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Making it easier to vote by moving the action from a polling station to your pocket could only increase turnout, especially in the primaries.

There are many professional elections that have switched to online voting in France and every time the E-Voting proponents trumpeted the turnout boost this would no doubt bring. Unfortunately they have essentially been wrong every time.

--jch

Four LCD ads panels designed by Samsung have been installed in the Parisian RATP subway stations corridors at the beginning of december, 400 will follow by june 2009, and so on (up to 1200 panels including the SNCF railway stations corridors) replacing progressively the previous backlit panels.

They are 70 inches full-HD LCDs, equipped with two cameras with a 140Â view angle, some technical information is available here :
http://www.01net.com/editorial/397944/la-pub-s-anime-sur-ecran-lcd-dans-le-metro-parisien/

picture of the back panel :
http://www.01net.com/editorial/397944/la-pub-s-anime-sur-ecran-lcd-dans-le-metro-parisien/?implus=/images/134917.jpg

and the first panels degraded by activists are pictured here :
http://bap.propagande.org/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=28294

Four LCD ads panels designed by Samsung have been installed in the Parisian RATP subway stations corridors at the beginning of december, 400 will follow by june 2009, and so on (up to 1200 panels including the SNCF railway stations corridors) replacing progressively the previous backlit panels.

They are 70 inches full-HD LCDs, equipped with two cameras with a 140Â view angle, some technical information is available here :
http://www.01net.com/editorial/397944/la-pub-s-anime-sur-ecran-lcd-dans-le-metro-parisien/

picture of the back panel :
http://www.01net.com/editorial/397944/la-pub-s-anime-sur-ecran-lcd-dans-le-metro-parisien/?implus=/images/134917.jpg

and the first panels degraded by activists are pictured here :
http://bap.propagande.org/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=28294

1. selling at a loss (vente à perte)
   
2. associating a free service with the sale (vente à prime)
   

AFNOR, the equivalent of the american INCITS, is going to say "no with comments" despite the tenacious pressure of Mircosoft France to modify the result in "abstention".

Source in french :
http://www.01net.com/editorial/357420/la-france-po urrait-refuser-l-openxml-de-microsoft-comme-standa rd-bureautique-international/

DVD encryption is harmless because it's been broken, right? WRONG! What the media conglomerates have done is to introduce the idea that DVDs should be region coded.

Une interprétation que ne partage pas Jean-Yves Mirski, délégué général du Syndicat de l'édition vidéo (SEV). Avec les derniers documents de travail du ministère de la Culture, nous allons dans le sens d'une reconnaissance qui est celle de la réalité d'aujourd'hui, commente-t-il. A savoir que les DVD vendus dans le commerce étant équipés de systèmes anticopie, la notion de copie privée (qui n'est pas un droit mais une exception), ne s'applique pas. Du reste, la copie privée ne s'applique véritablement qu'aux programmes diffusés en radio ou à la télévision.

Alas ! That the same thing was voted in France a couple weeks ago...

• http://www.silicon.fr/getarticle.asp?ID=12133 (in French -- most recent)
• http://www.01net.com/article/288611.html (in French, still talks about it as a project)
• http://www.smh.com.au/news/breaking/french-antiter ror-plans-to-hit-cybercafes/2005/09/27/11275868285 90.html (in English, presents it as a draft -- oldest)

Bah, our Minister of the Interior, Nicolas Sarkozy, is best buds with the Bush administration, so what can a guy do ? :-(

Have we forgotten about France? It seems the French are quite keen on this technology. As of 22 April 2005, Infosat started offering BPL as a commercial service in La Haye-du-Puits, in Normandy.

The technology is also being experimented with in Paris.

According to this very positive Liberation article, the French authority for the regulation of telecommunications recently gave the go-ahead for BPL operators to offer commercial services. Previously, BPL was not considered a proven technology and was only allowed to be offered as an experimental service.

