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Free as in Freedom
January 14, 2021
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0x6B: GPL Enforcement Investigation DMCA Exemption Request
Summary
Software Freedom Conservancy filed multiple exemptions in the USA Copyright Office Triennial Rulemaking Process under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). In this episode, Karen and Bradley explore the details of Conservancy's filing to request permission to circumvent technological restriction measures in order to investigate infringement of other people's copyright, which is a necessary part of investigations of alleged violations of the GPL and other copyleft licenses.This show was released on Thursday 14 January 2021; its running time is 00:51:45.
Show Notes
Segment 0 (00:39)
- Bradley claims that you'll now love the audcast more than ever (02:51)
- Conservancy filed many exemptions as part of the currently ongoing triennial DMCA Process. (02:50)
Segment 1 (04:22)
- Everyone in the Free Software community wishes the USA's Digital Millennium Copyright Act didn't exist. (05:24)
- Bradley is currently doing research going to the year 1790 that shows the foundations of the copyright act, but Karen points out that Bradley isn't a professional copyright historian (yet). He points out he is an amateur copyright historian (05:45)
- DMCA is the USA's implementation of the WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT), but is more a restrictive copyright act than the WCT requires. (06:50)
- Bradley mentioned that the three videos from the Copyright Office, which are linked to from Conservancy's blog post on the subject that, while they are Copyright Office propaganda, that are helpful to explain the DMCA (10:57):
- Conservancy filed the most exemption requests in the 2020/2021 Rulemaking Process (21:25)
Segment 2 (28:07)
- Conservancy filed an exemption request and a “Long Form” comment in support of it that was labeled “Class 16: Computer Programs &—; Copyright License Investigation” by the Copyright Office (29:00)
- Bradley mentioned that people can get arrested just for giving talks under the DMCA, referring to Dmitry Sklyarov. Adobe simply called the FBI and got him arrested under DMCA. (38:50)
Segment 3 (34:36)
If you are a Conservancy Supporter as well as being a FaiFCast listener, you can join this mailing list to receive announcements of live recordings and attend them through Conservancy's Big Blue Button (BBB) server.
April 22, 2019
0x66: The End of Hellwig vs. VMware
Summary
Bradley and Karen discuss the details of the completion of the lawsuit (which Conservancy supported) between Christoph Hellwig and VMware in Germany.
This show was released on Monday 22 April 2019; its running time is 00:38:29.
Show Notes
Segment 0 (00:37)
- Bradley mentioned the episode of Red Dwarf, White Hole, where the characters are speaking too slowly or two quickly due to time differentials. (01:30)
- Bradley explained that the Hellwig vs. VMware suit in Germany has concluded. (03:30)
- German is a civil law legal system. (05:15)
- Christoph Hellwig announced on his website that he has decided not to appeal. (07:18)
- Bradley did a technical analysis how much of Christoph's code appeared in the infringing VMware product. (07:50)
- Till Jaeger was Christoph's lawyer; Till was also the lawyer for Harald Welte's (currently defunct) gpl-violations.org project. (09:04)
Segment 1 (09:26)
- “Trolling” refers to being a non-practicing entity. Patrick McHardy is specifically a practicing entity, since he upstreamed a lot of code in Linux. (09:50)
- Bradley was thinking of the patent troll, Intellectual Ventures. (10:40)
- Bradley that the Eastern district of Texas hears many patent cases in the USA. (10:50)
- Bradley mentioned a This American Life, Episode 411, which discussed patents. Show hosts/producers Laura Sydell and Alex Blumberg visit one of those “empty-but-not” office buildings in the Eastern District of Texas. (11:18)
- Bradley and Karen wrote about Patrick McHardy's behavior back in July 2016 — Conservancy was the first to talk about it publicly. Bradley sought to prevent the “compliance industrial complex” from using knowledge of Patrick's behavior to unduly scare people. (13:10)
- Conservancy (with FSF) also published the Principles of Community-Oriented GPL Enforcement (15:10)
- The rest of the Netfilter team, except for Patrick McHardy, endorsed the Principles. (16:30)
- The VMware suit started 2015-03-05, and began before Patrick McHardy started his problematic behavior. While the VMware suit was working its way through the court, McHardy had filed many inappropriate lawsuits. (18:30)
- German court decisions are very rarely published, but thanks to hard work by everyone involved, the appeal decision, and the lower Court's decision (the latter of which was also translated into English.) (27:30)
Segment 2 (33:01)
March 27, 2019
0x64: Our Producer Dan Lynch Interviewed at Copyleft Conf 2019
Summary
Bradley and Karen interview their own producer, Dan Lynch, on site at Copyleft Conf 2019.
This show was released on Wednesday 27 March 2019; its running time is 00:36:00.
Show Notes
Segment 0 (00:46)
- Karen now teaches teaches a course at Columbia University. (03:40)
- In addition to being the producer of Free as in Freedom, Dan Lynch was the host of Rat Hole Radio, the co-host of Linux Outlaws, and currently co-hosts Hollywood Outlaws. (04:30)
Segment 1 (5:19)
- Dan helps co-organize Oggcamp which is having its tenth-anniversary event on Saturday 19 October 2019. (08:00)
- Bradley mentioned the phrase from IT Crowd
quote:
Did you see that ludicrous display last night?
(11:08) - Dan talked about The Manchester Ship Canal. (13:16)
- Dan promoted Hollywood Outlaws where he and his co-host Fab talk about Bosch. (23:18)
- Dan promoted his own podcast about comics called Tales of the Unattested. (23:27)
- Dan Lynch has a personal website, which has his blog. (23:55)
- Bradley referenced the phrase
You are no Jack Kennedy
which was stated by Bentsen on Wednesday 5 October 1988 during the VP debate between Quayle and Bentsen for the 1988 USA Presidential campaign. Details and background of this are explained by NBC in this story. (26:30)
Segment 2 (28:23)
Bradley and Karen briefly dissect the interview with Dan.
