Good analysis. The press coverage in the US, always with the same comment, seems to indicate that some industry lobbies have already started a campaign, perhaps to have the US government pressure the French government.
Note that now that the Minister of Culture himself has praised interoperability, I don't see him supporting the reverse when the discussion starts in the Senate.
And, yes, there are amendments to the bill that are often said to have been written by Vivendi Universal (now, articles 12 bis and 14 quater). They are supposed to target writers of p2p software with criminal and civil penalties, but they are written so vaguely that they could potentially touch any software, such as Apache, capable of sending out files on the Internet.
It is still unknown whether the Senate is likely to change these clauses. It is sometimes said that the criminal clauses will be found unconstitutional on grounds that criminal law should be written precisely, but civil penalties could be equally devastating if big corporations demand money for each file allegedly swapped using such software.
Alternatively, depending on how courts interpret these clauses, hardly any software could be found within their scope...
It's a mess.
Finally, I think you are wrong about French lawmakers not understanding what they vote upon. Most of them, surely, fail to grasp the implications, but many of those personally involved in the text (basically, the few who have debated on it) tend to know the issues. During the debates, members of the Assembly mentioned software like Linux, VLC, Apache etc. appropriately.
I note that France's National assembly recently adopted a bill that balanced criminal and civil penalties for circumventing systems deemed to implement DRMs with a clause saying that publishers of DRM systems should be ready to give out specifications of these DRMs to anybody willing to implement a compatible player.
This move was derided in the US as some "anti-iPod law".
Well, the motivation for this was that the criminal and civil penalties initially envisioned by the DADVSI law would have de facto created a new kind of intellectual property around DRMs, with DRM companies potentially being able to prosecute competitors for making compatible players (which can be easily construed as facilitating the weakening of the protection).
The initial draft of the law made it a felony to do anything that weakened a DRM system. Since publishing documentation on a DRM system, in order for competitors to implement it, can be construed to weaken the DRM system, this may have effectively prohibited making competitor players.
Currently, French IP law recognizes copyright (author's rights and derived rights), trademarks and patents (and other more obscure tidbits). It does not recognize any exclusive right over a file format or protocol, unless there are patents. It actually makes it legal to decompile programs in order to achieve compatibility, if there are no available means to achieve it.
So, depending on how courts would have interpreted the original draft, the law would have created another kind of intellectual property: protocols and file formats implementing DRMs - protected with felony penalties of up to 3 years in prison and 300,000 EUR fine.
Here's how I interpret the current version of the law. Companies publishing content in proprietary formats now have the choice between:
* Claiming that their formats implement DRMs, which enables them to sue circumventers, but also allows competitors to ask them for specifications.
* Not claiming this, which leaves the situation as it is currently.
Remember, the French public didn't ask for this law. It is publishers and makers of DRMs who asked for strong protection allowing them to prosecute circumventers. Well, with rights come duties. That's life.
Instead of commenting on stuff based on press reports written by clueless journalists and possibly driven by biased comments from the industry, you should probably read the law, the amendments and the debates:
This is a massively complex topic, with lots of politicking, negociating and backhanded tricks. Sorry, but you cannot possibly make a meaningful comment on the issue unless you have followed it a bit.
To me, most of the comments here sound as clueless as if some French guy had commented that the Democrats had rushed Bush to go to war in Iraq.
Christian Vanneste did not write the law, at least formally; the law was proposed by Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, Minister of culture. What Vanneste did was to represent the Commission of Laws of the National Assembly, write a report, and present a number of amendments. Generally speaking, Vanneste showed to be a strong supporter of DRMs, and paid little attention to the legal risks created for free software.
(Note: contrary to 99% of the people answering here, I read the proposed law, as well as the debates on this text.) (Warning: What follows is precise fact. If you're waiting for the usual mentally retarded "yaah yaah the French are retarded" banter or the usual jokes about the "cultural exception", please read other messages.)
