FYI Ping.
I am of the opinion that hackers generally do us a valuable service. If you can extend the "virus" metaphor a little, the multitude of virus' help innoculate us. When China decides to destroy the US Internet infastructure, oops, those hackers have prevented this. Better to get a bunch of small ailments that create persistent antibodies than to be unchallanged but vulnerable to a killer attack.
Bravo for Red Hat. I have been using their OS since v4.0, and have been very happy with it.
Red Hat may me making an important mistake here...publishing this information in OTHER countries may not protect them from prosecution. Many anti-DMCA'ers tend to forget WHY the DMCA was drafted in the first place, and why this problem isn't confined to the US.
In 1996, the World Intellectial Property Organization, a subset of the World Trade Organization (WTO), got together with the intent to streamline copyright enforcement laws, penalties, and extradition rules. The result of this was the
1996 WIPO Copyright Treaty, which was signed by Clinton and approved by Congress. The DMCA is simply the WIPO Treaty codified into U.S. law. Why is this bad? Because it means that copyright violators in ANY signatory country can be extradited to ANY OTHER signatory country to be prosecuted for copyright violation. It also means that if Red Hat's "non-U.S." readme is read in another signatory country, they can be prosecuted
right here in the U.S.!
Current signatory countries include:
Argentina
Belarus
Bulgaria
Burkina Faso
Chile
Colombia
Costa Rica
Croatia
Czech Republic
Ecuador
El Salvador
Gabon
Georgia
Guinea
Honduras
Hungary
Indonesia
Jamaica
Japan
Kyrgyzstan
Latvia
Lithuania
Mali
Mexico
Mongolia
Panama
Paraguay
Peru
Philippines
Republic of Moldova
Romania
Saint Lucia
Senegal
Slovakia
Slovenia
Ukraine
United States of America
I do find it funny that the US and Japan are the only first world countries on the list, and that NO E.U. nations signed it.