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France Hostile To Open Source Software?
AdamWeeden writes "According to the Free Software Foundation of France the French Department of Culture is telling free (as in speech) software providers that 'You will be required to change your licenses ... You shall stop publishing free software,' and warn they are ready 'to sue free software authors who will keep on publishing source code.'" From the post: "It appears that publishing Free Software giving access to culture is about to become a counterfeiting criminal offence. Will SACEM sue France Télécom R&D research labs for having published Maay and Solipsis (P2P pieces of software used to exchange data)? Up to this point, the rather technical debate surrounding the issues addressed by DADVSI bill (copyright and neighbouring rights in the information society) makes one ask: Just how much control do the Big Players in the field of culture want to seize? It now looks like years of quibbling have put an end to compromises." More information on the DADVSI bill is available at Infos-du-net.com. They've come a long way since last year.
Because Microsoft France surely just made one.
Nice to see that the US doesn't have a monopoly on loony government agencies and legislation...that's obviously in the public domain.
Toute votre base sont appartiennent à nous
il n'y aura aucun logiciel libre en France !
It's interesting to see that while people rag on America all the time for being a bunch of corporate shills, we are very friendly to OSS, the Gov't even makes its own publicly available (think World Wind, SELinux), and OSS adoption is high. Meanwhile, our french friends are hostile to it. And they say OSS is a liberal thing.
I am Spartacus
When has France ever been hostile towards something and then come out on top?
If I think something is funny, I will probably mod it +1 Insightful. "It's funny because it's true."
I was on the fence, but now they've done it. I am officially giving up croissants, snobbery, and disdain for other people. I just can't be associated with them anymore.
There goes VLC.
French programmers could just develop their software under assumed pen-names and publish their free software on servers overseas outside of the French government's jurisdiction. It's a sucky law if it passes, but if it does pass, I'm eager as hell to see it broken en masse to the point of it being unenforceable. Stereotypes about surrendering notwithstanding, of course...
Slashdot requires you to wait longer between hitting 'reply' and submitting a comment.
What is "access to culture"? The article specifically uses two P2P file-sharing programs as examples. Is this about pirating media (music, movies), or about publishing source code?
The proposed prohibition is specifically against open source software that allows you to defeat drm, not open source software in general.
Still a bad trend in any event
This, were it to pass, would effectively shut out France and French OSS developers while not changing a damn thing anywhere else. OSS will still be available to anyone in France who wishes to download it, but France will have been cut out of a large and quickly growing segment of the tech industry. The most popular server OS, most popular web server, Internet DNS, and most popular MTA, among other software, will no longer be legal in France. How will they even route their Internet traffic?
Have they thought about this at all?
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
"Magouilles"
With an "o", sorry.
You can't take the sky from me...
Freedom fries?
Wait...That won't work, since it's about free-as-in-freedom software...
Free-as-in-beer fries!
What can you expect from a nation that has 300 kinds of cheese?
... The French Government is preparing a referendum to see if French citizens are awake yet.
From what can be gathered, the majority of French went to sleep about the time that Renault and Peugeot withdrew their products from the US market because their cars were not competitive, and judged to be too unreliable and lacking in innovation.
Sorry. I shouldn't be so snide. I actually LIKE most of the French people I know. The trouble is, their Government wants to have its own planet. Ain't gonna happen.
You simply can not legislate prosperity (and jobs) into existence. If people are willing to work for free and produce quality output, that is a force you cannot stop.
Even the French can't do it.
Russia
Watch for Penguins, they eat Apples and throw rocks at Windows.
Sell it for a dollar and include a dollar rebate and call it Frenchware instead of Freeware
Demented But Determined.
During the night of 22nd to 23rd December 2005, while everybody is preparing for Christmas, the French Parliament will rule about the "DADVSI" law. This vote will be made with minimal discussion, as an "emergency" has been declared on this law.
France is such an enigmatic country, you may consider there's probably a trade union of programmers in close-source shops who feel threatened and therefore want the government to protect their jobs.
I keep expecting France to collapse from it's own inertia, but it does seem to keep on truckin'
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Just a couple months ago, we mailed a "thank you" gift to a family friend in Paris. We shipped her a nice cashmere sweater.
We then found out that our friend had to pay an extra ~$50 fine to pick up the sweater - it was held by some sort of customs agency. Apparently, France has a ban on 'imported textiles' - if someone ships you a sweater, some socks, or even a tshirt, you'll be fined.
