Thread: France planning to ban free software??
re: http://www.fsffrance.org/news/article2005-11-25.en.html Francois, do you know anything about this? I haven't heard anything about it really and to be honest it sounds crazy, but I'd like to get some more details. -- Robert Treat Build A Brighter Lamp :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL
Le Samedi 03 Décembre 2005 01:32, Robert Treat a écrit : > re: http://www.fsffrance.org/news/article2005-11-25.en.html > > Francois, > do you know anything about this? I haven't heard anything about it really > and to be honest it sounds crazy, but I'd like to get some more details. I think you're right. It's totaly crazy, a really dumb idea. It seems that the french music corporation (SACEM, our french RIAA) is having a hard time dealing with piracy. So, they would like to be able to sue people giving technical way to download illegally... Someone writing software without DRM capabilities would be a target. It means every free software developer. Here is the file from the french government : http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/12/dossiers/031206.asp There's a lot of articles on french web sites : http://www.eucd.info/138.shtml http://standblog.org/blog/2005/11/29/93114528-c-est-pas-pour-peter-l-ambiance-mais http://www.glazman.org/weblog/dotclear/index.php?2005/11/28/1409-honte-a-la-sacem http://formats-ouverts.org/blog/2005/09/29/552-les-drm-sont-declares-en-urgence http://formats-ouverts.org/blog/2005/11/28/629-les-drm-obligatoires http://www.zdnet.fr/actualites/informatique/0,39040745,39290820,00.htm?xtor=1 http://linuxfr.org/2005/11/24/19945.html There's also some important newspapers writing articles on this but I only found one on the web : http://abonnes.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-651865,36-716172@51-698751,0.html (I think you need to be registered to read this article, so here is an excerpt : Cette inflexion de la stratégie des représentants de l'industrie musicale était attendue. En effet, la Sacem et la SCPP ont récemment dû revoir leur stratégie en matière de lutte contre le téléchargement de fichiers musicaux. Le refus de la CNIL de permettre à des sous-traitants de la SCPP de ficher les internautes contrefacteurs a désamorcé l'idée d'une traque de masse. A défaut de pouvoir efficacement lutter contre les auteurs de téléchargement illégaux, c'est sans surprise que les représentants des ayants droit se retournent contre ceux qui fournissent les moyens techniques de télécharger. Quid du principe du logiciel libre, celui du partage de la connaissance sans limitation et des outils qui y mènent ? Est-ce vraiment le problème des majors ? ). There is a petition against it : http://eucd.info/petitions/index.php?petition=2 French governement will try to vote this law in hurry during Christmas holiday (22 and 23 december). Of course, there will be less people to vote against it. I don't understand why they would do such a thing. Our administration is using a lot of free software. They are using it more and more. Don't they see where they are going to ? I hope this can help you to better understand. At least, you'll have more details with the above links. Regards. -- Guillaume. <!-- http://abs.traduc.org/ http://lfs.traduc.org/ http://traduc.postgresqlfr.org/ -->
Hi, > do you know anything about this? I haven't heard anything about it > really and > to be honest it sounds crazy, but I'd like to get some more details. I heard about it last week. As Guillaume says it is pretty crazy. I guess it's a desperate move by an industry lobby who's overwhelmed by tehcnologies they don't master (and they're not used to not mastering technologies). So they would rather forbid the whole concept of free software than trying to be clever. It's always easier playing the big bad ass rather than using your neurons (see the Bush government). In a way it's rather similar to the fight agains terrorism: traditional structures are overwhelmed so they turn to strong-arm tactics at the expense of democracy and all. The scary thing about this law proposal is that there are enough crazy people in the French governement right now that such a law could pass. In particular, a power-hungry maniac like Sarkozy (the Interior Minister and senior fascist) is ready to do just about anything to get people to elect him in 2007. The other risk is that the law is planned to be debated in parliament very soon to prevent a debate from being organised. It might be hard to mobilise quickly enough and the law could pass as just one more document to sign. Then again, it's not all dark. After intense lobbying the licensing law that Americans wanted to impose on Europe was refused by the European Parliament. Also the French National Police Force and the French equivalent of the IRS have both recently migrated to Open Office, so there's quite a strong current among the French administration in the favor of open source software. Cheers (or try to, anyway) --------------- Francois Home page: http://www.monpetitcoin.com/ "If it's not from me, it's from Confucius" - Lao Tse
On Fri, Dec 02, 2005 at 19:32:57 -0500, Robert Treat <xzilla@users.sourceforge.net> wrote: > > re: http://www.fsffrance.org/news/article2005-11-25.en.html > > Francois, > do you know anything about this? I haven't heard anything about it really and > to be honest it sounds crazy, but I'd like to get some more details. The impression I got from this was that it was a poorly written attempt to ban P2P software that if read literally would ban such things as ftp and perhaps operating systems.