[Discussioni] Rik van Riel

[Alessandro Rubini]

Ho apprezzato molto questo messaggio di Rik van Riel, e vorrei condividerlo
con voi (e` stato scritto in una lista pubblica).

> From: Rik van Riel <riel a conectiva.com.br>
> To: Richard Stallman <rms a gnu.org>
> Cc: <seth.johnson a RealMeasures.dyndns.org>, <www-patentpolicy-comment a w3.org>,
>         <C-FIT_Community a RealMeasures.dyndns.org>,
>         <fairuse-discuss a mrbrklyn.com>, <nylug-talk a nylug.org>,
>         <patents a liberte.aful.org>, <DMCA_Discuss a lists.microshaft.org>,
>         <love a cptech.org>
> Subject: Re: [Patents] Richard Stallman re: W3C Patent Policy
> Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2001 09:14:35 -0300 (BRST)

On Wed, 3 Oct 2001, Richard Stallman wrote:

>     To keep this site out of legal trouble I'll
>     just put measures in place to make sure americans won't
>     be able to download the software ;)
>
> By refusing access to Americans, you would be helping to keep
> Americans under the thumb of the repressive patent regime,

It's _your_ democracy.  If you want to change it, feel free.
Just don't expect me to get into legal trouble over the civil
liberties most americans wouldn't even be defending themselves.

> Please do not be so quick to abandon the US to the domain of
> repression.

It's your own regime.  While I don't agree with the policy
of repression being put in place in the US, this is purely
a matter of internal politics and I don't feel that I, as
a foreign citizen, have any business interfering in whatever
the people of the US want to inflict on themselves.

> At present, you are not in danger even if you allow Americans to
> download from your site.

Tom Vogt (sp?), a German citizen who has never even been in
the US, is one of the named defendants in the DECSS case in
California, essentially robbing him of his right to visit
the US because of doing something which is one of his civil
rights where he lives and where it was done (publishing the
DECSS program on his website in Germany).

> But please take note of the danger of the Hague treaty, which
> threatens to globalize *all* the laws of the various signatory
> countries that can restrict what you can publish. If patents are
> included in the Hague treaty--and that is the current proposal--and if
> Brazil signs it, Brazilians that publish software on the net could be
> in danger from US patent law.

... unless I'm not publishing to the US ;)

> See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/hague.html for more explanation, and
> please try to stir up some political activity.

I bet setting up a website where Americans are blocked from all
nice goodies is bound to stir up something.  Nothing promotes
complacency and apathy than keeping up the status quo ...

I'm pretty convinced most Americans won't take any action against
them being stripped of their civil liberties until the first time
they're being confronted with it in a bad way.

Oh, I think I'll be making the "block the US" setup into a nicely
packaged and documented piece of software; I'll be calling it
`yankbuster' in a pun on the excellent junkbuster software ;)

regards,

Rik
-- 
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