Lame, snobby, and stupid. If you don't like someone in france, send them a sock each day.
http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/ 21/180220&from=rss
Would this mean they would be using illegal software?
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
Ça c'est fucké...
That is the most fubar'd proposed bit of IP legislation I have ever heard...
If you want to give free access to your own IP, why the devil should it be against the law?
This is bizarre... I cannot think of an industry outside music and movies that would even think of lobbying for such legislation in any nation... Hell, Wall Street uses a lot of OSS, and I imagine that the Euro-zone financial giants do as well.
This is quite possibly the most myopic bit of IP legislation I have ever seen.
Vous n'avez aucune chance de survivre faites votre temps.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Maybe this is all just a misunderstanding and France isn't upset abut the actual terms of the license, but that the license isn't written in proper French legalese, and thus is a pox on the French language.
I didn't think it was possible, but seeing all these replies makes me kind of ashamed of being part of the Slashdot community. I mean, occasional trolls are one thing, but more than hundred posts of fresh new jokes and insightful rants about France, that's just really embarassing. Signal to noise was never this bad. And the only on-topic comments by people who bothered to read the article came down to this being sort of a non-issue.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
Let me tell you that the editorial's title ("France Hostile To Open Source Software?") is very misleading for a very simple reason: the anti Free Software statements have been made by the SNEP and SCPP, which are --guest what-- 2 lobbying groups created by various music companies. Here is a small list of companies belonging to those groups: Sony BMG, EMI, Universal, Warner Music France, Walt Disney Company, etc. Complete lists can be found on their websites:
Those 2 lobbying groups are obviously anti-P2P (and they say it clearly on their respective websites) and that explains totally why they are so anti Free Software, knowing that BitTorrent as well as other popular P2P tools are Free Softwares. But in no way whatsoever have the French in general, or the France Government, made any anti Free Software statements. We all remember those various stories that prove quite the contrary !
As a supporter of Free Software, and french citizen, I am quite sad to see this story posted on Slashdot. It just makes people have a bad opinion about us :(
LPayed 6.5 million
Made New zealand rapid about anti-nuclear.
They where anti nuclear before the sinking, buit the pretty much cemented it.
Finally:
"Operation SATANIC was a public relations disaster.."
you think? who the hell allowed it to be called that? I mean, it could have brought world peace, and that name still would have made it a public relations nightmare.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
My French is really rusty (but better than Babelfish?), but a bit of digging online found another source saying this: "L'amendement "VU / SACEM / BSA / FT Division Contenus" au projet de loi DADVSI cherche à assimiler à un délit de contrefaçon l'édition, la diffusion et la promotion de tout logiciel susceptible d'être utilisé pour mettre à disposition des informations protégées par le droit d'auteur et n'intégrant pas un dispositif de contrôle et de traçage de l'usage privé."
Which I translate vaguely as: "The "VU / SACEM / BSA / FT Division Contenus" of the DADVSI legal project hopes to gather under the offense of counterfeiting the spread or promotion of all software susceptible to being used to disseminate information protected by copyright, and which does not incorporate DRM." source
I could be wrong, though...rusty, as I said. In any case, it doesn't seem that different from other laws passed elsewhere, and the firefox/OpenOffice people could relax? Someone else can confirm/refute.
picpix image polls. create - share - vote. fun!
My own translations.
D VSI.html :
e ls-libres.html :
from http://www.infos-du-net.com/actualite/5760-loi-DA
The law covers "the act of circumventing technical measures (of protection) or making available methods permitting such circumvention, understood that these methods have a limited commercial purpose or a limited use for purposes other than circumvention."
So, the law, if passed, will make it illegal to circumvent these protections, to make software that is capable of circumventing or that makes it easier to circumvent, its possession, promotion of such a system, communication for the same purpose, all with a penalty of 300 000 euros and 3 years in prison.
from http://www.infos-du-net.com/actualite/5837-logici
"You will stop the publication of software [...] [We are ready to] pursue the authors of Free software who continue to divulge their source code [...]". On 18 nov 2005, at the Culture ministry, the SACEM took the world to court.
SACEM is attacking Free software? This is not a fantasy, it's a reality supported by SNEP and SCPP, two other powerful defenders of music and the rights of authors in France. But where is the connection between these different guardians of culture and software? The answer is simply the vote on the amendment "VU/SACEM/BSA/FT Division Contenus" of the DADVSI law that we've talked so much about these last few weeks.
