The pure bullcrap law was voted *unanimously* by all the political groups of the senate who expressed their vote (right wing, socialist, centrist). Only the communist group abstained (*sic*).
There wasn't even *one* courageous senator to vote against! Let's hope the same won't happen in the National Assembly, which members are directly elected (which is not the case for the senators)
The author probably messed the score for the final vote with the public record vote for Retailleau's amendement, the only one published on the French Senate website (where 15 persons voted for after the executive branch felt it could easily pass, suspended the exam and made a few phonecalls).
Look at http://www.laquadrature.net/en for more details about the vote, and soon a translation of the most disturbing parts of the law (help needed;).
Be also aware that Nicolas Sarkozy's plan is to spread such a mechanism to the European level!
Every European shall take action on his Member State's government, so Bono/Cohn-Bendit/Roithova's amendement to Telecoms Package remains into the Council's position! (more infos soon)
The french grassroot movement Squaring the Net, aiming at informing the general public about such stupid network regulations happening in France and in Europe, helped this decision to be voted, along with EFF, Globenet and other european NGOs.
The industry-influenced French president Nicolas Sarkozy expressed his wish to spread the "graduated response" (three strikes) to the European level during the French presidency of the union (starting July the 1st), after having it voted in France in the next few weeks...(along with this one, other projects include an administrative labelling of "trusted" websites, increase of data retention to fight cybercrime, etc.. more infos on the SquaringtheNet website)
Let's hope this EU vote will help counter his evil plans !
There isn't "no one" to use Free, Libre and OSS. As long as the people who use it continue to be able to be part of it by having the same freedom on it as the original author, and make it grow, it will grow, that's the point !
People who a few years ago were "achh! there is no decent graphical interface, it's pointless!" are now drooling using compiz-fusion... people saying "crap! there is no multimedia! it will never work!" now use vlc, mplayer, amarok, songbird, etc... (and gnash soon;) people saying "merde! there is no game, it sux!" now use their proprietary game under wine, etc...
You can spend energy today telling everyone how it will fail, how it will never interest anyone, but someday it might be ready and comfortable enough for you.. and then you might realize the true value of Freedom. (hint: it has no price.;)
Let's hope that AMD will make the smart move of opening up the specs of its ATI video cards, thus encouraging the development of GPL drivers. I am convinced that this could be a decisive step in the "war" with Nvidia...
... not to receive RMS.. and not a question of planning, or appointment of whatever... Matignon was warned for a few weeks of his coming, and could have make him be received by any small office-counselor, as humiliating as it would have been, some "chargé de mission" or whatever. but instead decided to leave him 100m away from the place.
That's exacly how was treated the free software position about DRM, internet-filtering dispositions, articles forcing DRM into any software, and so many other atrocities commited into the DADVSI law in the name of "protecting the authors".... well the authors of Free Software were just unheard.
Actually many associations (APRIL, FSF France, EUCD.INFO) wrote many letters to ask for an interview between the prime minister and RMS. Actually none of them was answered.
Letters were sent a few days ago to tell the day and hour of his coming (he flew from Boston especially for this occasion), so he wasn't exactly "forcing his way" and the guards said that de decision to refuse him was "maturely decided"... This is a political decision of not receiving him, and nothing else.
So a "good" DRM system is either anti-competitive, or inefficient ?
That's the proof that DRM is completely pointless, and harmful for competition and business.. (plus the different harms and discomfort for consumers, and problems for computer security, etc.) protecting DRM by law is an aberration, that's why the french dispositions about a right to interoperate are a good thing in such a stupid economic environment.
Do you really think China will respect US firms' DRM? come on....
What the Assemblée's version of the text forced DRM makers to give publicly is NOT "trade secret", just "informations needed for interoperability", with such precision : "technical informations and programming interfaces needed to obtain a copy in an open standard of a protected work".
These informations should be made public for a competition to be free. If it isn't, then it's use for blocking competition. That's because they didn't disclose such informations that Microsoft was found guilty by the European Commission.
Now we understand that US Corporations don't want competition to be free, the just want to rule the market, by whatever mean.
Let's not worry, though, thanks to their lobbying (Apple Corp and the DoC pushed very hard on the french Senate), the new text just allow some kind of stupid commission to ask and say "please!" in order to _try_ to obtain thoses informations now.
