Freies Vortragsprogramm (Sa, 06.05.2006)

Digital Restriction Management (DRM) and the GPLv3

von Georg Greve (Free Software Foundation Europe)

Samstag, 06.05.2006, Saal 6.1, 16:00-17:00 Uhr

Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) is one of the most-debated topics in general, and in relation to the review process for the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 3. In his talk, Georg Greve will give an introduction to the basics of DRM, what are the promised benefits, who wants it, and what are the dangers of DRM to authors, artists and society as a whole

On this background the talk will then focus on the DRM-specific language of the GNU GPLv3, clear out some misunderstandings that have occured over the past months, explain what these paragraphs do or do not do, and why this is necessary.

Über den Autor Georg Greve:

Born 10. March 1973, Georg Greve has a classic scientific background as "Diplom" Physicist with biophysics, physical oceanography and astronomy as minor fields of study. His interdisciplinary diploma thesis was written in the field of nanotechnoloy at the computer science faculty of the University of Hamburg.

Software development was part of his life since he was 12 years old and besides a first publication of a program in a professional journal in 1991, it partly financed his studies when he managed the software development to evaluate SQUID-sensor data in the biomagnetometic laboratory in the University hospital of Eppendorf (UKE) in Hamburg, Germany.

In 1993 he came in touch with Free Software and GNU/Linux. Being European speaker for the GNU Project since 1998, Georg Greve at this time also began writing the "Brave GNU World," a monthly column on Free Software published in the German Linux-Magazin and other magazines worldwide, as well as the internet in up to 10 languages.

In early 2001, he initiated the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE, FSF Europe), the first Free Software Foundation outside the United States of America and the only transnational Free Software Foundation so far. Construction and coordination of FSFE as European non-governmental organisation, as well as its integration and coordination in global context was the focus of his work in the past years.

The range of activities spanned areas like technology, politics, society, and economy as well as classical management. Among other things, Georg Greve was invited as an expert to the "Commission on Intellectual Property Rights" of the UK government or represented the coordination circle of German Civil Society during the first phase of the United Nations (UN) World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) as part of the German governmental delegation; he als furthered networking the Civil Society working groups on European level as well as for the thematic working group on Patents, Copyrights, Trademarks (PCT) and Free Software.