SSSCA

[Ben.Westgarth at facs.gov.au]

Hi everyone,

Most of you are probably aware of the thouroughly disturbing bill currently
being tabled in the US known as the SSSCA.
It essentially proposes that any digital product must incoporate security
technology which will prevent it from being copied.
One of the many impacts such legislation would have is to make the production of
open source software illegal if the software did not incorporate some kind of
security which prevented it from being copied - not really 'open source' now is
it? :-(
Fortunately, this bill is still in its infancy and its primary target is not the
open source development community but rather media piracy etc. The fear is that
the bill will unintentionally pass with wide sweeping powers if congress is not
properly informed.

Anyway, because I'm not any kind of expert on this matter, and if you haven't
done so already, take the time to check out:

http://www.redhat.com/opensourcenow/article2.html

RedHat have set up a registry of disapproval to help them persuade congress that
the bill in its current state is a really bad idea.

Cheers,
Ben Westgarth