French Parliament adopts controversial copyright bill

[BWF89]

That sucks, another one bites the dust.

The French parliament has today finally adopted a law known as DADVSI implementing the 2001 European directive on copyright, roughly an equivalent to the US Digital Millenium Copyright Act. The final text criminalizes sending copyrighted data over peer-to-peer networks, and enacts tough penalties for those designing programs "evidently designed" to send copyrighted data or meant for circumventing DRM protection techniques.

Free software groups contend that the law could in effect make it impossible to implement free software capable of reading DRM-encumbered formats. EUCD.info denounces the "worst copyright law imaginable". [1]

The text started to be examined in Parliament in December 2005, when it took an unexpected twist with an amendment decriminalizing peer-to-peer networks (in exchange for the payment of a flat fee), since repealed. In March, other amendments were strongly criticized by Apple Computer, and as a result the US government pressured the French government to rescind them.

The ruling UMP party voted in favor of the law, but a number of its parliamentarians, including a vice-president of the National Assembly, expressed strong reservations; the centrist UDF split over it, with its president François Bayrou being opposed to the bill, but some other members abstaining from voting; the left-wing opposition PS and PCF voted against it. The opposition has announced it would mount a challenge over the law before the French Constitutional Council.

Proponents of the bill claim that it will rein in unauthorized copying of copyrighted content, which they claim jeopardizes artistic creation in France. Opponents opposed both the way the bill was examined in Parliament, which they claim was put under pressure, and some clauses that they claim may violate civil liberties or jeopardize free software.

The bill is due to be signed into law by president Jacques Chirac following the probable examination by the Constitutional Council.

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/French_P...copyright_bill

[Engnome]

Oh ****, one of my worst fear is that this will spread. It started in USA but it seems to be spreading. Hopefully our pirate party here in Sweden can stop these kind of laws when (or if) they get into the parlament. Hopefully the big &%¤&% European Union won't force this kinda stuff on us like they have with countless other stupid laws and regulations.

[richbarna]

They have been talking of doing this in Spain, but there is a major problem.
The telephone company Telefonica has a monopoly hold over the country, and as Spain is one of the major file sharing countries in Europe, if this happens, nobody will want to pay extortionate prices for broadband connections if they only use it for file sharing.
Currently Telefonica charges €60 (do the conversion to your currency) per month for line rental and ADSL.
If prosecutions start to arise for file sharing, Telefonica will lose million€, and they know it, and the government knows it too.

[BWF89]

@Engnome: Well good luck with that

@richbarna: I read somewhere that 1/3rd of all information transfered over the internet is through BitTorrent. Not that 100% of BT users are pirates (i use it to download the new OpenOffice releases when the servers are swamped) but it does make you think.

Just a heads up, If you go to the Wikinews links and click on the picture there you can see RMS in it.

[gingermark]

How will this affect the PLF repositories?

[Stone123]

The ruling UMP party voted in favor of the law, but a number of its parliamentarians, including a vice-president of the National Assembly, expressed strong reservations;

I realy have no belief in politicians. I bet less then half of them voted just to get votes from oposing side on next election when they where realy for it, its just bureaucracy. Was this bill that VLC media player team was so against?

[tsb]

DRM and its corresponding consequences are becoming a fact of life. Until Linux and its community come to terms with this, there is no future. Yes, open source is of the upmost importance, but it must be able to coincide with the strictest of DRM measures or else the glass will be half empty not half full. When a Linux distro can reach this compromise between the community and its open source developers as well as with those wishing to protect their intellectual property and holding control of the latest technolgies, it will finally have the chance of becoming something as great or even greater than any OS yet to gain mass acceptance.

[BWF89]

@tsb: The Linux developers themselves don't really have to do anything. If someone wants to create a program for Linux that uses DRM nobody can stop them. The only thing they can't do is (when the GPLv3 comes out) is use DRM in a program that is under the GPLv3.

[Engnome]

Currently Telefonica charges €60 (do the conversion to your currency) per month for line rental and ADSL.
If prosecutions start to arise for file sharing, Telefonica will lose million€, and they know it, and the government knows it too.

Wow thats expensive! Is that telephone AND ADSL? But i have to say I think youre overestimating the importance of the money generated to the ISP. They don't mean alot when the US puts pressure on a country to do something about warez.

[tsb]

@tsb: The Linux developers themselves don't really have to do anything. If someone wants to create a program for Linux that uses DRM nobody can stop them. The only thing they can't do is (when the GPLv3 comes out) is use DRM in a program that is under the GPLv3.

No, if the kernel itself and everything built around it doesn't have DRM security in mind, it will never be accepted and ratified by AACS or whatever BoD is evauluating the distro.

It must start at the beginning or else it has already failed.