The article goes on to explain that tests have shown that the technology is able to meet the obligations placed upon public networks and is seen as a way to provide low-cost internet.

This article says that in La Haye-du-Puits, it's priced at 24 euros a month for a 1mbps connection, including some kind of VOIP service.

Neither article mentions interference, except to say that it doesn't interfere with the electrical network!

(Translated from the original French.)

UFC-Que Choisir (a French consumer protection organization) has been granted a prohibition on DVD copy protection devices by the Paris Court of Appeal, these devices having been judged to be incompatible with private copying rights.

Arnaud Devillard, 01net., April 22, 2005 at 7:28pm

What consumer protection groups have not yet succeeded in gaining for CDs, they have just obtained for DVDs. On April 22nd, the Paris Court of Appeal prohibited the use of DVD-based copy protection systems. The reason? The incompatibility of this practice with private copying rights.

Two companies, Les Films Alain Sarde and Studio Canal, thus suffered a serious setback after having won the case in the Court of First Instance at the end of April 2004.

UFC-Que Choisir latched onto the case of a consumer who was unable to copy a DVD of Mulholland Drive, a David Lynch film produced by Alain Sarde and Studio Canal, onto a video cassette. This person wanted to watch the film at his mothers, who did not have a DVD player. The strict familial context mandated for the exercise of private copying rights was therefore applicable.

The tribunal also faulted the DVD producers for lack of consumer information. This was not entirely absent but was judged to be insufficient. The label CP for Copy Protected was indeed present on the jacket, but in small characters and not sufficiently explicit.

A worrying judgement for the French Video Producers Association.

Les Films Alain Sarde and Studio Canal have one month to unblock their DVDs. At the same time, Alain Sarde and Universal Pictures Video France must pay 100 euros in damages to the consumer in question. The same two companies, and Studio Canal, must also pay him 150 euros as well as 1,500 euros to the consumer association.

On the other hand, the court refused the request for damages and interest by UFC-Que Choisir against Studio Canal. The consumer association admitted to a legal misstep on its part, having chosen the wrong target for its request. The court also refused to release a judiciary communiqué on the decision.

It goes without saying, however, that UFC-Que Choisir is more than satisfied, as the damages and interest were not the main object of the case. This was rather the acceptance of its argument regarding private copying. This, and the fact that the decision can be applied to other cases as long as the original DVD was purchased legally, says Gaëlle Patetta of the associations legal department.

But for the delegate general of the Video Producers Association, Jean-Yves Mirski, the decision is worrisome. Not having had the time to analyze the decision in detail, the VPA has not yet decided whether to appeal the decision to a higher court (the Court of Cassation). But this is far from out of the question.

In any case, according to Jean-Yves Mirski, this judicial turn of events directly contradicts the European Copyright Directive. The latter permits the use of copy protection systems. This will certainly not make future legal action on this subject any simpler.

If you have an ATI video card, their's is free.

FusionSoft DVD 4.5, uses Fraunhofer codec - French site
4.5 again, other french site
FusionSoft, other versions, german(?) site

Those are good., but I don't think you can get much funnier than this one.

According to this http://www.neteconomie.fr/news/infoCOM.php3?id=838 (in french can't find anything in english, sorry), MP3Pro shouldn't be the only new codec blooming in spring 2001. Universal Musics wants to launch his new codec: BlueMatter (developped by Entrust (http://www.entrust.com/?).

According to this interview (once again, in french sorry) of the director of Universal Music France, BlueMatter should be used to make people pay for online music (I also read about Universal projects of online music and it seems to be streaming only).

So I guess that the new formats won't be as public as MP3 has been to prevent unauthorized players and encoders. One can always try to revers enginer the codec but it'll be hard both technically and legaly (especially in USA with the DCMA if they intermix an access control process with the codec). Beside, this was the strategy used by Apple with the Sorenson codec and unfortunatly there is still no free (as speech) Sorenson codec.