Get comfortable, no one will be able to compete with US DRM. The "iPod law" (what a stupid name! are people able to pronounce "interoperability" or do they have to always speak in trademarks??) is going to be erased under Apple's pressure.
- Vanneste = very-right-wing guy saying "DRM are a benefit for humanity!" "we are now in the Bill Gates Galaxy, and this is good!", protesting against pacifist movies, voting laws talking about "positive aspects of colonization"
- Law = french DMCA, inclunding parts written by Vivendi-Universal
- bonus = restrictive parts not imposed by the directive, like "private police" to seek downloaders, and outlawing of "any communication software that can be used to provide copyrighted material and that doesn't include technical protection measures" (the last one being pushed by Vivendi-Universal)
- FUD about Apple, Itunes, etc = fear of exceptions bringing back freedom to a total outlawing of any possible circumvention.
The Law project is the transposition of the EUCD (European Union Copyright Directive) that is the DMCA's sibling, both descending from the WIPO treaty of 1996.
The main objective of this project it the legal protection of the "technical protection measures" (DRM) and the outlawing of their circumvention.
The french project though, goes much further in that direction than what the directive imposes, it is, in its current state, the most restrictive DMCA in the world!
The activists of the Free Software Foundation France founded the EUCD.INFO initiative to fight against those legal restriction that endengers the interoperability and the will of Free Software developpers.
This Vanneste guy is the "rapporteur", which means he is the one who wrote the law, and he is very unpleased that some of the EUCD.INFO amendements may be included in his project, rendering it an inoffensive version of the DMCA, comparable to the US one with some of the recent exceptions.
There is a long list of incredible things done by Vanneste (including being recognized guilty in his trial for homophobic declarations, protesting against a pacifist movie about the Algerian decolonization war with extreme-right folks, passing a law which recognize the positive role of colonization, etc...), and by the government (propaganda about "unlawful downloading" being the point of all this law project, opening a propaganda website about it which censors a so-called "democratic debate" where 95% of the comments are against that law project, removing amendements voted by the parliament which are in the opposite direction of the general restrictive axis, pushing amendments written by Vivendi-Universal, etc.)
I think you'll hear again about this DADVSI (the short name for "author's right and neighbour's right in the information society) law project, whatever the outcome may be!
"many Linux users will want access to DRMed material..."
To access DRM material there are two different ways : - you circumvent the DRM which may be legal under certain laws, especially if you do it for reaching interoperability. A circumvention program can be GPLed without any kind of doubt. - you implement the DRM into your software, in which case, your software can't be GPLed : practically, implementing a DRM means programming a way to access a given key in certain conditions. If your program is free-as-free-speech, anyone can modify the code so the access will be given anytime.
That's the major incompatibility between free-as-free-speech software and DRM, as put by Loic Dachary, long-time member of the FSF : "when talking of a free-as-speech DRM, either it's not a DRM, or it's not free-as-speech"
(we took for a definition of a DRM coinciding of what they had been so far : Digital Restriction Measured, that control the use of copyrighted data.)
All this happened during a meeting of the CSPLA (Conseil Superieur de la Propriété Littéraire et Artistique, Superior Council for Intellectual Property) which is a consultative body of the Ministry of Culture and Communication.
The objective of these meetings of the CSPLA is to provide a whitepaper with amendments to the laws proposed by the Ministry, so it's about equivalent to the Ministry itself.
What's interesting is the composition of the (48 i think? not sure) members of the CSPLA : besides Vivendi/Universal, SACEM, SCPP, SNEP, TF1 (the major TV channel), Microsoft _AND_ BSA have a seat (which makes two seats for Microsoft, actually), while the Free Software Foundation France always got refused to participate...
So the whole commission which is supposed to be representative, isn't _at all_! It's vast majority is private corporate interests, with no civil society at all.
it's not that simple to alter the GPL before applying it : it will require that any modified version be redistributed under the _original_ GPL, not the one you modified.
so the protection / attribution clause (that some FUDders call "virality") is also there to make sure the GPL's integrity will be respected, which complicates a little the use of derivative licenses...
if you happen to initate such a project as a plugin for History Flow that deals with FLOSS projects, or hear from an existing one, i'd be very glad to hear from it!
i hope you'd either post a news about it or be so kind to notify me through/.
