<nettime> PlayFair > Sarovar

[kevin lahoda <up@treerunner.com>]

Sarovar.org is India's first portal to host projects under Free/Open
source licenses. It is located in Trivandrum, India and hosted at Asianet
data center. Sarovar.org is customised, installed and maintained by
Linuxense as part of their community services and sponsored by River
Valley Technologies.

 From Sarovar's < http://sarovar.org/ > Latest News: "After a short
"vacation" thanks to a Cease and Desist letter from Apple, we're back
online. Many thanks to Sarovar for hosting us..  -PlayFair "

Sarovar now hosts The PlayFair project < http://playfair.sarovar.org/ >
which SourceForge has declined in order to avoid tangling with Apple's
decision to go DMCA on their ass <
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/04/09/1554203 >. Like something from
a Gibson novel, I wouldn't doubt if Sarovar rises to meet more than
another of these occasions in the near future.

And so, we have more contentious open source code hosted outside of the US
in order to circumvent unfavorable legal processes.

Offtshoring in itself is not all that new (another example: <
http://www.citi.umich.edu/u/provos/honeyd/ >). Here is how this one gets
interesting:  A big guy - Apple, goes a little sour, another (kind of) big
guy - SourceForge, takes the easy route, and then an offshore repository
stands in.

With all of this, one thing that should not be ignored is that SourceForge
should be shamed for not holding itself stronger. In a way SourceForge's
decline of PlayFair and non-usage of the Safe Harbor Provision Act <
http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/ > is an admit of defeat and a
failure to stand up for one's (community's) rights.

What comes out of this?

Well, maybe Apple wins because they avoid a chance of being tarnished.  
Imagine what consumer level acknowledgment of the reality of Apple
marketing a clean yet gritty 'Garage Band' motif (with all that punk rock
implies) while at the same time sleeping with DRM, recently RIAA, and now
DMCA, could entail... One can easily see that Apple is dancing itself into
a bit of a gamble. But then again, what does an Ipod zombie care about
these acronyms anyway?

What does SourceForge get? Not much. This only makes it easier for them to
weasle out of the next situation that comes up. Not to mention they also
missed a good chance to join PlayFair in telling Apple what's what.

k

http://sarovar.org/ http://sarovar.org/projects/playfair/
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/04/09/1554203
http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/
http://www.citi.umich.edu/u/provos/honeyd/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/09/playfair_dmca_takedown/




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