Apollon soon in kde-extragear

Tue Feb 10 01:02:39 GMT 2004

I don't want this to turn into a moral argument as that's really pretty 
irrelevant.  I consider it an issue of legal liability.  I was pretty clear 
on this in the post that I pointed to in my last mail.

> Then I strongly agree with Benoit Walter. There are illegal pages which can 
> be displayed with konqui. The use of K3B, especially after adding the 
> DVD-burn-feature, is obvious: It's about copying CDs and DVDs.
> Nobody says "stop" here?? Why not? Isn't copying of copyrighted material 
> illegal? 

The equivalent would be if Konqueror defaulted to starting up at warez.com or 
something like that.  That too would be a liability for KDE and I of course 
wouldn't support that.

The FastTrack network -- as I understand it the primary protocol used by 
Apollon -- is overwhelmingly used for trading copyrighted material.  Both the 
authors of the primary client for that network (Kazzaa) and users of it have 
had legal action filed against them in the US.

It's also of note that copying CDs is legal; distribution of them is not.  K3b 
does not provide anything for aiding in the illegal step and it can be easily 
argued that in its most usual mode of operation that its use is legal.  The 
same is not true for Apollon.

> There is even no law which says that it's forbidden to possess copies of 
> copyrighted material! You're even allowed to listen to the mp3s. You're not 
> allowed to install a copy of a software, though.
> And do you really wanna say to the user: "hey, don't you have a bad 
> conscious that you downloaded a song"?
> Imho, there are more people looking at porn-pages than people using 
> p2p-software. And you don't tell those: "hey dude, that's dirty!".

Again, all irrelevant.  Pornography is not illegal (generally speaking).  As 
you point out neither is copying files generally speaking.  If the FastTrack 
network was primarily used for legal means this would be another matter; it 
is not and there have been legal repercussions in the United States.

> Other topic: Uploading. That is illegal - if the offered material is 
> copyrighted. Per default, Apollon doesn't upload and doesn't turn the user's 
> pc into a searchnode.
> 
> So it's up to the user. And KDE and the programmers have absolutely no clue 
> of what the users do with it. They could use it for illegal upload, or maybe 
> they just download songs, or they actually share not copyrighted material. 
> Who knows? Who cares? It's not in our responsibility. Why not? Because 
> Apollon doesn't force anybody to download only copyrighted material. And 
> Apollon doesn't allow only the sharing of copyrighted material. OK, maybe a 
> little hint somewhere in the program would be good. Hints like the Americans 
> have on their coffee-cups: "HOT!"....

It is our legal responsibility to look after the liabilities and potential 
risks to the KDE project.  Whether you like it or not p2p software is a legal 
risk -- the relevant question is how large it is in its current state and 
what we can do to minimize that risk.

I would also extend this to say that the KDE project has a certain obligation 
to its users to not distribute -- or at least warn them when we do -- 
software that could potentially get them sued in its most usual mode of 
operation.

> On Tuesday 10 February 2004 00:19, Dominique Devriese wrote:
> >"Maybe a prominent notice could be put in place in the
> >program saying that usage of the program is to the user's own risk,
> >and that (s)he should always check the legality of the downloaded
> >content ?"
> 
> It's not in the downloader's responsibility to check that. It is the 
> uploader who might break the law, if he shares copyrighted material.

This is naive.  Making copies of copyrighted material is illegal in most 
western countries -- no matter which side of the transaction you're on.  We 
could go on about where the moral responsibility lies, but I'm not really 
concerned about that.

> Neither is Apollon. Apollon is just a client. The authors are German and 
> Dutch. Therefore the Copyright Law of Germany and the Netherlands is which
> counts. 

This would be true *only* if it was not hosted in KDE's CVS.  KDE e.V. owns 
the CVS server and as it "does business" in the United States and many other 
countries (specifically we have donors from the US, sponsor conferences there 
and one of the KDE e.V. board members lives there) KDE's CVS then falls into 
the scope of the laws of those countries.

> I wonder how kmldonkey got a cvs-account. Did anybody ask? 

If you look back at the thread that was mentioned I objected to KMLDonkey 
being hosted in KDE's CVS server.  Unfortunately there was no discussion 
prior to its being imported.  That said I feel that the author displayed an 
understanding of the relevant laws and made a reasonable appeal based on that 
understanding.  This has not yet happened from the Apollon side.

If some attempt is made in Apollon to decouple it from the currently 
problematic networks and statements were added to inform users of the 
potential legal problems of trading copyrighted works (downloading or 
uploading) I would consider this a reasonable compromise.

A final note -- we've been through most of this before -- interested parties 
can find it in the previously linked thread which I find preferable to 
rehashing it all here.  There were some reasonable suggestions / guidelines 
discussed there and I would suggest that these are acted upon.

- -Scott

- -- 
There are 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary, and 
those who don't.
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