In this article you'll find a pretty good answer to your question : seven economic models are detailed here, either based on selling services, advantages (think "club premium" or mandrakesque things like this), or novelty (one recent version of the software isn't for free-as-a-beer, but the older one is free-as-in-speech), etc..
any european folk interested by this subject should come to TheHague on nov the 18th to attend FlossPols :
take a look at the speakers list to get an idea of how "high-level" this event can be.
representatives from the European Union, the IDA (the organism from the EU responsible for an excellent "opensource migration guidelines" report), and from various state-ministries from all around europe will gather there around "FLOSS in government", giving concrete experience-returns and precious advise i think...
Libre Multiplayer Online Poker 3D
on
Geeks and Poker?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
There is an.iso of a liveCD ready to run it, the project is lead by Loïc Dachary, a senior GNU, Debian programmer, and i think developpers are needed to help them;)
An interesting fact is that it is plain GPL software developped under a commercial contract: Loïc works on this paid by a game company!
So this could be a major hit in gnu/linux gaming AND a way to prove one (brilliant) programmer can _earn_ his life writing Free Software! =~))
why does such commercial anouncements take place on/. ?
so many people have time to loose to cut/paste press communiques, or is that kind of crap originating directly from Nokia Corp?
i know for sure i will _never_ buy this camera!:)
... is the bug in the Patriot anti-missile system!
url
an error in the way it rounded 1/10000th of seconds made it less and less accurate proportionnally to the time since it had been booted up!
so remember to always reboot your anti-missiles counter-mesures before using them!
take a look at this Free Art License based on the GPL, but aimed at covering the Copyleft distribution terms of any artform.
it's the only one to make a difference between an original artwork and its copies, which may seem irellevant applied to digital art, but allows "real" physical artworks to be used and reused as GPLed code.
Slashdot Mirror
The pure bullcrap law was voted *unanimously* by all the political groups of the senate who expressed their vote (right wing, socialist, centrist). Only the communist group abstained (*sic*). There wasn't even *one* courageous senator to vote against! Let's hope the same won't happen in the National Assembly, which members are directly elected (which is not the case for the senators) The author probably messed the score for the final vote with the public record vote for Retailleau's amendement, the only one published on the French Senate website (where 15 persons voted for after the executive branch felt it could easily pass, suspended the exam and made a few phonecalls). Look at http://www.laquadrature.net/en for more details about the vote, and soon a translation of the most disturbing parts of the law (help needed ;).
Be also aware that Nicolas Sarkozy's plan is to spread such a mechanism to the European level!
Every European shall take action on his Member State's government, so Bono/Cohn-Bendit/Roithova's amendement to Telecoms Package remains into the Council's position! (more infos soon)
The french grassroot movement Squaring the Net, aiming at informing the general public about such stupid network regulations happening in France and in Europe, helped this decision to be voted, along with EFF, Globenet and other european NGOs.
The industry-influenced French president Nicolas Sarkozy expressed his wish to spread the "graduated response" (three strikes) to the European level during the French presidency of the union (starting July the 1st), after having it voted in France in the next few weeks...(along with this one, other projects include an administrative labelling of "trusted" websites, increase of data retention to fight cybercrime, etc.. more infos on the SquaringtheNet website)
Let's hope this EU vote will help counter his evil plans !
There isn't "no one" to use Free, Libre and OSS. As long as the people who use it continue to be able to be part of it by having the same freedom on it as the original author, and make it grow, it will grow, that's the point !
;) people saying "merde! there is no game, it sux!" now use their proprietary game under wine, etc...
;)
People who a few years ago were "achh! there is no decent graphical interface, it's pointless!" are now drooling using compiz-fusion... people saying "crap! there is no multimedia! it will never work!" now use vlc, mplayer, amarok, songbird, etc... (and gnash soon
You can spend energy today telling everyone how it will fail, how it will never interest anyone, but someday it might be ready and comfortable enough for you.. and then you might realize the true value of Freedom. (hint: it has no price.
A sugar-candy coating of technology for everybody to accept receiving information without any kind of processing/verification from journalists !
Well... get ready for the future !
Let's hope that AMD will make the smart move of opening up the specs of its ATI video cards, thus encouraging the development of GPL drivers. I am convinced that this could be a decisive step in the "war" with Nvidia...