In 2001, the European Union adopted a directive called EUCD which, following from a 1996 WIPO treaty, required member states to legally protect DRM "technical protection measures". Concretely, the EU asked France to enact appropriate penalties against people circumventing DRMs.
In 2003, a law was drafted. Due to various circumstances, the law only came to Parliament in December 2005. The proposed law made circumventing DRMs, or even helping in circumvent DRMs, a felony punishable by up to 3 years in prison and/or up to a 300,000 EUR fine. The law was publicly justified by the need to protect the rights of the artists.
One major criticism is that the law and some proposed amendments could in essence endanger any "free software" capable of playing music, video or even DRM-encumbered text (PDF, anyone?) because it could be argued that giving the source code of a DRM was a help in circumventing it. Not everybody wishes to risk a maximal sentence of 3 years in prison for free software.
In December, the National Assembly famously adopted an amendment, the first in a series making p2p explicitly legal provided that Internet users paid a flat fee, against the wishes of the Minister of Culture. This started instant mayhem as the Minister tried to herd the Assembly back in his direction.
In March, Parliament began discussing the text again. The directive imposed DRMs in order to safeguard the rights of the artists. Parliament then voted for amendments that said that DRMs were ok and protected, but provided that they were interoperable, in order to allow concurrence in the marketplace of software and hardware players.
What this NYTimes article shows is that this bill was, in reality, not about the rights of the artists. It was about enacting criminal penalties for people who made concurrent products capable of reading the same contents. Now, some of those who pushed for the bill (makers of DRMs) are whining that their attempt backfired.
To be blunter: some companies made DRMs, and requested heavy felony penalties against circumventers. Well, they have now been served obligations of compatibility in exchange for some ability to prosecute circumventers. That's life.
Ah, by the way: in theory at least, French law prohibits "linked sales" to consumers - that is, tying the sale of a product to the sale of some other product, though this has wide exceptions.
Have you ever been to the US? In the US, both the federal and the state government impose environmental, workforce, etc. rules. The US government and the state governments (and sometimes the county or other local governments, though I do not know the details of this) maintain separate taxation systems run by separate administrations with different procedures. This means that for many purposes, you have to fill one form for the state government, and one for the US government. Furthermore, the state government and the US government may disagree on some aspects - witness, for instance, how the US federal government prohibits the sale of marijuana, while the state of California admits it for medicinal purposes.
In comparaison, the EU largely delegates everything to the member states. Most of EU legislation is implemented through directives, which have to be transposed into national legislations; incoherences are eliminated during transposition. There is no separate tax system nor any separate tax administration. Etc.
Some MEPs are really angry about the Commission's actions. MEP Michel Rocard (France/"Socialists") pronounced a speech before the JURI (juridical affairs) committee of the European Parliament, in which he accuses the commissionner who pushed the project of sneaky actions. I think that Rocard and others are decided to shoot down the proposal by whatever means.
Many of us here are wary of the possible developments with drivers getting prosecuted using information from the black box... But how about the opposite?
A colleague of mine was once driving when the power steering failed for a few seconds, in a curve. He was very surprised and this could have led to an accident. How would have he been able to prove he was driving correctly if he had hurt somebody, for the purpose of determining responsibilities with respect to insurances?
A black box would have shown the erroneous action of the power steering, making the car manufacturer liable instead of the driver.
(He was of course insured, but
basic insurances cover damages to other vehicles and their passengers, not to one's own passengers;
insurance fees take the driver's accident history into account.)
Ok. Proofs that France sold a lot of weapons to Iraq before 1990, when it was fully legal (and the US supported the idea, because Iraq was battling Iran - note the sales from the US).
Have you got any proof of what you say? Or are the alleged illegal French weapons in the same location as the never-to-be-found weapons of mass destruction?
These numbers themselves are probably inaccurate. According to a 2003 poll, the proportion of Catholics is around 62%, 6% of Muslims, and 26% without religion.
So far, there has not been any single demonstration that France sold weapons to Iraq when it was prohibited.
