"Alfred M. Szmidt" ams@gnu.org
Gareth Bowker wrote:
Under UK law, that would be incitement to religious hatred, and illegal. Using your logic, because I allowed anyone to modify my work, I can be sued. This is clearly ridiculous.
But this wasn't an clear modification, it was the addition of new material too.
By adding an invariant section containing content forbidden in some country (incitement to religious hatred in the UK, for example, DMCA-busting advice in the US), you can impose geographic restrictions to the manual. A variation on the Encyclopedias Forbidden bug.
Of course, this is arguably just exploiting bugs in local laws, similar to the problems with Quake and the German Youth Protection Laws. It's still a pain in the backside.