Posted on Friday 2 December 2005 - Popularity: 9%
If the “VU/SACEM/BSA/FA Contents Department” bill proposal passes in the Parliament, free software and distributing the source code to your software will become illegal in France.
“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”
“Havoc is breaking loose,” says Christophe Espern. “How can people possibly both pretend to defend culture and then want to ban the only software giving universal access to it? Actually, the contradiction may be only superficial: I think what they are truly after is the control of the public… culture is just a excuse.”
Ok, I’m just speechless! This shows once more that lobbyism is definitely not a good thing and that politicians that don’t work for the people are about the worst thing that can happen to a society.
December 2nd, 2005 at 2:18 pm
Not sure how clear the article’s English version is, but it’s not an attack on open source software per se (what kind of political system could prevent people from distributing software and its source for free if they want to?): it’s basically against DRM-less file-exchange software. And the primary target would be free P2P software because open-source and DRM and mutually exclusive by nature.
Haven’t the RIAA, MPAA et al. been pushing for similar regulations in the US (Broadcast Flag, etc.)?
December 2nd, 2005 at 2:40 pm
Actually, the page (in French) linked from that article reads: “This amendment seems inspired by the SSSCA/CBDTPA, a US bill proposal that was eventually rejected because it threatened the US economy and national economical security.”
And it also states that such a law would indeed apply to many kinds of software, like chat clients (with file transfer) or web servers. I know our Parliament has given in to the SACEM’s demands to levy a tax on blank media, but I don’t think they could ever be stupid enough to endorse a law that would, as mere collateral damage, require replacing software on every computer in the country with crippled crap (especially now that more and more government agencies are seeing the advantages of switching to free software, and after a French-led commission worked hard to repel software patents in Europe).
December 2nd, 2005 at 2:52 pm
Thanks for the additional clarifications. Sadly my French isn’t too good anymore.
Fredi
December 2nd, 2005 at 4:14 pm
I’ve been searching for recent news stories with terms like “france sacem” and such, but have been turning up empty… do we have any info other than this press release from some of the participants?
December 2nd, 2005 at 6:21 pm
Not that I know (or could find).
Fredi
December 2nd, 2005 at 6:57 pm
There’s a whole bunch of French blogs and news sites writing about this (you can search for “sacem” on news.google.fr). Turns out the reason why this is being rushed under the radar is that it’s just the implementation of a couple-year-old European directive.
So we might be able to dodge the anti-P2P amendment (if what I read is correct, it specifically targets software that’s prominently used to share copyrighted material — even if that wasn’t the developer’s original intention, so BitTorrent wouldn’t be exempt) but the basic DMCA package seems pretty much unavoidable.
And all this time, reading horror stories about the DMCA and thinking, “thank god it’s not happening here”…