘it is
bizarre, and unfortunately something Red Hat cannot easily do much
about,’ but like it or not Red Hat has been recruited to the
campaign to make the DMCA look ridiculous.

“The patch itself is on the Red Hat site, on this page, and the
oddity here can be seen if you go down to the bottom. Under the
heading ‘references’ there is a link to
http://www.thefreeworld.net/non-US/. At this point, those of you
reading this while within US jurisdiction should have a care. We
will endeavour to unfold the tale to you without exposing ourselves
to action under the DMCA, but we stress now that we are not
encouraging you to do so, nor is it our intention to provide you
with the tools to do so.

“Thefreeworld.net is not as yet an especially widely-known site,
but its purpose is explained here. Briefly, it notes that the US
has shown a readiness to bust individuals who perfectly legally
publish information and software outside of the US, on the basis
that this is published to people within US jurisdiction, among
others. In order to publish this information without getting
busted, Thefreeworld.net uses a licensing agreement which
specifically rules out people within US jurisdiction. You can see
the licence here, and again we stress that people within US
jurisdiction should not accept this licence…”

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