The music and movie industries are busy looking at Steve Jobs' views on Digital Rights Management, but they shouild spare a glance or two toward the Free Software Foundation.

The word on the street is that a new and final draft of the GPLv3 will be released within the next week or so. While several provisions are still under negotiation (sort of -- it is a democratic process in which one player, the FSF, automatically holds a majority of the votes), one that is not is the FSF's unrelenting hostility to any form of DRM. Its purpose is to ensure that no program licensed under the GPL can be used in connection with any DRM program.

The main target here is, of course, Linux. Now, Linus Torvalds holds the licenses on the kernel of Linux, and he is skeptical about these new provisions. And FSF cannot impose anti-DRM provisions retroactively in any case. But the FSF controls many of the programs that surround the kernel in any serious distribution of Linux, and users need access to these and to future tweaks, which can be placed under GPLv3. So Torvalds' power is limited.

But the FSF's power is also limited. The content industries simply cannot afford to renounce their ability to implement forms of DRM in the future. So it is hard to see how Linux will survive as a viable enterprise operating system if this provision remains in the GPLv3. It seems doubtful that big computing services providers could realistically divide their operations to exclude the use of Linux for content clients while using it for others.

As I read the drafts of GPLv3, for example, I don't see how Google couild use GPL'ed code and at the same time implement its promises to install technology to weed out copyright violations. (If I am wrong on this point, I will take correction -- the GPL (any version) is so opaque that claiming a good grasp of its meaning counts as hubris. The relevant language from the last public draft of GPLv3 is set forth below.)

Similarly, it is hard to see how Sun could carry out its rumored plan to use the GPLv3 to license a Solaris kernel that would be surrounded by FSF software in a Linux-substitute. Server farms stocked with machines that cannot process any DRMed movie, TV, or music content? Get real.

Is it possible that Richard Stallman, chief priest of the FSF, is really Steve Ballmer in disguise, working to make Windows the only operating system for all content-related computing?

* GPLv3 draft language:

3. 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.

posted by James DeLong @ 10:19 AM | Free Culture Movement

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