Paris. 2001-06-05. The draft Hague Convention is to be revised from
June 6th. The Hague Convention defines a set of provisions for the
execution of foreign judgements in the event of international
disputes. Current drafts include industrial property and
intellectual
property within the potential scope of the proposed Convention. If
the
current draft were approved, the Hague Convention would eventually
allow:

1.to enforce US Internet patents in EU;

2.to enforce non-EU laws in order to censor EU Internet web
sites.

An EU company publishing on a server located in the EU a web service
which provides Internet airplane reservation services worldwide
could
be sued in the US by PriceLine for infringement on patent 5,794,207.
A
US judge could decide that this EU company should block access to
its
service to US citizens unless it gets a license from PriceLine.
Under
the current draft of the Hague Convention, such a judgement would
be
enforceable in the EU.

A researcher who publishes on a EU server an article on the
weaknesses
of encryption techniques used in the media industry (ex. CSS, SDMI,
etc.) could be sued in the US for infringing the Digital Millenium
Copyright Act. A US judge could decide that this EU researcher
should
block access to its research article to all US citizens. Under the
current draft of the Hague Convention, such a judgement would be
enforceable in the EU.

Because all known techniques to block access to a category of
citizens, people, country or IP adresses can be easily circumvented
through “email tunneling” (a technique which consists in
encapsulating
any Internet protocol into encrypted email messages), the only two
ways of enforcing foreign judgements which entail blocking access to
a
server require either to close EU services or contents which
infringe
on foreign laws, thus creating the conditions for global censorship,
or to prohibit encryption and deny privacy on the Internet.

Members of the Hague Conference include all EU countries as well as
Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China,
Croatia,
Cyprus, Czech Republic, Egypt, Estonia, Former Yugoslav Republic of
Macedonia, Georgia, Hungary, Israel, Japan, Republic of Korea,
Latvia, Malta, Mexico, Monaco, Morocco, Peru, Poland, Romania,
Slovakia, Slovenia, Suriname, Switzerland, Turkey, the United States
of America, Uruguay and Venezuela.

Some of these countries are well known for their aggressive software
patent practices or their restrictive laws on free speech. In
particular, EuroLinux feels very concerned by the eventual
enforceability of foreign Internet & software patents in Europe.
EuroLinux urges members of the Hague Conference to put on hold
current
plans to extend the execution of foreign judgements in the fields of
industrial and intellectual property until their effects on software
and the Internet have been carefully assessed.

References

CPT’s Page on the Hague Conference on Private International Law’s –
http://www.cptech.org/ecom/jurisdiction/hague.html

Hague Conference on Private International Law –
http://www.hcch.net/f/conventions/draft36f.html

Intellectual Property Draft –
http://www.cptech.org/ecom/jurisdiction/IPWorkgroup3.pdf

EuroLinux petition for a Software Patent Free Europe –
http://petition.EuroLinux.org/

PriceLine patent already in dispute –
http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/ctg949.htm

DeCSS Author Arrested –
http://www.slashdot.org/articles/00/01/25/0827258.shtml

Copyright Thugs – The SDMI, the RIAA and industry lawyers better get
something straight: preventing piracy doesn’t mean you can punish
researchers –
http://www.thestandard.com/article/0,1902,24208,00.html

French hackers break SDMI, publish results –
http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/hackscracks_article-2370.html

About EuroLinux – www.EuroLinux.org

The EuroLinux Alliance for a Free Information Infrastructure is an
open coalition of commercial companies and non-profit associations
united to promote and protect a vigourous European Software Culture
based on Open Standards, Open Competition, Linux and Open Source
Software. Companies members or supporters of EuroLinux develop or
sell
software under free, semi-free and non-free licenses for operating
systems such as Linux, MacOS or Windows.

The EuroLinux Alliance launched on 2000-06-15 an electronic petition
to protect software innovation in Europe. The EuroLinux petition has
received so far massive support from more than 70.000 European
citizens, 2000 corporate managers and 200 companies.

The EuroLinux Alliance has co-organised in 1999, together with the
French Embassy in Japan, the first Europe-Japan conference on Linux
and Free Software. The EuroLinux Alliance is at the initiative of
the
www.freepatents.org web site to promote and protect innovation and
competition in the European IT industry.

