FSFLA news
Issue # 13
August 2006
FSFLA news
1. Editorial: The DRM threat
2. FSFLA in the media
3. GPLv3
4. SELF project
5. Events
6. Participate in FSFLA
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1. Editorial: The DRM threat
DRM, Digital Restrictions Management systems, are already among us and they are the most tangible threat to human rights, freedom and privacy in digital environments.
What are they? DRM are technical measures of restricting access and copying of works published in digital formats. There are various technical applications of DRM, but in general, they share the following common features:
* they detect who accesses the work, when and under which conditions, and report this information to the work provider;
* they authorize or deny, without possibility of appeal, access to the work, according to conditions determined and modified unilaterally by the provider, regardless of the rights that the law grants to the author or the public.
These technical measures find a repressive complement in laws and agreements that criminalize some actions related with them, such as writing programs that may evade the restrictions imposed through DRM, investigate its inner working, reverse engineer it, or simply access the content from some other device not foreseen by the content providers. Laws such as the recently-approved DADVSI (Droit d'Auteur et Droits Voisins Dans la Société de l'Information) in France and the older DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) in the US are part of the judiric offensive by the DRM promoters. These legislative landmarks enable criminalization of Free Software construction that eases access to contents under these systems.
In Latin America, this kind of rules arrive by means of the Free Trade Aggreements with US that, at the very least, requires the parties to sign - and therefore to commit to abide by - the WIPO Copyright Treaty[1] and the WIPO Performance and Phonographs Treaty[2], both dated 1996, that include these obligations to its signers. Just as an example, it's worth pointing out chapter 15 of the Free Trade Agreement of Central America and Dominican Republic with US (CAFTA)[3], that explicitly requires criminalization of escaping these technical measures, including whoever builds, import, distribute products or components, or offer to the public or provide services to the public that make it easier for the public to escape the technical protection measures.
These treaties do not mention the impact that these measures, both technical and juridic, have on human rights. They don't say that DRM violates recognized principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, such as the Right to Free Access to Culture (Art. 27), the Right to Privacy (Art. 12) and the Presumption of Innocence (Art. 11).
With the Universal Declaration of Human Rights[4] in mind, FSFLA wrote a position statement[5] that lets people know what DRM is, where it can be found, who controls it, how they negatively impact the development and dissemination of FERe Software, which human rights they infringe and which actions are underway to resist the worst threat to privacy and freedom in digital environments.
At FSFLA we are already working on different strategies of dissemination, public awareness and resistnace to DRM in our mailing list http://www.fsfla.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/anti-drm and we have a wiki with resources in Spanish and Portuguese at http://wiki.fsfla.org/wiki/index.php/Anti-DRM.
Besides, we invite readers to sign the letter that Free Software Foundation and its campaign Defective By Design will send Bono, U2's lead singer, to join our fight for freedom and privacy in digital environments. http://defectivebydesign.org/petition/bonopetition
We need to reach for the citizens. Only with information and public awareness about this problem can we resist its technical and juridic imposition. To this end, we've worked on dissemination texts, graphical campaigns, radio ads and interviews in the media that enable us to publicly denounce the DRM threat.
DRM watch us, control us, censor us, limit our freedom, violate our privacy and are fundamentally incompatible with the Free Software spirit.
[1] http://wipo.int/treaties/es/ip/wct/index.html
[2] http://wipo.int/treaties/es/ip/wppt/index.html
[3] Capítulo 15 - CAFTA - http://www.minec.gob.sv/default.asp?id=84&mnu=70
[4] http://www.un.org/spanish/aboutun/hrights.htm
[5] http://www.fsfla.org/?q=es/node/99
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2. FSFLA in the media
During the Third GPLv3 International Conference, that took place in Barcelona, the Groklaw portal interviewed Fernanda Weiden, Alexandre Oliva and Federico Heinz. The interview done by Sean Daly with 3 FSFLA members is published at http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20060708010316170 and discusses legal matters, particularly those related with legislations of Free Software adoption in public administration in various Latin-American countries. Also, the interview starts an interesting debate on violations of the GPL license and about gender issues within our community.
