25 November 2005. FSF France press release. Friday November 18th, 2005, French Department of Culture. SNEP and SCPP tell Free Software authors: "You shall change your licenses." SACEM add: "You shall stop publishing free software," and warn they are ready "to sue free software authors who will keep on publishing source code" should the "VU/SACEM/BSA/FA Contents Department"[1] bill pass in the Parliament.
URL: http://www.fsffrance.org/news/article2005-11-25.en.html
On Wed, 2005-11-30 at 18:50 +0100, Jerome Dominguez wrote:
25 November 2005. FSF France press release. Friday November 18th, 2005, French Department of Culture. SNEP and SCPP tell Free Software authors: "You shall change your licenses." SACEM add: "You shall stop publishing free software," and warn they are ready "to sue free software authors who will keep on publishing source code" should the "VU/SACEM/BSA/FA Contents Department"[1] bill pass in the Parliament.
Could someone explain exactly what the problem is here?
From reading the article, I get the impression that the bill seeks to
prevent software accessing media without some form of DRM, which seems a step beyond the already bad EUCD situation - is that right?
Cheers,
Alex.
On Wed, 2005-11-30 at 22:19 +0000, Alex Hudson wrote:
On Wed, 2005-11-30 at 18:50 +0100, Jerome Dominguez wrote:
25 November 2005. FSF France press release. Friday November 18th, 2005, French Department of Culture. SNEP and SCPP tell Free Software authors: "You shall change your licenses." SACEM add: "You shall stop publishing free software," and warn they are ready "to sue free software authors who will keep on publishing source code" should the "VU/SACEM/BSA/FA Contents Department"[1] bill pass in the Parliament.
Could someone explain exactly what the problem is here?
From reading the article, I get the impression that the bill seeks to
prevent software accessing media without some form of DRM, which seems a step beyond the already bad EUCD situation - is that right?
From what little I understood...
Imagine you use Firefox to download a DRM'ed Windows Media Video file. Firefox would have to respect the copy prohibition embedded in that .WMV file, if it doesn't, it would be illegal to use it.
Now imagine Firefox DOES respect the copy prohibition. Since Firefox is Free Software, it can be modified so it WON'T respect the prohibition. As such, it would be illegal to use it.
These two situations are an example of what that law would turn illegal.
If you dig to a lower level, maybe the network card driver should analise the content, I think.
Rui
err... I really think this is nonsense...
* Any software can be modified (free software or proprietary) * Any hardware can be modified (by adding chips, like xbox and ps2) * Any content will be free
What we discuss here is how difficult is to do this... The sony case showed what happens when you try to enforce DRM.
Im going to say a stupid phrase now, but thank god China is a dictatorship, otherwise we would be completely attached to another dictatorship, the one ruled by the multinational companies and the market.
[]s, gandhi
Rui Miguel Silva Seabra wrote:
On Wed, 2005-11-30 at 22:19 +0000, Alex Hudson wrote:
On Wed, 2005-11-30 at 18:50 +0100, Jerome Dominguez wrote:
25 November 2005. FSF France press release. Friday November 18th, 2005, French Department of Culture. SNEP and SCPP tell Free Software authors: "You shall change your licenses." SACEM add: "You shall stop publishing free software," and warn they are ready "to sue free software authors who will keep on publishing source code" should the "VU/SACEM/BSA/FA Contents Department"[1] bill pass in the Parliament.
Could someone explain exactly what the problem is here?
From reading the article, I get the impression that the bill seeks to
prevent software accessing media without some form of DRM, which seems a step beyond the already bad EUCD situation - is that right?
From what little I understood...
Imagine you use Firefox to download a DRM'ed Windows Media Video file. Firefox would have to respect the copy prohibition embedded in that .WMV file, if it doesn't, it would be illegal to use it.
Now imagine Firefox DOES respect the copy prohibition. Since Firefox is Free Software, it can be modified so it WON'T respect the prohibition. As such, it would be illegal to use it.
These two situations are an example of what that law would turn illegal.
If you dig to a lower level, maybe the network card driver should analise the content, I think.
Rui
Discussion mailing list Discussion@fsfeurope.org https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion
On Thu, 2005-12-01 at 10:29 +0000, Rui Miguel Silva Seabra wrote:
Imagine you use Firefox to download a DRM'ed Windows Media Video file. Firefox would have to respect the copy prohibition embedded in that .WMV file, if it doesn't, it would be illegal to use it.
Now imagine Firefox DOES respect the copy prohibition. Since Firefox is Free Software, it can be modified so it WON'T respect the prohibition. As such, it would be illegal to use it.
I must be being stupid, because I still can't see the practical problem - my Firefox/media player/whatever already does respect DRM, in so far as I can't access DRM'd media (as far as I know), and the EUCD has already made it an offence to bypass DRM mechanisms.