Permanent URL for this PR

http://petition.EuroLinux.org/pr/pr11.html
http://petition.EuroLinux.org/pr/pr11.pdf

Legalese

Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
All other trademarks and copyrights are owned by their respective
companies.

It’s at LinuxDoc.org and includes this news. “LinuxPorts.Com (poet’s website) has opened a online store to help support the LDP. They have used the artwork from their online comic,
TUX as supporting material. The artwork was used in the creation of mugs, shirts and mousepads. To purchase and donate to the LDP
please click here.”

Check it out at NPR.org. It’s in Real Audio format.

v=It’s at ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/alan/2.4/. Intermediate diffs are available from http://www.bzimage.org.

Cox says, “In terms of going through the code audit almost all the sound drivers
still
need fixing to lock against format changes during a read/write. Poll
creating
and starting a buffer as write does and also mmap during write, write
during
an mmap.”

2.4.5-ac9
o Fix gameport link problems (Vojtech Pavlik)
o Fix an oops in the sg driver (Tachino Nobuhiro)
o Fix brlock indexing bug (Takanori Kawano)
o Add parport_pc_unregister_port (Tim Waugh)
o Configure.help updates (Eric Raymond)
o Fix xircom_cb problems with some cisco kit (Ion Badulescu)
o Fix tdfxfb cursor rendering bug (Franz Melchior)
o Add driver for the sony vaio i/o controller (Stelian Pop,
Junchi Morita, Takaya Kinjo, Andrew Tridgell)
o Orinoco updates for symbol, intel, 3com cards (Jean Tourrihles)
o Use list_del_init in uhci driver (Herbert Xu)
o Fix a uhci SMP deadlock (Herbert Xu)
o Allow faster freeing of reisefs metadata (Chris Mason)
o Fix error path leaks in reiserfs (Chris Mason,
Vladimir Saveliev)
o Fix NFS problems triggered by 2.4.5 mmap change (Trond Myklebust)
o Resynchronize with m68k tree (Jes Sorensen)
o Add es1371 sound driver locking (Frank Davis)
o Fix a small error in the trident locking (Frank Davis)

2.4.5-ac8
o Fix sign handling bug in random sysctl (me)
| From Stanford tools
o Add more idents to the NS558 driver (Vojtech Pavlik)
o Fix oops on some HID descriptor sets (Vojtech Pavlik)
o Fix reuse bug in UML net code + clean up (Jeff Dike)
o ES1370 driver locking (Frank Davis)
o Update init/main.c patch for umask (Andrew Tridgell)
o Fix uml fault race, and looping fault on
protection error (Jeff Dike)
o Update devices.txt (H Peter Anvin)
o Update the airo driver (fix pci pm oops.
spinlock abuse, delete after kfree, unchecked
copies) (Jeff Garzik)
o Remove old UML umn driver (Jeff Dike)
o Fix resource leaks and printk levels in isapnp (Mike Borrelli)
o Add new procfs programming documentation (Erik Mouw)
o Fix usb xconfig breakage (Andrzej Krzysztofowicz)
o Replace accidentaly lost UP_APIC help (Mikael Pettersson)
o Olypmic driver update (Mike Phillips)
o Clean up LVM spelling, debug macros (Andreas Dilger)
o Make various bits of LVM static (Andreas Dilger)
o Make lvm_snapshot_use_rate its own function (Andreas Dilger)
o Make lvm_do_lv_create loop the right amount
o Fix lvm stamping on a semaphore causing an oops
o Fix lvm hardware block size handling (Andrea Arcangeli)

CNet has a review. “Users who want to try Linux but are frustrated with the steep learning curve will find a welcome change in this polished,
easy-to-use distribution. If any Linux distribution is actually making progress toward the consumer desktop, Linux-Mandrake is
surely it, offering a computing experience approaching the simplicity of the Macintosh. New users, especially those looking for a
quick and easy alternative to Windows or the Mac OS, will be hard pressed to find a smoother, easier transition to the world of
Linux.”

From PR Newswire: Zuma Networks, a pre-IPO growth
company driving the future emergence of IP services within high-speed network
fabrics, announced today that it will demonstrate the first ever high
bandwidth firewall network with layer 3 switching and integrated Linux
multiprocessing at the SUPERCOMM 2001 show, June 5 – 7, at the Georgia World
Congress Center in Atlanta, Georgia, booth #4517. Zuma Networks will be
demonstrating its LightReef layer 2/3/4 switch-router family, the Z1, Z4
and Z16, in multiple configurations.