[...]
Pressure on the government:
The last meeting of the Commission Sirinelli of the CSPLA (superior advisors on intellectual property) finally ended in an agitated debate with three powerful organizations opposed against the advocates for Free software.
For Christophe Espern, the representative of Creative Commons France and co-founder of EUCD.INFO, the debate was nonsensical. "How can people pretend to defend culture and at the same time seek to stop the only software that allows everyone to access it? In my opinion, the contradiction is obvious: their intention is to control the public; culture is just a pretext."
But for SNEP and SCPP the objective is simple and clear: "You will change your licenses".
For whatever reason, the government is maintaining that the adoption of this bill is "urgent", which brings it to the forefront of debate and gives it priority treatment. As far as why it's so urgent - some people are asking why it's so urgent to pass a plan on intellectual property when the social issues related to the riots requires a national debate - nothing seems to justify this sudden interest in a subject unless it's the economic pressure of these powerful groups.
The amendment didn't have to be proposed immediately, but a special meeting was held on Nov 25, and the decision now rests in the hands of the Parliament.
*** This post is under CC-BY. Please feel free to edit/improve it***
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This isn't the first time I've seen someone submit something that is a gross misrepresentation of the truth.
The French government is NOT attacking free software. Rather groups within the entertainment industry are attacking P2P software that is distributed for free. This is a copyright infringement case. The fact that the industry goons are attacking free software is incidental. What is particularly telling is the way that this article is written. The author talks about "access to culture" when what he's really talking about is the ability to freely violate copyright law. Someone who wasn't paying close attention might mistakenly assume that the "culture" in question is in fact the free software that is under attack. I'm sure that this confusion is quite intentional.
The slashdot editors seem to be vulnerable to propaganda that plays upon their own fears. I could probably create a fake site with a story declaring that the RIAA had begun hiring contract killers to execute the defendants in their copyright suits and slashdot would publish a link to it.
Forget the slashdot effect, cases like this deserve a name all their own, the SlashDUPE effect.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Forcing monitors to duel is cruel and inhumane. This blood sport should be outlawed and people like you put in jail!
And I can understand French. The French article this is based on though is cryptic. It seems *they* are trying to lobby parliament to have some control over p2p programs. They want to have some form of control over all p2p programs (checking who downloads what, who makes what available) and would like to make it so that p2p programs cannot be open sourced so as to circumvent methods of stopping IP theft.
Instead of giving the software away for free, by all means, sell it. But then, you can take advantage of a very common commercial gimmick, the big players have come to rely on: the mail-in rebate.
The open source community can develop the first commercial entity to offer 100% rebates. Or, forget the mail-in stuff altogether - make it an instant rebate at the time of purchase.
The original poster is extremely confused, at best.
What the story really is:
- Content industry pressures Europe into having their own version of the american DMCA, the EUCD. It passes.
- The EUCD, as a European directive, needs to be transcribed into every EU member state law.
- France is late transcribing the EUCD into national law and gets fined several times about it.
- The French government starts transcribing EUCD requirements into national law, and gets "friendly advice" about how to do it from (basically) Vivendi Universal and the (influential) french movie & arts industry, and none from the (non vocal and lower influence ) french tech & net industry.
- The EUCD has mostly the same provisions as the DMCA (don't break DRMs, etc) , but the French content industry (backed by US DRM solutions vendors) wants to go further : make DRM support mandatory for basically all software that enables peer-to-peer file swapping, including audio streaming software (to plug the Stationripper hole)
It is that step further (making DRM mandatory) which is inherently incompatible with Open Source software, and threatens to make things like Icecast illegal, that has brought up a stir.
The bill is scheduled for parliament vote on December 22th. More info at http://eucd.info/
Just so you know, France's government isn't liberal. Google "Jean-Marie Le Pen" for the historical details, but they basically had to choose between doppelgangern of Gee-Dub or Pat Buchannon, and chose Bush's counterpart.
As for this legislation, it seems to outlaw free software using the internet, under the notion that free software can be modified to remove restrictions on what you do with copyrighted material.
I feel disdain even saying these things to you. I doubt anyone here is familiar with the French Constitution, which requires laws to be reviewed by the Constitutional Committee before they can be enforced. The CC includes former Presidents and legal minds NOT involved in politics. It's kind of like a pre-emptive Supreme Court, and it would almost certainly not approve.
Of course, the likelihood of this amendment passing is low. There was a fuss about this in the U.S., too, when DRM first started being a big issue.