Poland has retracted their claim of having found Roland missiles manufactured in 2003 (probably after being told that the manufacturing of the latest generation of these missiles stopped in the early 1990's, and thus it was materially impossible that France could have sold 2003-manufactured Roland missiles to Iraq).
All Airbus starting from the 320 have digital fly-by-wire controls. The 320 dates from 1988, long before the 777. Airbus markets aggressively the fact that the fly-by-wire controls are similar on all fly-by-wire Airbus airplanes.
The future A380 and A400M will also be fly-by-wire.
The Concorde had analog fly-by-wire on some commands.
* It is not any more illegal to insult the prime minister than it is illegal to insult any other official. Actually, courts consider that politicians, by their own function, expose themselves to personal attacks, and thus consider that they deserve less protection from libel or insults than other people.:-)
* "Illegal to engage in speech/publication except against specific groups (nazis)"?!
* Certain political movements have been outlawed, indeed - if they had engaged in criminal activities. Are you alluding to Occident (who used to smash political opponents with iron bars) or to Unite Radicale (a member of which tried to kill the current president)?
* "This is different than making a word or created words disappear from the language which is what the Frenchies are doing."
What!? So, because a company has been prohibited from showing advertisements from competitors as an answer to a query by a first instance court, you declare that the "French make a word disappear"?
Are you out of your mind?
(Trademark law is largely case law. Again, babbling on the matter is largely pointless until it comes to the Cour de Cassation or at least the Court of Appeal.)
France does have real freedom of speech and the press. Please quote facts in favor of your arguments.
(Hey, in the US, didn't the Church of Scientology win injunctions barring Google from *indexing* (I'm not talking of advertisements) copies of their "copyrighted documents"?)
I think that many posters here, probably motivated by anti-French bigotry, and incompetent about legal issues, are missing the point.
This decision was taken by a court of Nanterre, probably the large claim court. It has not gone through an appeal before the Court of Appeals, and of course not gone to the supreme court (Cour de Cassation).
Until the Cour de Cassation has pronounced itself, it is as silly to comment on this as a "position of the French government" or as "silly laws/regulation from the French government" than it would be to comment on the "position of the United States" government from a single judgment from a US district court.
Note that the BVP (the organization where you found this official FAQ) is a private non profit organization made by the industry for self-regulation.
As far as I know, the French government does not require advance approval for any advertisement (in fact, I remember some ministers irate at some commercials). However, broadcasters may use the BVP as a counsel to check whether advertisements are a lawsuit risk etc...
A bit of trivia: this conference takes place at INRIA-Rocquencourt, a computer science (and applied maths) research center housed in a former US army base near a freeway north of Versailles. 30 minutes from Paris? Yes, with a car... don't expect to reach the darn place in 30 minutes by public transportation!:-)
I fully agree with you. In general, building something that can handle two different tasks with different constraints is more error-prone than building two separate things.
Cargo is bulky, heavy, but does not require very high safety, nor life sustenance systems. Passengers are less bulky, lighter, but do require high safety and life sustenance systems (air, water, food, toilets...). Those are two different sets of requirements. Remember that NASA and other space agencies do not have unbounded budgets; it's wise to relax a bit on the cargo to be safe on the passengers.
Also, consider the absurdity of satellite launches from the Space Shuttle: you fly into space a crew (plus lots of safety and life sustenance systems) for a task that an automatic system fulfills well.
(Interestingly, having discussed with people designing flight control systems for automated launch vehicles and civil aircraft, I have the impression that safety is far laxer for automated launch vehicles: human lives are not at stake, so they may afford some latitude.)
Slashdot Mirror
Good analysis. The press coverage in the US, always with the same comment, seems to indicate that some industry lobbies have already started a campaign, perhaps to have the US government pressure the French government.
Note that now that the Minister of Culture himself has praised interoperability, I don't see him supporting the reverse when the discussion starts in the Senate.