From a column at ZDNet: “The most frustrating aspect of the open source crowd is the assumption that if you’re
not part of their solution you’re part of the problem — that one must choose between
Free Software and the Dark Side, as represented by ‘traditional’ software companies
such as Microsoft.”

ZDNet reports that Intel is saying Sharp will use an Intel StrongARM processor in its upcoming handheld running Linux. Sharp wouldn’t comment, though.

Slashdot has a Q&A with attorney Dan Ravicher, who’s interested in Open Source issues.

June 5, 2001 Naperville Illinois – With only two months since the original Beta showing of the product at Spring COMDEX in Chicago, the Little Blue Box posts its first major accomplishment with a distribution relationship with Linux Central, one of the leading eCommerce portals associated with Linux industry product distribution.

PJ Hyett, of the Little Blue Box group said, “It is one thing to prototype and then manufacture a computer system. Start-up businesses do that sort of thing everyday. It is another thing all together to be recognized by the peers in your industry group and get a warm reception in the distribution channels. In many cases getting distributed is the single most difficult problem many new businesses face. That is why you see so much product from new start up companies like ours show up so quickly at Internet Auction Sites. A lot bigger companies have failed at this first step. We are very pleased with the progress we have made, and by now there should be NO QUESTION that we are out to prove the dynamic power Open Source offers to the IT world, and that our target is Microsoft.

We are very pleased that our first distribution relationship is with one of the most established and successful families of web portals. Internet.Com is an established leader in the Internet community, and their Linux Central eCommerce portal is one of the major Linux distribution sites in the world today. We would be hard pressed to find a better start in the retail marketing phase of our product development. We are also very pleased to announce the release of our Version 1.1 of the system and software build, with a couple significant product improvements.”

“Distributing products such as The Little Blue Box is a large part of our mission to provide Open Source solutions for the Linux market,” said James Gray, of LinuxCentral.com. “We are very excited about the prospect of offering these truly unique products to the Linux community,” Gray added.

What is a Little Blue Box?

• A “Blue Box” is a term used by gadget hobbyist and hackers for a device that is capable of doing something revolutionary, possibly illegal, or so good it should be illegal. It is in that thought process that this product was named, the Little Blue Box Email Sever. It is so powerful, so simple, and so cost effective our competitors will wish it would be made illegal. This product is the first of its kind in the world. It is a completely 100% total email solution for the small business.
• The Little Blue Box Email Sever is simple to set up. It comes completely 100% pre-configured, and works right out of the box. There is no server software to set up, no hardware assembly to mess with. The business or organization simply plugs it into a power outlet and plugs it into a LAN connected to the Internet, and it works.
• The Little Blue Box Email Sever is simple to use and manage. A secretary with basic understanding of a computer can use the simple administrative software in less than TEN minutes to add, edit or remove email accounts.
• The Little Blue Box Email Sever is reliable. The hardware is powerful but basic, with little that can fail. The only moving parts are drives and fans. And, even if it does fail, it is simple to diagnose, fix or replace.
• The Little Blue Box Email Sever is more than a product, it is a SERVICE as well. If the organization using the Little Blue Box Email Sever experiences any kind of failure, be it the server itself, the company LAN, or the Internet connection; email is NEVER lost. Our MX service assures that email finds a safe place to reside until the server is back on line.
• The Little Blue Box Email Sever has staying power. Again, this is due to SERVICE. Our RPM service makes sure that your server gets its software upgraded on a quarterly basis.
• The Little Blue Box is the simplest and fastest solution to the problems associated with LAN based email when using a fixed Internet connection such as ISDN, DSL, wireless broadband or a T1. It is REALLY as easy as 123. Your order it, you plug it in, and it works.

The Little Blue Box will begin its distribution run at the Linux Central web portal located at http://www.linuxcentral.com starting Tuesday June 5th.

All inquires for purchasing please go to http://www.linuxcentral.com

All licensing requests for the Little Blue Box are available through the web site http://www.littlebluebox.com. The LOGO and Indicia graphic for LBB were developed by Nitrozac, the very cool artist behind the after Y2K series at Geek Culture

Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds.
Microsoft(tm) and Exchange(tm) Server are trademarks of Microsoft
Little Blue Box(tm) is a trademark of Ibss, Inc.