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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 !
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.
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.
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
It appears to be about copyright infringement. I am sure the comment was about Open Source P2P software, not ALL Open Source software.
--fatboy
When has France ever been hostile towards something and then come out on top?
What about Greenpeace?
The information on the provided links is fuzzy, messy and scaremongering at its best. If you read the link to the actual proposal, it says that it plans to put on the same level as counterfaiting the creation of software which can be used to exchanged copyrighted data. The text is so vague that all IM software, IRC, news and even Windows itself (shares) will fall under it. It has nothing to do with free software licenses as much as I can read.... (BTW France's government is moving slowly to free software - OO, Mandriva, etc.) and I don't understand why FSF France would word their article that way.
They say it's based on some rejected american law called CBDTPA (check wikipedia for a description) which aimed at disallowing all non DRM-enabled technology.
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.
As it should. Damn those French racists! :)
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 :(
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.
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."
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.
That's really a wild guess (and a wrong one ;)). I have hesitated to submit the story myself a few days ago and I should have because this summary is (once again) very misleading (but I'm getting accustomed).
The DADVSI law project is really the adaptation of the EUCD European directive, which is itself the european DMCA. Yeah, we can thank our european leaders who enjoy copying stupid american laws like DMCA and SW patents... Anyway..
While keeping all the badness of DMCA (forbidden reverse engineering, etc.), there's something more: if your software allows DRMs to be circumvented, then it is illegal. The problem with Free Software is that, by nature, you can change it, so DRMs could always be circumvented. So the "obvious" solution to those RIAA-like (SACEM & co) fuckers is to make them illegal.
There's nothing about "french culture" here, really, and please, French people don't have much in common with Quebeckers (I'm seeing many analogies that are totally out of place). When they (i.e: SACEM & co) talk about culture, they talk about Hollywood movies and the latest Madonna hit just as much as french movies & music. It's just an anti-piracy measure.
The problem is that their lobby is strong. They just are the same RIAA-like bastards... they should shoot themselves, the world would be better off.
Not much to add, as a french free software developper, you can imagine I'm quite angry at them (and at our government) right now (and I've been for some time... if only it could be avoided like software patents, but I have very little faith here).
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
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