And, yes, there are amendments to the bill that are often said to have been written by Vivendi Universal (now, articles 12 bis and 14 quater). They are supposed to target writers of p2p software with criminal and civil penalties, but they are written so vaguely that they could potentially touch any software, such as Apache, capable of sending out files on the Internet.
It is still unknown whether the Senate is likely to change these clauses. It is sometimes said that the criminal clauses will be found unconstitutional on grounds that criminal law should be written precisely, but civil penalties could be equally devastating if big corporations demand money for each file allegedly swapped using such software.
Alternatively, depending on how courts interpret these clauses, hardly any software could be found within their scope...
It's a mess.
Finally, I think you are wrong about French lawmakers not understanding what they vote upon. Most of them, surely, fail to grasp the implications, but many of those personally involved in the text (basically, the few who have debated on it) tend to know the issues. During the debates, members of the Assembly mentioned software like Linux, VLC, Apache etc. appropriately.
I note that France's National assembly recently adopted a bill that balanced criminal and civil penalties for circumventing systems deemed to implement DRMs with a clause saying that publishers of DRM systems should be ready to give out specifications of these DRMs to anybody willing to implement a compatible player.
This move was derided in the US as some "anti-iPod law".
Well, the motivation for this was that the criminal and civil penalties initially envisioned by the DADVSI law would have de facto created a new kind of intellectual property around DRMs, with DRM companies potentially being able to prosecute competitors for making compatible players (which can be easily construed as facilitating the weakening of the protection).
The law was then balanced so as to avoid this.
This is more complex than you think.
The initial draft of the law made it a felony to do anything that weakened a DRM system. Since publishing documentation on a DRM system, in order for competitors to implement it, can be construed to weaken the DRM system, this may have effectively prohibited making competitor players.
Currently, French IP law recognizes copyright (author's rights and derived rights), trademarks and patents (and other more obscure tidbits). It does not recognize any exclusive right over a file format or protocol, unless there are patents. It actually makes it legal to decompile programs in order to achieve compatibility, if there are no available means to achieve it.
So, depending on how courts would have interpreted the original draft, the law would have created another kind of intellectual property: protocols and file formats implementing DRMs - protected with felony penalties of up to 3 years in prison and 300,000 EUR fine.
Here's how I interpret the current version of the law. Companies publishing content in proprietary formats now have the choice between:
* Claiming that their formats implement DRMs, which enables them to sue circumventers, but also allows competitors to ask them for specifications.
* Not claiming this, which leaves the situation as it is currently.
Remember, the French public didn't ask for this law. It is publishers and makers of DRMs who asked for strong protection allowing them to prosecute circumventers. Well, with rights come duties. That's life.
Instead of commenting on stuff based on press reports written by clueless journalists and possibly driven by biased comments from the industry, you should probably read the law, the amendments and the debates:
2 06.asp
http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/12/dossiers/031
The law is essentially a patch on the IP code, which you will find there:
http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/
Of course, this needs a working knowledge of French.
Some information in English is available here:
http://eucd.info/index.php?English-readers
This is a massively complex topic, with lots of politicking, negociating and backhanded tricks. Sorry, but you cannot possibly make a meaningful comment on the issue unless you have followed it a bit.
To me, most of the comments here sound as clueless as if some French guy had commented that the Democrats had rushed Bush to go to war in Iraq.
Christian Vanneste did not write the law, at least formally; the law was proposed by Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, Minister of culture. What Vanneste did was to represent the Commission of Laws of the National Assembly, write a report, and present a number of amendments. Generally speaking, Vanneste showed to be a strong supporter of DRMs, and paid little attention to the legal risks created for free software.
Text of the law, the debates, etc:2 06.asp
http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/12/dossiers/031
But, yes, this law allows competitors to reverse-engineer DRMs for compatibility purposes.
(Note: contrary to 99% of the people answering here, I read the proposed law, as well as the debates on this text.)
