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You mean, just like it is in France? Where using encryption to encode your mail is considered criminal?????

Nice trolling: encryption is perfectly legal in France. The French chapter of the Free Software Foundation even took care of getting an official approval for encryption tools like GnuPG and OpenSSL. See http://fsffrance.org/dcssi/dcssi.fr.html#dossiers (link in French)

And for a governmental source, look at the ssi.gouv.fr website, specifically on:
http://www.ssi.gouv.fr/fr/reglementation-ssi/cryptologie/index.html (link in French)
first paragraph states:"Under article 30 of Law 2004-575 of June 21st, 2004 on confidence in the digital economy, the use of cryptology is free in France."

"I read the court ruling .. What I understand of the ruling (I'm french, but I'm no lawyer)"

Do you mind producing a translation of the ruling so as the rest of us can confirm your understanding. What does this bit say:

- cute -
Considerant que la societe EDU 4 replique:

- qu'elle n'a jamais dissimule l'utilisation d'un logiciel libre VCN, sous license GNU GPL.

- qu'elle n'a jamais souscrit l'obligation d'etre proprietaire des logiciels mis en oeuvre et n'a jamais pretendu etre l'auteur du logiciel GNU-GPL

- qu'elle disposiat la possibilite de modifier corriger et adapter le logiciel libre sous license GNU GPL, de l'integrer dans sa solution informatique et de distribuer le logiciel integrant les modifications qu'elle a apportees ..
- paste -

'In a landmark ruling that will set legal precedent, the Paris Court of Appeals decided last week that the company Edu4 violated the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL)'

"I read the court ruling .. What I understand of the ruling (I'm french, but I'm no lawyer)"

Do you mind producing a translation of the ruling so as the rest of us can confirm your understanding. What does this bit say:

- cute -
Considerant que la societe EDU 4 replique:

- qu'elle n'a jamais dissimule l'utilisation d'un logiciel libre VCN, sous license GNU GPL.

- qu'elle n'a jamais souscrit l'obligation d'etre proprietaire des logiciels mis en oeuvre et n'a jamais pretendu etre l'auteur du logiciel GNU-GPL

- qu'elle disposiat la possibilite de modifier corriger et adapter le logiciel libre sous license GNU GPL, de l'integrer dans sa solution informatique et de distribuer le logiciel integrant les modifications qu'elle a apportees ..
- paste -

'In a landmark ruling that will set legal precedent, the Paris Court of Appeals decided last week that the company Edu4 violated the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL)'

It's an idiosyncracy of French law. The plaintiff here was a customer who did, yes, successfully sue for the source code. It probably couldn't happen in the US or UK.

FSF France's take on this finds this noteworthy:

"But what makes this ruling unique is the fact that the suit was filed by a user of the software, instead of a copyright holder. It's a commonly held belief that only the copyright holder of a work can enforce the license's terms - but that's not true in France. People who received software under the GNU GPL can also request compliance, since the license grants them rights from the authors."

Just when you thought the German courts were GPL-friendly, this shows up. Vive la France!

> and one of its core tenets is a formatting structure that makes it a lot more difficult to write illegible code

> and one of its core tenets is a formatting structure that makes it a lot more difficult to write illegible code

Yeah, and just as proof of that look at this code:
http://reserve.fsffrance.org/tinyp2p/www.freedom-to-tinker.com/tinyp2p.html

Hah. Lovely as that sounds, I don't think that is the truth. Court cases are brought against filesharers, ISP illegally supplying their addresses to record companies who lack court orders.

In truth, no-one here cares about DRM, free software or copyright. It's well outside the public conscience. Media coverage of this stuff, with the exception of the technology program on BBC world/news, there is none. Any colunns in newspaper typically contain laudible inaccuracies, laughible misconceptions and livacious prejudices. Most people don't know what DRM (or a stem cell) is.

In France, the parliament lobbied to rule the development of free software illegal (1), a threat to french software businesses. So much for freedom, equality and brotherhood. In the UK, *very* few people outside labs and universities use linux. Some people use FireFox cos it's quite good but they wouldn't understand the GNU public license. *I* get out, too.

http://fsffrance.org/news/article2005-11-25.en.htm l

That was supposed to be:

French Government Lobbied to Ban Free Software and
France about to get worst copyright law in Europe? but then this! I just don't know whether to hug or punch them!

(Slipped and hit submit instead of preview :( )

French Government Lobbied to Ban Free Software and
France about to get worst copyright law in Europe? but then this! I just don't know whether to hug or punch them!

ready "to sue free software authors who will keep on publishing source code" should the "VU/SACEM/BSA/FA Contents Department"[1] bill proposal pass in the Parliament.

See the [1] there? In TFA it refers to this. According to the Google Translation, the problem is a proposed amendment being added (seemingly at the last minute; damn goofy translations) to a bill called DADVSI which is nearly ready to pass. In American terms, we call this a "rider" and it's how all the devious crap gets through the system.

So...yes the French Government. Fuckwit AC.

The DCMA, the US's favorite export.

Actually the DMCA as well as its EUCD european counterpart are both implementations of the TRIPS international treaty which was brought to us by our loved and highly democratic World Trade Organization.

It also seems that EUCD is yet more restrictive than DMCA, actually the french implementation of EUCD, if adopted by the parliament at the end of the month, will simply make it illegal to publish free software .

It's more than time for all this nonsense to stop.

You can read...
* Richard Stallman on Free Software and Free Software.
* Free Software Foundation France on Free Software and Free Software
... to understand that Free Software or Open Source is not the solution to the lack of democraty when you introduce Electronic Voting.
Please remember that 99% of the citizen-elector can not read code and that the 1% left can not verify what code is running the day of the election.

Dear Free Software friends,

A self organized development hosting facility, Gnaa! (Gnaa is Not An Acronym), is available to all Libre Software developpers and users at http://gnaa.org/. It was created in January 2004 and is offering the same services as Savannah and SourceForge.net.

Philosophically, Gnaa! follows the lead of the Free Software Foundation. Projects hosted on Gnaa! will be distributed under licensing terms compatible with each other so that they can be mixed freely. Running these projects on your own machine will not require any non-free software.

The self organized side of Gnaa! means that it is run by its users. Anyone is welcome to contribute to the maintainance of the hardware and software platform. Entering the Gnaa! maintainers team can happen within the hour : propose yourself, answer support requests if you can, provide a patch to implement the feature you want. No contribution will be ignored or discarded: if you make a mistake we rely on you to fix it.

Because Gnaa! is philosophically and technically compatible with Savannah, we started to implement an import/export procedure so that projects can move freely between Gnaa! and Savannah. The compromission of Savannah last year showed that it is critical to have many Free Software development facilities where projects can be backed up easily.

Happy Hacking,

About:
Gnaa! has been started in January 2004 by Loic Dachary (Savannah's project iniator), Mathieu Roy (myself, deeply involved in Savannah since 2002) and Vincent Caron (involved in Savannah since the summer 2003). The hardware is provided by the Free Software Foundation France and the bandwidth is offered by Free, a French Internet Services Provider.

As a "frenchie", I obviously follow news on this subject. The french branch of the european FSF has launched a fund to help fight this forthcoming bill.

Since 1985, here in France, we have the right to copy media for private use. It is also possible for public & non-profit organizations to adapt existing media for disabled people.

As such, copy protected CD's are already illegal...