On his part, professor Pedro Rezende published a full article entitled "Windows WGA, a Microsoft online com você", where he profoundly analyses the workings of such systems and its implications to privacy for people who use Microsoft operating systems. The article is a resource that serves as a valid example of the new mechanisms of Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) implemented in these proprietary operating systems. The portuguese version of the text is available at http://observatorio.ultimosegundo.ig.com.br/artigos.asp?cod=389ENO003 while FSFLA's translators team is working on a Spanish translation at http://wiki.fsfla.org/wiki/index.php/Wga_es
Beatriz Busaniche showed up a few weeks ago at the technology portal Canal-ar, where she analized the problems related with the record label companies, the P2P networks and she took the time to bring attention of the readers about the DRM threat at http://www.canal-ar.com.ar/Noticias/NoticiaMuestra.asp?Id=3309
Enrique Chaparro visited FM LA Tribu one more time. On Saturday, July 1st, the program Rebeldes Stereotipos devoted almost all of its air time to analise the implementation of DRM systems with a complete interview in which Enrique analised the current copyright regime, the implications of the free trade treaties and the expansion of legislations such as DMCA besides the direct consequences DRM will have over freedom and privacy for people in digital environments. The complete audio of the interview of Enrique Chaparro to FM La Tribu is published under an Argentinian Creative Commons Attribution Sharealike license at http://www.puertorock.com.ar/FM_La_Tribu_RS_20060701.ogg - It is worth pointing out that the weekly show Rebeldes Stereotipos has a stable section devoted to free software and culture. We specially thank the Ututo Project for replicating and distributing this material in various servers https://www.ututo.org/www/modules/news/news.php?ID_news=117
Alexandre Oliva was interviewed about sotware patents and DRM as a complement to an interview with Richard M. Stallman about Free Software and Digital Freedom. RMS's and Alexandre Oliva's opinions are published at
http://www.link.estadao.com.br/index.cfm?id_conteudo=7995
http://www.link.estadao.com.br/index.cfm?id_conteudo=7996
http://www.link.estadao.com.br/index.cfm?id_conteudo=7997
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3. GPLv3
The fourth and last international GPLv3 conference will be made between the 23th and 24th of August of 2006 in Bangalore, India. The coordination of the event, that will count with the presence of Richard M. Stallman, is in charge of FSF and FSF India, sister organizations of FSFLA.
For those who wish to participate in the license update process, they can do it through this web site http://gplv3.fsf.org dedicated to inform on the process, to disclose discussion resources and to facilitate the reception of comments from whoever want to contribute to the update of the most popular Free Software license.
Meanwhile, the FSF already published the second draft of the GPLv3 license and the first draft of the update to the third version of the LGPL. A complete guide to analyze the drafts is in http://gplv3.fsf.org/gpl3-dd2-guide.html
FSFLA maintains an updated information page on the process of GPLv3 in http://www.fsfla.org/?q=node/60
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4. SELF project
Fernanda Weiden and Federico Heinz participated in the official launch of the Self Project in Holland. SELF - Science Education and Learning in Freedom - it is an European Union project which aims to develop a platform of educative materials on free software and open standards and to facilitate its access to educative institutions, universities, training centers, companies and free software communities.
The launch of the project, developed under the coordination of Internet Society Netherlands and other organizations related with Free Software, is an excellent opportunity to gather the contributions of Professor G. Nagarjuna (president of FSF India), Georg Greve and Jonas Oberg (of FSF Europe) along with Fernanda Weiden and Federico Heinz (of FSF Latin America).
This way, organizations of Europe, Asia and Latin America are united to divulge the philosophy and to foment the access to free software in a frame of Cooperation and joint effort. More information on this project in the official site in http://www.selfproject.eu/
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5. Events
During the Monthly Meeting of CaFeLug (Free Software User group of Capital Federal, Buenos Aires, Argentina), Beatriz Busaniche offered a speech on DRM and the current actions to resist this threat. The event took place on Saturday 22th of July in the "FM La Tribu" auditorium, communitarian radio that offers permanent support to activities related to Free Software and whose computer infrastructure already was released by CaFeLug volunteers.
From the 24th to the 26th of August, Alexandre Oliva will be present in the III Fórum de Software Livre of Bahía, in Brazil. Alexandre will present two lectures: "As Ações Mais Legais da FSFLA: Fundação Software Livre América Latina" and "O Poder Liberdador do Segundo Dedo". More information on this event at http://festival.softwarelivre.org
On the 29th of August, Federico Heinz and Beatriz Busaniche will participate in the "Animation 3D with Software Libre" event that will be made jointly by the Blender Foundation, the Plumíferos project and the Foundación Via Libre. The event will take place in the "Sala Solidaridad" of the Centro Cultural de la Cooperación, starting at 19 hours in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina. The event will count with the presence of the producers of Plumíferos (the animated Argentine film with Free Software applications) and members of the Blender Foundation, producers of Elephants Dream (short film distributed under a Creative Commons By license). More information on the latter one that will be displayed in the event in http://orange.blender.org/ and on the Plumíferos project in http://www.plumiferos.com/
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6. Participate in FSFLA
If you are interested in Free Software and you wish to make some contribution, do not hesitate to visit http://www.fsfla.org/?q=es/node/78 and join the team of your preference.
FSFLA is constructed with voluntary work in different areas: press, education, translations, specific campaigns, legal subjects and others. Join the FSFLA!