Does this French proposal go further in some way I don't understand? Does it apply somehow to works that aren't protected by DRM, or extend DRM? Is the default of "this is DRM'd, therefore no access is possible" not good enough somehow?
Apologies if I've missed the point of the problem ;o)
Cheers,
Alex.
On 02-Dec-2005, Alex Hudson wrote:
On Thu, 2005-12-01 at 10:29 +0000, Rui Miguel Silva Seabra wrote:
Imagine you use Firefox to download a DRM'ed Windows Media Video file. Firefox would have to respect the copy prohibition embedded in that .WMV file, if it doesn't, it would be illegal to use it.
Now imagine Firefox DOES respect the copy prohibition. Since Firefox is Free Software, it can be modified so it WON'T respect the prohibition. As such, it would be illegal to use it.
I must be being stupid, because I still can't see the practical problem - my Firefox/media player/whatever already does respect DRM, in so far as I can't access DRM'd media (as far as I know), and the EUCD has already made it an offence to bypass DRM mechanisms.
You're not being stupid, but you're victim to a confusion the media consortium would love to propagate.
The "respect the copy prohibition" refers to a *legal* restriction, not a technical one. That is, a device or program that "respects" such a prohibition would be obeying the law (and ignoring the user), rather than being technically restricted by the medium.
In other words, "DRM'ed media" is media that somehow *indicates* what actions are permitted or prohibited. Software that "respects" the DRM will duly obey the indications of what is permitted, disregarding what the user wishes to do.
Think of the "may only read X times" or "may not print" or "may not be read aloud" flags in (some misguided vendors') e-books. Those are indications only; if they are to be effective, they must be enforced by the device that accesses them.
In this wise, the lobbyists for "if we don't license it, it's illegal" demand a world where devices that permit breaching the license are themselves illegal -- where the legal assertion of license restrictions are synonymous with the technical impossibility of breaching the license, with *any* legal device.
Thus, any device that does not betray the wishes of its user, by obeying the signals in the media regardless of the device's apparent capabilities, is to become illegal under such a regime.
Since free software obeys the wishes of those who customise it to their wishes, and does not attempt to obey the wishes of the media consortium, the vision explained above is mutually exclusive to free software. One or the other must be eradicated.
On Sat, 2005-12-03 at 02:34 +1100, Ben Finney wrote:
You're not being stupid, but you're victim to a confusion the media consortium would love to propagate.
The "respect the copy prohibition" refers to a *legal* restriction, not a technical one. That is, a device or program that "respects" such a prohibition would be obeying the law (and ignoring the user), rather than being technically restricted by the medium.
hm, I think my point was slightly more subtle than this.
You're right, DRM restrictions are not equivalent to legal restrictions. But, in the EU, overriding DRM is already an offence. What I'm asking is how forcing software to respect DRM results in less freedom - my software is already effectively respecting DRM by refusing to access it.
In other words, I'm asking for an example scenario of something that would be legal under the EUCD, but not legal under this new law, so that I can properly understand the concern here.
Cheers,
Alex
Alex Hudson home@alexhudson.com
But, in the EU, overriding DRM is already an offence. What I'm asking is how forcing software to respect DRM results in less freedom - my software is already effectively respecting DRM by refusing to access it.
Some DRMs aren't effective if simply ignored. I can see why DRMers would like those simple "read-only flag" measures to have heavy legal penalties, because they're very cheap to make.
The amendment 2nd part seems to criminalise failure to add Digital Restriction Measures when told that the software you publish or distribute is being used to help break DRMs. I don't remember that in EUCD. I thought EUCD forbids one telling others how to break DRMs, and publishing software specifically to break DRMs: did it also criminalise programmers who merely ignored DRMs?
This may be a problem for programs which can be hacked to ignore some DRM flags in files. It looks like merely giving the source code to program X could be a counterfeiting crime if that law passes and the DRMers make a public statement "program X does not respect our DRMs".
Hope that helps,
On Fri, 2005-12-02 at 16:27 +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
The amendment 2nd part seems to criminalise failure to add Digital Restriction Measures when told that the software you publish or distribute is being used to help break DRMs. I don't remember that in EUCD. I thought EUCD forbids one telling others how to break DRMs, and publishing software specifically to break DRMs: did it also criminalise programmers who merely ignored DRMs?
Well, here's the thing - when I said "ignored", I generally mean "can't access" rather than "software bypasses the 'do not view' flag". As an example, I have a lovely PDF viewer in Gnome which allows me to cut'n'paste text out of PDFs, which is nifty. However, it does respect the awful PDF "don't print this", "don't save this" rubbish (as well as the slightly more respectable "don't view this" rc4 encryption, which it could hardly ignore).
