Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Open Source
Newly proposed French law does not penalize Apple
First off, I would like to note that this post is an opinion
piece, and though it contains facts, the opinions contained therein are definitely biased towards open source, open
standards, the freedom of software programmers, and technological innovation.France's Assemblé Nationale voted in yesterday evening the DADVSI, a rather hideous proposal which will most likely become law when France's Sénat deems it constitutional and President Chirac signs it. Both of the latter are likely as the president is of the same majority right party (UMP) as the Assemblé Nationale. The New York Times (and Slashdot) have noted incorrectly that the law will contain clauses for interoperability required of iTunes and iPods, but those amendments did not make it into the final proposal voted on Thursday night. Read on for a breakdown of the law as it currently awaits, almost certain, approval.
This new law will forbid an individual from providing information about how to break any protection system, or the use of a technology that breaks a protection system. A quick breakdown of the proposed fee structure for breaking this law:
- 38 Euros: Fine for downloading a copyrighted work, per work.
- 150 Euros: Fine for sharing a copyrighted work with someone else.
- 750 Euros: Fine if you have in your possession and/or use a software that bypasses copyright protection.
- 3,750 Euros: Fine if you write software or provide information about bypassing copyright protection.
- 30,000 Euros and 6 Months in Prison: Penalty for those making available software or technology that bypasses copyright protection.
- 300,000 Euros
and up to 3 Years in Prison: Penalty for making available any peer to peer software which "knowingly promotes
piracy."
DVD playback software (free or non-free), conversion software, backup software, file transfer software, and more are all illegal to create or distribute and carry heavy penalties. For example, making available Mplayer, VLC, Xine and more would cost 30,000 Euros and up to 6 months in prison.
This law also includes hundreds of side addenda. One such add-on will take the restricted size of copyrighted material in schools and research projects to ridiculously low resolutions (400x400 pixels in 72dpi for images) as well as require a large sum payed by the French National Education to authors' rights organizations. The New York Times reported about DADVSI, but only about a clause requiring interoperability of music players which was subsequently removed before ratification on Thursday evening (a link to this New York Times article was also posted on Slashdot).
This law was jokingly nicknamed "Vivendi Universal" by the members of the Assemblé Nationale, and yet was still voted in. All in all the law does not penalize Apple, but with all the open source software available for the Mac platform, it will penalize Apple users.
[via: French article by the Associated Press about Thursday's revisions of the law]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Aaron Hoffman said 4:51PM on 3-17-2006
Three cheers for fascism!
Hip-hip, hooray! Hip-hip, hooray! Hip-hip, hooray!
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l0ne said 4:53PM on 3-17-2006
Immediate consequence of this mess, the France-based VLC media player now will have to factor out DVD playing, as its implementation is largely dependant upon DeCSS (and cannot be done any other way).
Gah.
Not that it will matter, as the libraries can be distributed and built in countries where DeCSS is legal; but the main development is done there and now you can't add the DVD playing part without facing fines.
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Fabienne Serriere said 5:00PM on 3-17-2006
l0ne: Yes, the VLC project being a student-run project and one that is near and dear to my heart as a multichannel audio specialist makes this that much harder for me to accept.
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slaws said 6:54PM on 3-17-2006
Why should Apple be penalized?
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John Muir said 7:12PM on 3-17-2006
Indeed, I'm not French myself and this law will not affect me, but the fact the VLC team - who do a great job with what many people including myself use as their main video player on the Mac - are being persecuted by such a boneheaded anti-innovation law does piss me off.
I hope the law is either not policed regarding the open source community outside of p2p apps, or even better that it gets repealed when France wakes up to the fact this sort of thing only hurts its citizens. Otherwise we're going to need a fundraised to move the VLC dev team to another country!
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tnkgrl said 7:44PM on 3-17-2006
This so fucked up it brings out the Hothead Paisan in me!
But as a dual citizen of France and Canada now living in San Francisco and working as an audio software developer, I'm not surprised... One of the reasons I moved from France to Canada was because of big-brother bullshit like this.
Ironically, I now live in the US and although I'm not going to be fined 750 Euros for using VLC, my partner and I can't legally get married here (assuming we want to) - go figure :)
So fellow (french) hackers and anarchists, please keep installing OSX on your PCs and XP on your Macs and VLC on every device you get your dirty mits on! And as you're geeking out just remember that the revolution is your boyfriend"...
Perhaps they can stop us, but ultimately they can't stop information.
