Red Hat funds copyright fight

Linux service provider Red Hat Inc. (rhat) announced on Thursday that it would partially fund the Electronic Frontier Foundation's attorneys in several cases being tried under the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. The company has started a foundation called the Red Hat Center for Open Source, which will advance open-source principles through research and selective investments. The foundation has given $50,000 to the EFF and $20,000 to Probono.net of New York to support education and participation in the debate surrounding fair use and legal reverse-engineering. Part of the EFF's funds will go toward its current defense of several programmers and Webmasters targeted by Hollywood Studios. Those studios are suing the defendants for their role in creating and distributing the program DeCSS, which allows users to play DVDs without adhering to the license terms set by the DVD Forum. Those terms require, for example, the playing of a special track on DVD containing ads and previews before the main menu can be accessed. -- Robert Lemos, ZDNet News