Now, if evince didn't support those PDF flags, as simple and as trivial it would be to bypass I'm pretty sure that it would be illegal under the EUCD. And, I don't know of any examples of software on my system which does ignore DRMs (well... maybe: perhaps Firefox ignoring javascript to disable right-clicks, etc. counts?) and effectively bypasses them.
So, I don't see that on the face of it, the French proposal makes much difference, unless what they're somehow trying to do is prevent people from distributing the source to (say) evince, because a hacker could get in there and remove all the code that respects those silly PDF flags? If that is an example of how the French proposal is different to EUCD as you suggest it might be, I would say that would be *extremely* serious for free software.
Perhaps an apt analogy would be to outlaw handyman joiners, because burglars can use crowbars too.
Cheers,
Alex.
Alex Hudson home@alexhudson.com
So, I don't see that on the face of it, the French proposal makes much difference, unless what they're somehow trying to do is prevent people from distributing the source to (say) evince, because a hacker could get in there and remove all the code that respects those silly PDF flags?
I think you've hit it head-on. You know that people can do that, so it seems it would be criminal for you not to act to prevent them, if the DADVSI law was in effect. With free software, I can't think how else you can prevent them besides ceasing evince distribution.
Like the FSF France wrote, this looks like it lets the DRMers stop free software distribution and many other things. I've just posted another translation (and less of a sleep-walk than the last one) which I found a bit clearer than the EUCD.info one.
Hope it helps,
Hope it helps,
State of translations: http://quatramaran.ens.fr/~blondeel/traduc/eucd.info/ TODO see: LISTE
Other langages are welcome :-) Yours, M.
On 02-Dec-2005, Alex Hudson wrote:
On Sat, 2005-12-03 at 02:34 +1100, Ben Finney wrote:
The "respect the copy prohibition" refers to a *legal* restriction, not a technical one. That is, a device or program that "respects" such a prohibition would be obeying the law (and ignoring the user), rather than being technically restricted by the medium.
You're right, DRM restrictions are not equivalent to legal restrictions.
Not presently. The proposed laws are attempting to make them equivalent.
But, in the EU, overriding DRM is already an offence.
Yes, breaching copyright is an offense.
What these laws try to make illegal is the distribution of anything that *could be used* to breach copyright. Such as free software.
What I'm asking is how forcing software to respect DRM results in less freedom
It's the difference between not being allowed to stab someone in the neck with a knife, and not being allowed to sell knives.
my software is already effectively respecting DRM by refusing to access it.
Most software *doesn't* do what you say -- and *all* of the software on a free operating system doesn't.
That's what they want to make illegal. Not the actions of breaching copyright -- those are already illegal, as you say. What is to become illegal is the distribution of tools that fail to betray the user's wishes when media tells them to.
In other words, I'm asking for an example scenario of something that would be legal under the EUCD,
Distributing or making an operating system that includes a 'cp' command that will copy files as requested by the user.
Distributing or making software that prints whatever the user asks to print.
Distributing or making software that will play an audio file as often as the user asks.
but not legal under this new law,
The new law would require all these items of software to refuse to perform their function if the bits they operate on contain some indication that the copyright holder doesn't like that action.
Software that didn't betray the user in such a way would be illegal to make or distribute.
On Sat, 2005-12-03 at 10:26 +1100, Ben Finney wrote:
But, in the EU, overriding DRM is already an offence.
Yes, breaching copyright is an offense.
That's not what I meant: overriding a DRM technical restriction, even if there is nothing preventing you from a copyright point of view, is illegal. You're not allowed to circumvent any technical protection on something; there is no "fair use" or similar here.
my software is already effectively respecting DRM by refusing to access it.
Most software *doesn't* do what you say -- and *all* of the software on a free operating system doesn't.
None of the software on my (free software) system utilises or bypasses DRM, not even the simple "don't print this" flags on PDF files. I can't access DRM'd audio or video, either. So, I don't think your statement is correct.
What is to become illegal is the distribution of tools that fail to betray the user's wishes when media tells them to.
That's already illegal under the EUCD, it's circumvention.
E.g., your example of:
Distributing or making software that prints whatever the user asks to print.
As I said before, evince will not print a PDF that has a no-print flag set on it. I suspect if it did, it would be a violation of the EUCD.
I know your audio example is also illegal, and I rather suspect that your example of cp is at least potentially illegal (Alan Cox, for example, once famously decided not to changelog a fix he made to the file system security of linux 2.2.20, because a file permissions system could be used as an access control mechanism, and detailing how to circumvent that would be a breach of DMCA/EUCD).
I'm not saying that I'm in favour of these things or anything; just that I don't understand how the French proposal is worse than what we already have. Now, MJ Ray has suggested that they may be trying to prevent people published source code that could be adjusted to circumvent DRM in the future - that would be an obviously terrible extension of the already bad EUCD situation.