... not to receive RMS.. and not a question of planning, or appointment of whatever... Matignon was warned for a few weeks of his coming, and could have make him be received by any small office-counselor, as humiliating as it would have been, some "chargé de mission" or whatever. but instead decided to leave him 100m away from the place. That's exacly how was treated the free software position about DRM, internet-filtering dispositions, articles forcing DRM into any software, and so many other atrocities commited into the DADVSI law in the name of "protecting the authors". ... well the authors of Free Software were just unheard.
Actually many associations (APRIL, FSF France, EUCD.INFO) wrote many letters to ask for an interview between the prime minister and RMS. Actually none of them was answered.
Letters were sent a few days ago to tell the day and hour of his coming (he flew from Boston especially for this occasion), so he wasn't exactly "forcing his way" and the guards said that de decision to refuse him was "maturely decided"... This is a political decision of not receiving him, and nothing else.
So a "good" DRM system is either anti-competitive, or inefficient ?
That's the proof that DRM is completely pointless, and harmful for competition and business.. (plus the different harms and discomfort for consumers, and problems for computer security, etc.) protecting DRM by law is an aberration, that's why the french dispositions about a right to interoperate are a good thing in such a stupid economic environment.
Do you really think China will respect US firms' DRM? come on....
What the Assemblée's version of the text forced DRM makers to give publicly is NOT "trade secret", just "informations needed for interoperability", with such precision : "technical informations and programming interfaces needed to obtain a copy in an open standard of a protected work".
These informations should be made public for a competition to be free. If it isn't, then it's use for blocking competition. That's because they didn't disclose such informations that Microsoft was found guilty by the European Commission.
Now we understand that US Corporations don't want competition to be free, the just want to rule the market, by whatever mean.
Let's not worry, though, thanks to their lobbying (Apple Corp and the DoC pushed very hard on the french Senate), the new text just allow some kind of stupid commission to ask and say "please!" in order to _try_ to obtain thoses informations now.
Get comfortable, no one will be able to compete with US DRM. The "iPod law" (what a stupid name! are people able to pronounce "interoperability" or do they have to always speak in trademarks??) is going to be erased under Apple's pressure.
(more infos on http://eucd.info/index.php?English-readers )
- SCPP = French RIAA
- Vanneste = very-right-wing guy saying "DRM are a benefit for humanity!" "we are now in the Bill Gates Galaxy, and this is good!", protesting against pacifist movies, voting laws talking about "positive aspects of colonization"
- Law = french DMCA, inclunding parts written by Vivendi-Universal
- bonus = restrictive parts not imposed by the directive, like "private police" to seek downloaders, and outlawing of "any communication software that can be used to provide copyrighted material and that doesn't include technical protection measures" (the last one being pushed by Vivendi-Universal)
- FUD about Apple, Itunes, etc = fear of exceptions bringing back freedom to a total outlawing of any possible circumvention.
The main objective of this project it the legal protection of the "technical protection measures" (DRM) and the outlawing of their circumvention.
The french project though, goes much further in that direction than what the directive imposes, it is, in its current state, the most restrictive DMCA in the world!
The activists of the Free Software Foundation France founded the EUCD.INFO initiative to fight against those legal restriction that endengers the interoperability and the will of Free Software developpers.
This Vanneste guy is the "rapporteur", which means he is the one who wrote the law, and he is very unpleased that some of the EUCD.INFO amendements may be included in his project, rendering it an inoffensive version of the DMCA, comparable to the US one with some of the recent exceptions.
There is a long list of incredible things done by Vanneste (including being recognized guilty in his trial for homophobic declarations, protesting against a pacifist movie about the Algerian decolonization war with extreme-right folks, passing a law which recognize the positive role of colonization, etc...), and by the government (propaganda about "unlawful downloading" being the point of all this law project, opening a propaganda website about it which censors a so-called "democratic debate" where 95% of the comments are against that law project, removing amendements voted by the parliament which are in the opposite direction of the general restrictive axis, pushing amendments written by Vivendi-Universal, etc.)
I think you'll hear again about this DADVSI (the short name for "author's right and neighbour's right in the information society) law project, whatever the outcome may be!
"many Linux users will want access to DRMed material..."
To access DRM material there are two different ways :
- you circumvent the DRM which may be legal under certain laws, especially if you do it for reaching interoperability. A circumvention program can be GPLed without any kind of doubt.
- you implement the DRM into your software, in which case, your software can't be GPLed : practically, implementing a DRM means programming a way to access a given key in certain conditions. If your program is free-as-free-speech, anyone can modify the code so the access will be given anytime.