(Warning: What follows is precise fact. If you're waiting for the usual mentally retarded "yaah yaah the French are retarded" banter or the usual jokes about the "cultural exception", please read other messages.)
In 2001, the European Union adopted a directive called EUCD which, following from a 1996 WIPO treaty, required member states to legally protect DRM "technical protection measures". Concretely, the EU asked France to enact appropriate penalties against people circumventing DRMs.
In 2003, a law was drafted. Due to various circumstances, the law only came to Parliament in December 2005. The proposed law made circumventing DRMs, or even helping in circumvent DRMs, a felony punishable by up to 3 years in prison and/or up to a 300,000 EUR fine. The law was publicly justified by the need to protect the rights of the artists.
One major criticism is that the law and some proposed amendments could in essence endanger any "free software" capable of playing music, video or even DRM-encumbered text (PDF, anyone?) because it could be argued that giving the source code of a DRM was a help in circumventing it. Not everybody wishes to risk a maximal sentence of 3 years in prison for free software.
In December, the National Assembly famously adopted an amendment, the first in a series making p2p explicitly legal provided that Internet users paid a flat fee, against the wishes of the Minister of Culture. This started instant mayhem as the Minister tried to herd the Assembly back in his direction.
In March, Parliament began discussing the text again. The directive imposed DRMs in order to safeguard the rights of the artists. Parliament then voted for amendments that said that DRMs were ok and protected, but provided that they were interoperable, in order to allow concurrence in the marketplace of software and hardware players.
What this NYTimes article shows is that this bill was, in reality, not about the rights of the artists. It was about enacting criminal penalties for people who made concurrent products capable of reading the same contents. Now, some of those who pushed for the bill (makers of DRMs) are whining that their attempt backfired.
To be blunter: some companies made DRMs, and requested heavy felony penalties against circumventers. Well, they have now been served obligations of compatibility in exchange for some ability to prosecute circumventers. That's life.
Ah, by the way: in theory at least, French law prohibits "linked sales" to consumers - that is, tying the sale of a product to the sale of some other product, though this has wide exceptions.
Have you ever been to the US? In the US, both the federal and the state government impose environmental, workforce, etc. rules. The US government and the state governments (and sometimes the county or other local governments, though I do not know the details of this) maintain separate taxation systems run by separate administrations with different procedures. This means that for many purposes, you have to fill one form for the state government, and one for the US government. Furthermore, the state government and the US government may disagree on some aspects - witness, for instance, how the US federal government prohibits the sale of marijuana, while the state of California admits it for medicinal purposes.
In comparaison, the EU largely delegates everything to the member states. Most of EU legislation is implemented through directives, which have to be transposed into national legislations; incoherences are eliminated during transposition. There is no separate tax system nor any separate tax administration. Etc.
Some MEPs are really angry about the Commission's actions. MEP Michel Rocard (France/"Socialists") pronounced a speech before the JURI (juridical affairs) committee of the European Parliament, in which he accuses the commissionner who pushed the project of sneaky actions. I think that Rocard and others are decided to shoot down the proposal by whatever means.
A colleague of mine was once driving when the power steering failed for a few seconds, in a curve. He was very surprised and this could have led to an accident. How would have he been able to prove he was driving correctly if he had hurt somebody, for the purpose of determining responsibilities with respect to insurances?
A black box would have shown the erroneous action of the power steering, making the car manufacturer liable instead of the driver.
(He was of course insured, but
In any case, don't most proprietary licenses deny any responsibility, even for damages caused by legitimate usage of the software?
If a Microsoft printer driver damages your printer, you won't get a refund either.
Ok. Proofs that France sold a lot of weapons to Iraq before 1990, when it was fully legal (and the US supported the idea, because Iraq was battling Iran - note the sales from the US).
How is that related to recent, illegal, sales?
Have you got any proof of what you say? Or are the alleged illegal French weapons in the same location as the never-to-be-found weapons of mass destruction?
