[Mageia-dev] Mageia repository sections, licenses, restrictions, firmware etc

Fri Oct 15 17:25:57 CEST 2010

Tux99 wrote:
+> On Fri, 15 Oct 2010, Wolfgang Bornath wrote:
+>
+>   
+>> As mirror maintainer/owner of Mandriva Linux and future Mageia
+>> (ftp.mandrivauser.de) I discussed this problem with my friends and we
+>> decided not to mirror PLF although a German university does
+>> (ftp.gwdg.de). The point is that our mirror is hosted on a private
+>> server where just one person is liable (me, unfortunately). But we
+>> also decided to mirror the non-free branch of Mandriva Linux. There is
+>> non-free and there is patented and/or legally unclear software - we
+>> will definitely stay away from the latter when mirroring Mageia.
+>> Making a difference between such software on the parent mirror will
+>> make it easy for mirrors such as ours. Distributing such software in
+>> the same branches as "normal" software will make it impossible to
+>> mirror Mageia.
+>>     
+> wobo, I perfectly understand your reasons 
+
+IANAL, but as far as I know U.S. law exempts hosting sites from
+liability for things coming from the outside, provided they take the
+offending material down if the content owner requests it. 
+
+Now, there are some differences between that situation and this one.
+
+For one thing, a mirror maintainer chooses what to mirror.  In the case
+of choosing PLF, whose nature is no secret, I don't think a mirror maint
+could plead ignorance.  On the other hand, this could work for
+repositories that don't explicitly claim to be illegal, provided the
+mirror maint notifies Mageia so that the offending package can be moved
+to another repository if the claim is valid.
+
+For another, this is usually applied to copyrighted content, not
+software, although I seem to remember early requests of this type for
+dvdcss to be taken down.
+
+