That's the major incompatibility between free-as-free-speech software and DRM, as put by Loic Dachary, long-time member of the FSF : "when talking of a free-as-speech DRM, either it's not a DRM, or it's not free-as-speech"
(we took for a definition of a DRM coinciding of what they had been so far : Digital Restriction Measured, that control the use of copyrighted data.)
All this happened during a meeting of the CSPLA (Conseil Superieur de la Propriété Littéraire et Artistique, Superior Council for Intellectual Property) which is a consultative body of the Ministry of Culture and Communication.
The objective of these meetings of the CSPLA is to provide a whitepaper with amendments to the laws proposed by the Ministry, so it's about equivalent to the Ministry itself.
What's interesting is the composition of the (48 i think? not sure) members of the CSPLA : besides Vivendi/Universal, SACEM, SCPP, SNEP, TF1 (the major TV channel), Microsoft _AND_ BSA have a seat (which makes two seats for Microsoft, actually), while the Free Software Foundation France always got refused to participate...
So the whole commission which is supposed to be representative, isn't _at all_! It's vast majority is private corporate interests, with no civil society at all.
it's called Gweled, and available at : http://sebdelestaing.free.fr/gweled/
Then it's not GPL anymore!
It became the Mr.Underbridge Public License, and is probably not compatible with the GPL anymore...
it's not that simple to alter the GPL before applying it : it will require that any modified version be redistributed under the _original_ GPL, not the one you modified.
so the protection / attribution clause (that some FUDders call "virality") is also there to make sure the GPL's integrity will be respected, which complicates a little the use of derivative licenses...
don't you have something else than that rapidshare thing? it obviously can't stand a /. crowd...
please somebody setup a torrent of that file!
very interesting indeed!!
/.
if you happen to initate such a project as a plugin for History Flow that deals with FLOSS projects, or hear from an existing one, i'd be very glad to hear from it!
i hope you'd either post a news about it or be so kind to notify me through
thanx in advance
In this article you'll find a pretty good answer to your question : seven economic models are detailed here, either based on selling services, advantages (think "club premium" or mandrakesque things like this), or novelty (one recent version of the software isn't for free-as-a-beer, but the older one is free-as-in-speech), etc..
have a good read!
any european folk interested by this subject should come to TheHague on nov the 18th to attend FlossPols :
take a look at the speakers list to get an idea of how "high-level" this event can be.
representatives from the European Union, the IDA (the organism from the EU responsible for an excellent "opensource migration guidelines" report), and from various state-ministries from all around europe will gather there around "FLOSS in government", giving concrete experience-returns and precious advise i think...
It's alpha, but works quite well i think :
.iso of a liveCD ready to run it, the project is lead by Loïc Dachary, a senior GNU, Debian programmer, and i think developpers are needed to help them ;)
here is le website.
There is an
An interesting fact is that it is plain GPL software developped under a commercial contract: Loïc works on this paid by a game company!
So this could be a major hit in gnu/linux gaming AND a way to prove one (brilliant) programmer can _earn_ his life writing Free Software! =~))
GO MekenSleep!
why does such commercial anouncements take place on /. ?
so many people have time to loose to cut/paste press communiques, or is that kind of crap originating directly from Nokia Corp?
i know for sure i will _never_ buy this camera! :)
... is the bug in the Patriot anti-missile system!
url
an error in the way it rounded 1/10000th of seconds made it less and less accurate proportionnally to the time since it had been booted up!
so remember to always reboot your anti-missiles counter-mesures before using them!
Actually when Police seize computers, they take the whold PC without materring unplugging harddisks and stuff...
;)
And here in France, not telling passwords of a crypted things is considered as a penal offense, from a recent law i think.
so all you US folks may already have that kind of how-ya-callit "Homeland Security" issues too...
yeah maybe it's just marketting afterall... but this raises interesting issues about concurrence of law and technology anyway
take a look at this Free Art License based on the GPL, but aimed at covering the Copyleft distribution terms of any artform.
;)
it's the only one to make a difference between an original artwork and its copies, which may seem irellevant applied to digital art, but allows "real" physical artworks to be used and reused as GPLed code.
here is the Free Art License,the translation of the original License Art Libre
and the website in french.
the license is in perpetual evolution.and more and more people use it.
i can't resist to some autopromotional example of FALed works with my own personnal website
njoy'n'share!