These numbers themselves are probably inaccurate. According to a 2003 poll, the proportion of Catholics is around 62%, 6% of Muslims, and 26% without religion.
So far, there has not been any single demonstration that France sold weapons to Iraq when it was prohibited.
Poland has retracted their claim of having found Roland missiles manufactured in 2003 (probably after being told that the manufacturing of the latest generation of these missiles stopped in the early 1990's, and thus it was materially impossible that France could have sold 2003-manufactured Roland missiles to Iraq).
All Airbus starting from the 320 have digital fly-by-wire controls. The 320 dates from 1988, long before the 777. Airbus markets aggressively the fact that the fly-by-wire controls are similar on all fly-by-wire Airbus airplanes.
The future A380 and A400M will also be fly-by-wire.
The Concorde had analog fly-by-wire on some commands.
* It is not any more illegal to insult the prime minister than it is illegal to insult any other official. Actually, courts consider that politicians, by their own function, expose themselves to personal attacks, and thus consider that they deserve less protection from libel or insults than other people. :-)
* "Illegal to engage in speech/publication except against specific groups (nazis)"?!
* Certain political movements have been outlawed, indeed - if they had engaged in criminal activities. Are you alluding to Occident (who used to smash political opponents with iron bars) or to Unite Radicale (a member of which tried to kill the current president)?
* "This is different than making a word or created words disappear from the language which is what the Frenchies are doing."
What!? So, because a company has been prohibited from showing advertisements from competitors as an answer to a query by a first instance court, you declare that the "French make a word disappear"?
Are you out of your mind?
(Trademark law is largely case law. Again, babbling on the matter is largely pointless until it comes to the Cour de Cassation or at least the Court of Appeal.)
France does have real freedom of speech and the press. Please quote facts in favor of your arguments.
(Hey, in the US, didn't the Church of Scientology win injunctions barring Google from *indexing* (I'm not talking of advertisements) copies of their "copyrighted documents"?)
I think that many posters here, probably motivated by anti-French bigotry, and incompetent about legal issues, are missing the point.
This decision was taken by a court of Nanterre, probably the large claim court. It has not gone through an appeal before the Court of Appeals, and of course not gone to the supreme court (Cour de Cassation).
Until the Cour de Cassation has pronounced itself, it is as silly to comment on this as a "position of the French government" or as "silly laws/regulation from the French government" than it would be to comment on the "position of the United States" government from a single judgment from a US district court.
Hopefully, the French government does not look for jerks on Slashdot to pass its legislation.
Note that the BVP (the organization where you found this official FAQ) is a private non profit organization made by the industry for self-regulation.
As far as I know, the French government does not require advance approval for any advertisement (in fact, I remember some ministers irate at some commercials). However, broadcasters may use the BVP as a counsel to check whether advertisements are a lawsuit risk etc...
Yes, INPI has the list of registered trade marks in France.
The French "government", or executive, has no authority over court decisions.
A bit of trivia: this conference takes place at INRIA-Rocquencourt, a computer science (and applied maths) research center housed in a former US army base near a freeway north of Versailles. 30 minutes from Paris? Yes, with a car... don't expect to reach the darn place in 30 minutes by public transportation! :-)
I fully agree with you. In general, building something that can handle two different tasks with different constraints is more error-prone than building two separate things.
Cargo is bulky, heavy, but does not require very high safety, nor life sustenance systems. Passengers are less bulky, lighter, but do require high safety and life sustenance systems (air, water, food, toilets...). Those are two different sets of requirements. Remember that NASA and other space agencies do not have unbounded budgets; it's wise to relax a bit on the cargo to be safe on the passengers.
Also, consider the absurdity of satellite launches from the Space Shuttle: you fly into space a crew (plus lots of safety and life sustenance systems) for a task that an automatic system fulfills well.
(Interestingly, having discussed with people designing flight control systems for automated launch vehicles and civil aircraft, I have the impression that safety is far laxer for automated launch vehicles: human lives are not at stake, so they may afford some latitude.)