The Free Software Foundation has posted a new draft of GPLv3. It appears that changes to clarify have been made, but no serious substantive alterations, and certainly no giving in to the objections of any of the commercial players in the open source space.

The press release focuses on DRM, saying:

The new draft clarifies that the license only directly restricts DRM in the special case in which it is used to prevent people from sharing or modifying GPLv3-covered software. The clarified DRM section preserves the spirit of the original GPL, which forbids adding additional unfree restrictions to free software. GPLv3 does not prohibit the implementation of DRM features, but prevents them from being imposed on users in a way that they cannot remove.

This is not exactly crystal clear, but it seems to be directed at curing a problem raised by Linus Torvalds, among others -- that the language could be read as requiring users to provide the keys used in the encryption of personal data. However, it is not intended to allow GPLed code to be used in connection with DRM applied to content, such as music or movies.

The draft license provision on DRM now reads:

No Denying Users’ Rights Through Technical Measures. Regardless of any other provision of this License, no permission is given for modes of conveying that deny users that run covered works the full exercise of the legal rights granted by this License.

No covered work constitutes part of an effective technological “protection”
measure under section 1201 of Title 17 of the United States Code. When you convey a covered work, you waive any legal power to forbid circumvention of technical measures that include use of the covered work, and you disclaim any intention to limit operation or modification of the work as a means of enforcing the legal rights of third parties against the work’s users.

Stallman discussed the DRM issue at the recent Barcelona conference:

[Section: Tivoisation and Digital Restrictions Management]

There are several primary areas where version 3 is different from version 2. One is in regard to tivoisation. Now, you've probably never heard the term "tivoisation", because I made it up, but it's an extrememly important threat to our freedom. It's named after a product called the "TiVo", which is capable of recording many television channels at once and then the user can watch any of the shows later on.

However, it's also designed to restrict the user in certain ways. There's no way to copy a recording out of the TiVo, and I think it erases them after a certain amount of time, and it also reports everything the user watches. So it's spying on the user all the time.

[22:30]

The TiVo, as it happens, contains a small GNU+Linux operating system. It contains, therefore, several Free Software packages under the GNU GPL and the GNU GPL requires them to make the source code available to the users, and I believe they do. The users can then modify the source code, compile it, and install it in the TiVo. At which point, it won't run, because the TiVo contains a special mechanism that notices if the programs have changed and refuses to run at all. It just shuts down. That is tivoisation: designing machines so that if the user installs modified versions they can't really function.

[23:43]

Tivoisation turns freedom number 1 into a sham. Freedom 1 is the freedom to study the source code and change it so that the program does what you want. With tivoisation, this freedom becomes purely theorectical. Yes, you can change the program so that it could be run in some other machine, and that might be useful for someone, but you can't change it and run it on the TiVo, and this is a deliberate restriction that they impose on the public.

The usual motive for tivoisation is because they are doing something else nasty, and that something else is called DRM - Digital Restrictions Management [repeats in Spanish "Gestion Digital Restrictiones"?], in other words, the functionality of refusing to function. Where the machine says: "I don't wanna let you see this file" - "I don't wanna let you copy part of this file" - "I don't wanna print this file for you, 'cause I don't like you". That is DRM.

Freedom number 1 is the freedom to change the program to do what you want. If you want to change the program so that you can't view certain files anymore, if you want to change the program so that you can't copy part of certain files, or you can't print certain files, you should be free to do that. GPL version 3 respects your freedom to do that. You can then distribute that modified version. GPL version 3 respects and defends your freedom to do that, but it will not let you take those same freedoms away from people who get that modified version.

[26:03]

GPL version 3 is designed to prohibit tivoisation, and the way we do this is by saying that whoever distributes the program, must provide whatever keys are necessary to install modified versions of the program such that they can really do the job.

Freedom 0 says you have the right to run the program as you wish for any purpose. This means you have a right to take your copy and use it on your computer for whatever purpose. This does not mean that you have a right to impose your purpose on other users. If your purpose is to restrict other people, and you want to do it by giving them a GPL covered program then you're out of luck because they, at that point, are the ones entitled to freedom using their copies. They're entitled to the freedom to change the program and run it for any purpose of their's and you have no right to control what they do. That's what we say to some people who demand the right to use our software to impose DRM on the public.

[27:50]

Yes they have the right to implement DRM and distribute the software, but they don't have the right to impose it on the general public in a way that they cannot escape from. The GPL version 3 draft has other measures in it to try and stop DRM as well, but again, not by prohibiting people from implementing those malicious features but rather by helping to safeguard users from evil laws that most countries in Europe have already adopted, which forbid users to do that. There's a law in spain, I'm almost certain.

Spain has implemented the EUCD right? Pablo? Tomorrow? oh. Is there a battle going on here. In France there is a big battle over the implementation of the [EUCD]. I'm afraid, if there's no battle in Spain, they're surely going to do something much worse than the directive requires. The directive requires making it illegal to distribute, at least commercially, software that is capable of freeing users from the restrictions imposed by DRM.

GPL version 3 contains language specifically designed to say that this power is waived, giving users permission to make the other software that interoperates.