Apollon soon in kde-extragear

[Scott Wheeler]

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On Tuesday 10 February 2004 21:39, Petter E. Stokke wrote:

> Still, it does rather shut the MPAA up if they should come knocking and you 
> ask them "show me the infringing code." The point here isn't to prove that 
> KMLDonkey can be used to download illegal MP3s (it can), but that 
> KMLDonkey itself directly contributes to or encourages the activity 
> (which, if Grokster didn't, according to a US court of law, KMLDonkey 
> certainly does not by a long shot).

To me there is a more important precedence in that that they were both sued -- 
regardless of who won -- I'm sure another 5 or so clients could be added to 
the list with a little thought.  There are a lot of people interested in 
suing authors of p2p clients.  It's reasonable to assume that in the case of 
such a suit that KDE e.V. would be named as a defending party.

We simply don't have the funds to establish the legality of such clients even 
with prior legal precedence.  And even with some legal precedence there are 
too many jurisdictions (i.e. the US case mentioned wouldn't have a 
significant bearing on another trial in another state) not to mention every 
country that KDE e.V. is active in or that KDE distributes software to.

And really I don't think it makes much of a difference in terms of 
"contributory copyright infringement" whether or not a protocol 
implementation is included or not.  That doesn't answer the question of "Was 
this software designed with the goal of making it easier for people to 
infringe upon copyrights." -- which IMHO is the appropriate question.

> Nothing is 100% legal, without dispute, not even Linux (as I'm sure Darl 
> McBride would be happy to tell you).

That's true, but unfortunately this isn't a black or white issue -- the 
chances of legal action based on the inclusion of p2p software vs. say, an 
implementation of the http protocol are orders of magnitude apart.

> Audio and video storage formats don't instantly imply illegality. I believe 
> the MPAA already lost that debate in the 80's against Sony over the issue 
> of VCRs.

But an important factor in allowing such clients in my opinion is going out of 
the way to establish "good faith" -- i.e. steering clear of things that can 
be pointed to which would help establish a case for the primary usage of 
these clients being the trading of copyrighted works.

On this specific issue I'm not sure that I would advocate the removal of such 
functions, but on the first use of one of them it would probably be a 
reasonable place to have a message box with a note on copyright law.

> We're dealing with legality here - I'll have to refer you back to  
> the Grokster/Morpheus case and dare you to explain how KMLDonkey could 
> possibly be considered illegal if Grokster wasn't. I mean, we _all_ know 
> what people used Grokster for (it wasn't for getting the latest Knoppix 
> ISOs), but that's not the point. The point is that KMLDonkey _does_ have 
> legitimate uses, doesn't explicitly encourage copyright infringement (MP3 
> search filters aren't synonymous with "show me only the warez plz"), and 
> most especially doesn't involve any kind of financial gain.
>
> A wise man once said, "I'm not in favour of folding projects just because 
> there is a vague perceived threat of a lawsuit."[1] If you'll excuse me 
> for being presumptious, I'd like to pre-empt this whole discussion by 
> asking the nay-sayers to point to some factual legal indication of 
> KMLDonkey/Apollon jeopardising KDE in general.

Actually we've seen lots of it.  KDE e.V. being sued for their inclusion would 
harm KDE.  There's a lot of evidence that contributors to p2p software are 
being sued in several countries.  KDE e.V. likely wouldn't even put up a 
fight to establish the legality of such software.

By distributing said software KDE becomes a target.  Sure, we're already in 
many contexts a target, but I'd say that there's more risk associated with 
these two clients than several times over the rest of KDE.  Is it a smart 
risk to take?  Where does it bring us?  What does it cost us?  That's the 
crux of the debate to me.

> In fact, maybe one ought to add a disclaimer dialog at KMLDonkey/Apollon 
> startup ("does not condone illegal redistribution" etc.) just to be on the 
> safe side. Would that sell you, I wonder? :)

I mentioned in my first email in this thread that I would consider that a 
reasonable compromise.  Since we don't really have a legal means to defend 
ourselves it seems only logical to over-compensate by going out of our way to 
establish good faith and to promote legal uses of p2p.  (I still personally 
don't like the idea of them being in CVS, but with this provision I would 
resign to just being noted as a dissenting opinion rather than trying to 
block their inclusion.)

- -Scott

- -- 
Audience Member: "What was the hardest part of building TeX?"
Donald Knuth: "It was all pretty easy."
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