[CentOS] RHEL on The Pirate Bay, Mininova, etc

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams ivazqueznet at gmail.com
Sun Mar 23 13:36:47 UTC 2008


On Sun, 2008-03-23 at 14:25 +0100, Daniel de Kok wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 23, 2008 at 1:57 PM, Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams
> <ivazqueznet at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Sun, 2008-03-23 at 13:46 +0100, Daniel de Kok wrote:
> >  > On Sun, Mar 23, 2008 at 1:28 PM, Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams
> >  > <ivazqueznet at gmail.com> wrote:
> >  > >  I'm not talking about the spec file metadata, I'm talking about the
> >  > >  signature that's applied to the package itself.
> >  >
> >  > A signature is just a special digest of the contents. I don't see how
> >  > that could be licensed differently.
> >
> >  And a painting of a landscape is just a special digest (or
> >  interpretation, if you prefer) of a landscape. It falls under copyright
> >  law, regardless of what laws the canvas or paint are required to follow.
> 
> That's a flawed analogy. Virtually, all jurisdictions require work to
> be original to qualify for copyright.

How is a rpm package signature not "original"? It's dependent on a
number of factors, not all of which are publicly accessible (e.g., the
private signing key), and some of which are variable (e.g., the build
time).

> Painting a landscape requires
> effort, and originality, mechanically making a digest with encryption
> software doesn't.

Nor does pushing the button on a digital camera, and yet Flickr is
filled with the results of that non-effort. You don't need to be a
lawyer to see that anyone challenging the license of that non-effort
would likely be laughed out of court.

> Anyway, let's not continue with *this* slippery slope. The next guy
> will proclaim that downloading software and recompressing it with
> bzip2 constitutes a new work ;).

Or a derivative of the original work. But adding a signature to an
already-created package does not make the signature a derivative of the
contents of the package.

(Once again, IANAL)

-- 
Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams <ivazqueznet at gmail.com>

PLEASE don't CC me; I'm already subscribed
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