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Submarine said 8:40PM on 3-17-2006
"DVD playback software (free or non-free), conversion software, backup software, file transfer software, and more are all illegal to create or distribute and carry heavy penalties. For example, making available Mplayer, VLC, Xine and more would cost 30,000 Euros and up to 6 months in prison."
Not necessarily. I recommend you read the current writing of article 7, which states:
"One cannot prohibit the publishing of the source code and the technical documentation of an independant program interoperating with technical protection measures for legal purposes."
and also orders those providing technical protection measures [DRMs] to give the technical documentation necessary to make compatible programs to those who request it.
As written, it seems that Xine, VLC et al. are legal as long as they do not work around a technical measure meant to enforce copyright. After all, Xine, VLC et al. allow users to read DVDs that they legally acquired, don't they? They obviously fall under this clause about source code.
"This law also includes hundreds of side addenda. One such add-on will take the restricted size of copy written material in schools and research projects to ridiculously low resolutions (400x400 pixels in 72dpi for images) as well as require a large sum payed by the French National Education to authors' rights organizations."
Not in the law. This is a result of a contractual negociation between the executive and publishers.
I strongly recommend you read the text of the law that will be sent to the Senate. It's available on
http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/12/dossiers/031206.asp
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Swordmaker said 11:31PM on 3-17-2006
Has anyone noticed that at the bottom of this article and frame is the following: "All contents copyright © 2005, Weblogs, Inc.
All rights reserved. The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) is a member of the Weblogs, Inc. Network. Privacy Policy"
Under the provision of "downloading any copy righted material", we have all broken this law merely by reading the article!
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Greg said 1:22AM on 3-18-2006
This law is going to date itself faster than spoiled milk.
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Bob said 8:59AM on 3-18-2006
Hey,
As long as the rule is applied across all forms of technology, I think it's a great idea.
Let's start with forcing Microsoft to make the Windows API's open to everyone. The only reason Microsoft has a monopoly on the OS market is because of the installed base of applications that will only run on Windows.
So, I can't wait for France to force Microsoft to allow linux and Apple to use these API's freely in their own OSes so they can compete fairly!
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Nuts said 12:13PM on 3-18-2006
"DVD playback software (free or non-free), conversion software, backup software, file transfer software, and more are all illegal to create or distribute and carry heavy penalties. For example, making available Mplayer, VLC, Xine and more would cost 30,000 Euros and up to 6 months in prison."
Doesn't that cover QuickTime and iTunes too since they are free and they can convert between mediatypes. Backup software ,heck they must be nuts, do they really expect every computer user in France to not make backups of theire stuff. Heck they might as well forbid every inhabitant of France to own and use a computer.
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Michel said 6:54AM on 3-19-2006
you have to understand
DADVSI is the EUCD european bills translated in french laws
EUCD is the WTO translation of 1996 discussions between all countries membres of WTO.
DMCA of americans is one of that.
DADVSI an other.
Japan will get the similar stuff
_all_ europeans countries too
and so it will go in all countries.
there are _no_ hope. the countries _HAVE_ to protect the business of musics and movies majors.
we will have to wait much younger people becomes leaders and decides to do money in embracing computers and internet. not fighting it.
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Pierre Henri Clouin said 1:58PM on 3-19-2006
Based on the current text of the French bill on Copyright (http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/12/dossiers/ta-report/droit_auteur.pdf), this post misrepresents the bill's content on DRM interoperability. For additional details, please refer to: http://phc.typepad.com/infonomics/2006/03/french_bill_on_.html#trackback
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Bernard Lang said 8:31AM on 3-22-2006
Fabienne Serriere must be talking about another law. The law on authors right, that was voted last night by the French MPs, is available at http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/12/dossiers/ta-report/droit_auteur.pdf
(and the French style word processor is easily identifiable :-)
I do not recognize much of what Fabienne Serriere is saying as applying to this text, though there are indeed many extremely noxious aspects in that law.
But, as far as I know, it does promote interoperability and allows for free software interacting with technical protection measure (also known as cultural protective custody :-). Playing a DVD with DeCSS is ok, as I understand the law, but using it to translate to DivX may not be, depending on decisions to be made, by a new mediating coucil, about private copies. Whether translation software between formats is legal is even a more subtle issue, depending on its legal uses. However, there seem to be some circularity between some articles of the law that will need clarification. [this text may be reproduced freely as is, despite anything Weblogs or TUAW might state]
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