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

[Frank Griffin]

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.