[unrev-II] SSSCA and the end of open source software

From: Jack Park (jackpark@thinkalong.com)
Date: Sat Oct 20 2001 - 09:15:25 PDT

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    The bill says:
    "it is unlawful to manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide or
    otherwise traffic in any interactive digital device that does not include
    and utilize certified security technologies."

    http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=01/10/19/1546246

    Senator Fritz Hollings will testify about his proposed SSSCA legislation
    before the Senate Commerce Committee on October 25. While the Open Source
    community is acquainted with the potential effects of this bill on freedom
    from government intrusion on our private activities, many businesses that
    use Open Source software, government agencies who sponsor Open Source
    projects, and lawyers who specialize in technology issues either have not
    heard of the bill, or do not understand its implications.

    Eben Moglen, chief counsel for the Free Software Foundation, is succinct:
    "SSSCA is a deliberate attempt to destroy free software." Moglen believes
    that the industries behind the drafting of the SSSCA want to control
    information from the beginning to the end of every event chain. "The
    content industries want to make a leakproof pipe that leads from their
    production facility directly to the eyeball and eardrum of the consumer."
    That pipeline must not be broken apart by any technology that is under the
    user's control, he says. "If the computer closest to your eyeball and
    eardrum has a free software operating system, the whole rest of the pipe
    doesn't matter: sound on its way to the sound card, or video on its way to
    the screen, can be copied or sent anywhere by the OS kernel. "So the
    content industries cannot -- so long as they adhere to their present
    obsolete business models -- tolerate the existence of any user-modifiable
    operating system for computers. Period." And that's what's behind Disney's
    and other corporations' campaign contributions to Hollings and their
    subsequent "urging" that Hollings, the chairman of the Senate Commerce
    Committee, draft the Security Systems Standards and Certification bill,
    which states in part that "it is unlawful to manufacture, import, offer to
    the public, provide or otherwise traffic in any interactive digital device
    that does not include and utilize certified security technologies." And
    while Disney interests may be completely aware of the subtleties behind the
    SSSCA, Hollings may be unaware of the chain of effects this could set off.
    "Although I cannot comment on the technical acuity of Senator Hollings,"
    says Pat Stakem, a NASA consultant who works with FlightLinux, a version of
    Linux that's running on unmanned space flights, "there have been problems
    in the past with oversight and unintended consequences when a highly
    technical issue is legislated."

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