On Wednesday 21 January 2004 13:07, Sven Neumann wrote: > Hi, > > I'd like to draw the GIMP developer's attention on this Advogato > article. It has some interesting comments and links and somehow I > get the feeling that it would be unwise to ignore this subject: > > http://advogato.org/article/742.html > > What is especially worrying me is that there seems to exist a > proposal for EU legislation to require devices and software to > include counterfeit deterrence technology: > > http://www.ecb.int/pub/legal/c_25520031024en00080008.pdf > > This document explicitely asks for comments and IMO it would be a > good idea to prepare such a comment. We could do this as the GIMP > developers or try to corporate with the FSF Europe. > > > Sven A good point to focus this discussion seens to be pointing the Central Bank to the direction of including non-printable add-ons to currency, like holograms or other things. Our (Brazil's) latest bank note already have got an holographic strip on it, and ...it would be quite hard to reproduce that in the GIMP. :-) The idea of installing anti-counterfeit protection in any imaging device is similar to the one discussed for some time about the so called "analog hole" - in which the movie and audio industries try to address anti-copying tecnologies even on analog devices such as VCRs. Perfect nonsense, since the ones most interested in counterfeiting would just have to make a deal with a manufacturer in China, or other country with similar capabilities to get his hardware without such protection. In the case of software, it is even easier: all a conterfeiter would have to do would be to develop his own, in house software - which could be a little harder if all existing Open Source libraries related to graphics were forbidden, but not impossible. Spammers already do that. On the other hand, this very same idea threatens the very soul of Free Software, or Open Source. It is just not feasible., as it is plain obvious. The pdf pointed to by Sven however asks for a comment that could be well constructed together with FSF Europe, showing these and other facts. JS -><-
