[billbears]

Not sure I understand. Anyway of explaining this is some form of layman's terms?

[demlosers]

If you find a security hole in somebody elses software, you cannot publish your findings, That would violate the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, and exposing you to possible prosecution.

[demlosers]

If people cannot get the word out about flaws it would remain a problem until the proprietary software company fixes it, which may never happen. Since the word did not go out, it’s not a well known problem. The OEM may forget about the problem or could drag their feet to fix the flawed software, because there is less pressure to do so. The outlaws in the hacking community(not saying all are outlaws) would most likely hear of the problem and exploit it, which in the end, leaves the user(you and me) vulnerable to hacks.

[TechJunkYard]

Not sure I understand. Anyway of explaining this is some form of layman's terms?

In this particular case, RedHat has posted some fixes for "potential security holes" on its web site, but the explanation of why these are security holes cannot be provided to US eyes lest they violate the DMCA.

So the details have been provided to a web site in the UK, which has copyrighted them, and has instituted a mechanism (a click-thru license agreement) that controls access to the information. As shown in the article above, the license agreement specifically states that if you are in the USA, you are not allowed in.

Under the DMCA, it is illegal for those of us in the USA to represent that we are NOT in the USA, for the purpose of reading the details, since that would circumvent a technological measure used to control access to a copyrighted work.

Now, do you see how stupid this is?