Trust me, the Ministry of Culture is laughed at by most of the government. Considering that the French government is encouraging open-source software (trust me, I know, I have worked with IT professionals in France on database conversions), and that OSS contributes to France's economy significantly, I very very seriously doubt this will be an issue.
I guess maybe I should go on an America-bashing tirade because of your proposed amendments to variously ban gay marriage and rename yourselves "The United States of Earth."
It would indeed affect everyone else. France has, in the past, had no reservations about enforcing its own censorship laws outside of their borders. Put another way: if you can somehow get access to something from France, the government of France claims jurisdiction.
How will they even route their Internet traffic?
I think that problem will solve itself when there isn't any.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
- The french Parliament will soon vote on DADVSI, the national version of the european EUCD, which is a copy of the american DMCA. The vote is scheduled to take place at night just before Christmas, under an emergency procedure, while nobody is paying attention. This, in itself, is making people angry.
- SACEM/SNEP/SCPP (the french equivalent of the RIAA) is lobbying for an amendment which reads very much like the american SSSCA/CBDTPA. This amendment can be understood as making DRM mandatory in any software which is ever used to violate copyright laws. That means FTP servers, web servers, etc. Since DRM in source code is easily circumvented, our RIAA could claim that any publisher of an open-source media player or file server is not doing their best to comply with this law.
- SSSCA/CBDTPA was rejected in the USA. Hopefully the FSF's press release will help defeat the french version as well.
AC
There is an online petition against the bill here. It started today and there are already 2087 signatures by individuals and 40 by organisations. Go on and sign.
This is actually quite funny, coming from a nation that, more than 200 years ago, revolted against the "elite" and demanded liberty and equality.
Didn't they get it then?
Can anyone explain how this has anything to do with "Culture"?
I guess we can soon mark France off the list of "free" countries. You can't publish your own software with source? What about websites since the "source" for XHTML, CSS, and HTML are by nature open?
Will French websites soon be illegal?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Pour la grande justice.
This whole article is a misunderstanding. The French's press release in English was just poorly worded. When the original text is looked at it is obvious that the French are only instituting a DMCA of their own (sucks!). They are also banning open source software that is used to pirate. This is what we should really be complaining about. See article on techdirt for details. http://techdirt.com/articles/20051202/1451240_F.sh tml
Great webhosting, cheap rates! Enter code SlashdotDiscount
It's interesting to examine recent history and see exactly why the French military is laughed at so much:
In the last hundred years, there have been three major military operations France was involved in. The first was WWI, where France (and its allies) stopped the invasion launched by Germany (and its allies), fought for a few years, and eventually won. So that's not the reason.
The second major war was WWII, where the French army was bulldozed by the most powerful military force on the planet at that time, Nazi Germany. While France and its allies eventually won that war, too, and their loss against a larger and more powerful force is hardly unreasonable, their reliance on the foolish Maginot Line was unwise, and is the source of a little bit of the scorn you so often hear.
It's France's most recent major military action, however, that is by far the most shameful and humbling, and makes their army a fair target for ridicule. Though France was still rebuilding after being all but destroyed ten years earlier in WWII, the sheer disparity between the power of France and the country they lost to is laughable. There is no excuse for a nation as large, powerful, rich, and advanced to lose to a nation as tiny, weak, poor, and backward as Vietnam .
One of the world's 10 most powerful countries, losing a war to one of the world's least powerful? Can you imagine?? No wonder we don't respect their military.
Hmm, I guess going commercial wouldn't, but the value added tax would violate the GPL (thus making GPL software illegal in that country) since you are forced to add a restriction on redistribution (namely that a tax must be paid since anyone who redistributes is a manufacturer and subject to the tax).
But seeing that is what the French want, I guess they are not too likely to complain about that.
I am amazed any government can come out with something like this. I have a feeling this is just to deflect attention from more subtle barriers to entry being created. The idea is the FSF, Mandriva, Redhat and any other business and organisation that feels threatend spends all their energy fighting this particular threat.
It can't possibly become law. It's the "bad bill". The "good bill" is in there somewhere.
For software companies to push to ban open source is a bit like publishing companies pushing government to ban blogs and school essays because they threaten their ability to sell books.
Another aspect is that this also threatens the business interests of the companies that use open source in their business such as IBM and Novell. I'm sure they won't take this nonsense from the French government. Have they sent a letter to IBM in France threatening to sue them yet?