Segment 3 (32:22)
Karen and Bradley mention that they'll discuss the Linux Foundation initiative, “Community Bridge” in the next episode. If you want a preview Bradley and Karen's thoughts, you can read their blog post about Linux Foundation's “Community Bridge” initiative.
September 2, 2016
0x5C: Basic FLOSS Concepts: Licensing 101
Summary
Bradley and Karen give a basic introduction of copyright licensing of Open Source and Free Software.
This show was released on Friday 2 September 2016; its running time is 01:02:03.
Show Notes
Segment 0 (00:35)
- Bradley mentioned the phrase “fixed in a tangible medium” which appears in the USA copyright law. (03:10)
- Bradley mentioned the Sherman Antitrust act. (04:05)
- Bradley mentioned the card game Pit (04:15)
- Bradley jokingly quoted Mit Romney's famous gaffe, “Corporations are people, my friend.” (04:44)
- Bradley read Title 17, the USA Copyright act many times. (06:50)
- Bradley mentioned the court case, UNIX System Laboratories, Inc. v. Berkeley Software Design, Inc., which resulted in releasing the parts of BSD that could be Free Software. (12:27)
- Bradley mentioned the FSF's Free Software Definition (13:11)
- Bradley mentioned OSI's Open Source Definition (13:16)
- Apparently, the problem of categorization is called Categorization in Philosophy. (14:30)
- The issue of Open Source not being trademarked is discussed in this essay by Richard Stallman. (15:44)
- The basic categorizations of types of FLOSS licenses are copyleft and non-copyleft.
- Karen suggests reading GPLv2 and GPLv3. (39:31)
- Bradley made a crude drawing of the spectrum of licenses. (40:20)
- Bradley mentioned the The Principles of Community-Oriented GPL Enforcement (55:40)
November 24, 2015
0x57: Support Conservancy Now!
Summary
Free as in Freedom host Christopher Allan Webber interviews Karen Sandler and Bradley Kuhn about their work on copyleft and at Software Freedom Conservancy. You can become a Supporter of this work!
This show was released on Tuesday 24 November 2015; its running time is 00:26:10.
Show Notes
- Bradley mentioned Cygnus Solutions, ultimately acquired by Red Hat, which was an early for-profit supporter of copylefted projects.
- Bradley and Karen discussed the VMware lawsuit.
- Chris Webber wrote this blog post in response to a Shane Curcuru, who is VP of Brand Management at the Apache Software Foundation, anti-copyleft talk at OSCON 2015. Shane's talk is consistent with Apache Software Foundation's historical and recent anti-copyleft positions (12:23)
June 4, 2015
0x56: … & We're Back!
Summary
Bradley and Karen discuss the VMware lawsuit that Software Freedom Conservancy is funding.
This show was released on Thursday 4 June 2015; its running time is 00:33:52.
Show Notes
- Bradley and Karen discuss the lawsuit that Christoph Hellwig filed. (07:37)
- Karen mentioned her LibrePlanet keynote about the VMware lawsuit. (21:30)
- Bradley's talk at LinuxConf Australia 2015, Considering The Future of Copyleft, is available online. (22:04)
- Bradley mentioned the discussion on pump.io about NPR fundraisers. (24:23)
- Bradley mentioned a Debian 8 release party at LinuxFest Northwest, which Microsoft didn't invite him to, since he wasn't willing to give Microsoft his contact info for marketing purposes. (29:16)
- Karen and Bradley promoted the Conservancy supporter program (31:40)
November 11, 2014
0x50: Big Announcements & Evans' FOSDEM 2014 Talk
Summary
Karen and Bradley announce Conservancy's DMCA filing and Conservancy and FSF's joint launch of the copyleft.org project, and then discuss Eileen Evans' FOSDEM 2014 talk, entitled Licensing Models and Building an Open Source Community.
This show was released on Tuesday 11 November 2014; its running time is 01:13:10.
Show Notes
Segment 0 (00:36)
- Conservancy file a DMCA petition regarding so-called “Smart TVs”. (02:00)
- Bradley mentioned the magic marker that was as circumvention technique under DMCA. Here's an amusing joke press release about the issue. (03:10)
- There isn't much documentation online of Bruce Perens live DMCA violation, but this article appears to be the main one on the subject, and there is also this interview (06:46).
- Bradley and Karen talked about the joint FSF/Conservancy copyleft.org announcement. (09:10)
- Bradley first pulled together the materials for copyleft.org for FSF's CLE seminars, particularly the one in March 2014. (10:00)
- Karen noted that Conservancy donated the time to write up a pristine example of good complete, corresponding source code for a GPL'd product. (11:30)
- Bradley discussed the incorrect GPLv2§2(a) violation accusations that some made against Red Hat regarding its changes to its publication of RHEL's Linux fork. (12:00)
- Karen and Bradley encouraged listeners to submit talk proposals for the FOSDEM 2015 Legal and Policy Issues DevRoom (15:03)
Segment 1 (19:38)
This is a recording of Eileen Evans' FOSDEM 2014 talk, entitled Licensing Models and Building an Open Source Community. If you'd rather watch the video, which includes the slides from her talk, it's available on FOSDEM's site.
Segment 2 (46:40)
- Bradley and Karen discuss Eileen's talk.
- Bradley mentioned the OpenStack CLA fight, which was covered in a panel discussion on FaiF 0x4B. (56:16)
- Karen mentioned the 501(c)(6) issues that OpenStack Foundation has faced, which were discussed already on FaiF 0x4E. (56:34)