On Wed, 09 Apr 2008 19:20:32 -0700, Aaron Griffin wrote:

On Wed, Apr 9, 2008 at 9:13 PM, JaDa wrote:

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I need some help and ideas, because the new Flashplugin 9.0.124.0 comes with DRM. http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=16293

Is it legal, if we crack it and build a DRM free Flashplugin?

If the installer itself is DRM'd, that's a different story.

I like to get it DRM free, because I don't know what DRM really does. Off course if someone like it with DRM support that will be no problem for me. But I am sure many people don't like DRM.

I'm not entirely sure what you're talking about. If you mean that flashplugin *support* DRM media, then what is the problem with that?

The reason is, that many Websites depend on Flashpluin 8 & higher. Alternative "Gnash" Builds are not ready for it. Is it legal, to crack Adobe Flash 9 and build a DRM free Flashplugin package? Then keep this package in AUR for those people how don't like DRM? -- Make it idiot proof and someone will make a better idiot.

JaDa wrote:

Is it legal, to crack Adobe Flash 9 and build a DRM free Flashplugin package? Then keep this package in AUR for those people how don't like DRM?

Well you seem to have decided so by uploading one to AUR.... what that is just the original flash plugin with a new name. Strange you uploaded it to AUR and then asked for help to make it do what is says in the package name rather than firstly using the forum to try getting help building it. It is almost as useful as uploading and empty PKGBUILD...

I took the liberty of quickly reading through the EULA of Adobe Flash Player. This is fairly straight forward: [Quote] 2.5 No Modification. 2.5.1 You may not modify, adapt, translate or create derivative works based upon the Software. You may not reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble or otherwise attempt to discover the source code of the Software except to the extent you may be expressly permitted to decompile under applicable law, it is essential to do so in order to achieve operability of the Software with another software program, and you have first requested Adobe to provide the information necessary to achieve such operability and Adobe has not made such information available. Adobe has the right to impose reasonable conditions and to request a reasonable fee before providing such information. Any such information supplied by Adobe and any information obtained by you by such permitted decompilation may only be used by you for the purpose described herein and may not be disclosed to any third party or used to create any software which is substantially similar to the expression of the Software. Requests for information should be directed to the Adobe Customer Support Department. [End Quote] You can find the source of this at http://www.adobe.com/products/eulas/players/flash/ Under section 2.5 No Modification. In short this means you cannot redistribute your modified versions of this software in a legal way unless you have their approval. Roman Kyrylych wrote:

2008/4/10, JaDa :

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Is it legal, to crack Adobe Flash 9 and build a DRM free Flashplugin package? Then keep this package in AUR for those people how don't like DRM?

In short - it is illegal.

On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 3:57 PM, Ondřej Kučera wrote:

Hi,

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I took the liberty of quickly reading through the EULA of Adobe Flash Player. This is fairly straight forward:

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[Quote] 2.5 No Modification.

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2.5.1 You may not modify, adapt, translate or create derivative works based upon the Software. You may not reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble or otherwise attempt to discover the source code of the Software except to the extent you may be expressly permitted to decompile under applicable law, it is essential to do so in order to achieve operability of the Software with another software program, and you have first requested Adobe to provide the information necessary to achieve such operability and Adobe has not made such information available. Adobe has the right to impose reasonable conditions and to request a reasonable fee before providing such information. Any such information supplied by Adobe and any information obtained by you by such permitted decompilation may only be used by you for the purpose described herein and may not be disclosed to any third party or used to create any software which is substantially similar to the expression of the Software. Requests for information should be directed to the Adobe Customer Support Department. [End Quote]

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You can find the source of this at http://www.adobe.com/products/eulas/players/flash/ Under section 2.5 No Modification.

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In short this means you cannot redistribute your modified versions of this software in a legal way unless you have their approval.

On the other hand - if it is only a PKGBUILD placed in unsupported, nobody's doing any redistributing of their software. Also, all the modifying is done by the end user, so it's up to them whether they want to do this (and risk some legal issues) or not. Thirdly, "illegal" is a word we should be careful about because each user is living in a different country with different laws. Which means that some parts of some EULAs might be simply invalid in some countries, so some users don't have to care about those parts.

Not that I want to encourage the existence of the package (I don't use Flash much and right now I'm totally uninterested in DRM flash animations/applications, so I don't really care) but the way I see it is this: (1) It *might* be illegal to have said PKGBUILD available for download from a webpage - this depends on the laws of the country where aur.archlinux.org resides. So this should be checked first. (2) If it is not the case, people responsible for running AUR are off the hook and then it's up to the users - it *might* be illegal to use the PKGBUILD to modify Adobe Flash in their country and it might not.

Hopefully I didn't make a mistake in my assumptions.

Ondřej

-- Cheers, Ondřej Kučera

Even if it was technically legal to keep a PKGBUILD on the AUR I don't think it should be home to this sort of crap. JaDa, you haven't given any real reason for what you're talking about other than telling everyone you're completely ignorant of what DRM actually is and what flash player actually does regarding it. Can someone delete the duplicate package from the AUR? I'm sure nobody else is going to steal your great idea so no need to park the name. -- Callan 'wizzomafizzo' Barrett

There's the example of Steinberg's VST, the SDK which you cannot re-distribute but _can_ place a working script of anywhere that expects it to be in the build directory. This Flash thing can be achieved similarly, though personally I don't see the point. On 10/04/2008, Firmicus wrote:

Callan Barrett wrote:

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Even if it was technically legal to keep a PKGBUILD on the AUR I don't think it should be home to this sort of crap. JaDa, you haven't given any real reason for what you're talking about other than telling everyone you're completely ignorant of what DRM actually is and what flash player actually does regarding it. Can someone delete the duplicate package from the AUR? I'm sure nobody else is going to steal your great idea so no need to park the name.

done