Cheers,
Alex.
Alex Hudson home@alexhudson.com
[...] Now, MJ Ray has suggested that they may be trying to prevent people published source code that could be adjusted to circumvent DRM in the future - that would be an obviously terrible extension of the already bad EUCD situation.
Not quite. I think it's source code that you know *is* being used to circumvent Digital Restriction Measures (perhaps by modification).
On Sat, 2005-12-03 at 13:29 +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
Alex Hudson home@alexhudson.com
[...] Now, MJ Ray has suggested that they may be trying to prevent people published source code that could be adjusted to circumvent DRM in the future - that would be an obviously terrible extension of the already bad EUCD situation.
Not quite. I think it's source code that you know *is* being used to circumvent Digital Restriction Measures (perhaps by modification).
Ok. I imagine it might work out the same in practise, though, for trivial DRM schemes like the PDF "don't print this" flag.
I wonder how far it would be possible to take that reasoning, though. As a practical example, the patent PDFs available on the esp@cenet service are encrypted, so I cannot access them (somehow, Windows/Acrobat [whichever] users are able to decrypt them automatically - I don't know how yet, and would appreciate help).
In order to break that DRM, I would have to find a password which produces a certain MD5 sum. Now, the top 5 bytes of that sum are used as a key to rc4 encrypt the pdf contents, so it doesn't need to be a total collision, but you're still talking days to break any specific PDF (actually, it might be faster if you can jump out of the md5 process early when it's not playing out right.... I'm not sure that's algorithmically possible, though).
Now, that kind of scenario isn't a kind of 'hack evince slightly and it works' thing, and distributing that code is already an EUCD violation. It would be interesting to know whether or not there are many DRM schemes out there which can be violated as easily as the PDF flags, as opposed to the rather better designed encrypted stuff.
I suppose I'll have to wait for a full en translation of the proposal to fully understand it. Google seems to know of DADVSI, e.g., www.dadvsi.info, but I'm not convinced that's the same proposal? Or is it?
Cheers,
Alex.
On 30-Nov-2005, Jerome Dominguez wrote:
SNEP and SCPP tell Free Software authors: "You shall change your licenses." SACEM add: "You shall stop publishing free software," and warn they are ready "to sue free software authors who will keep on publishing source code" should the "VU/SACEM/BSA/FA Contents Department"[1] bill pass in the Parliament.
URL: http://www.fsffrance.org/news/article2005-11-25.en.html
What action can be taken by French citizens? By other people? How soon must action be taken?
On Thu, Dec 01, 2005 at 09:19:41AM +1100, Ben Finney wrote:
On 30-Nov-2005, Jerome Dominguez wrote:
SNEP and SCPP tell Free Software authors: "You shall change your licenses." SACEM add: "You shall stop publishing free software," and warn they are ready "to sue free software authors who will keep on publishing source code" should the "VU/SACEM/BSA/FA Contents Department"[1] bill pass in the Parliament.
URL: http://www.fsffrance.org/news/article2005-11-25.en.html
What action can be taken by French citizens? By other people? How soon must action be taken?
I'm afraid that only French citizens can do something. The EUCD.INFO initiative proposes some actions : http://www.eucd.info/agir
The EUCD.INFO initiative was launched by FSF France.
Jerome Dominguez a écrit :
On Thu, Dec 01, 2005 at 09:19:41AM +1100, Ben Finney wrote:
On 30-Nov-2005, Jerome Dominguez wrote:
SNEP and SCPP tell Free Software authors: "You shall change your licenses." SACEM add: "You shall stop publishing free software," and warn they are ready "to sue free software authors who will keep on publishing source code" should the "VU/SACEM/BSA/FA Contents Department"[1] bill pass in the Parliament.
URL: http://www.fsffrance.org/news/article2005-11-25.en.html
What action can be taken by French citizens? By other people? How soon must action be taken?
I'm afraid that only French citizens can do something. The EUCD.INFO initiative proposes some actions : http://www.eucd.info/agir
The EUCD.INFO initiative was launched by FSF France.
It seems that we are the guinea pigs of the new european laws. In this case, DADVSI is quite like IPRED2: Mme Fourtou, rapporteur of the Framework Decision to the JURI meeting, is the wife of Vivendi Universal's CEO (author of the amendement Vivendi Universal/SACEM/BSA in the french Parliament). Everybody's concerned.
Since her Framework Decision was rejected by JURI "on the basis of the Court's judgment of 13 September 2005 (Case C‑176/03 Commission v Council) where the Court clarifies the distribution of powers between the first and third pillars as regards provisions of criminal law", IPRED2 could be voted in a "trilogs" procedure with only one reading by the EU Parliament (otherwise, we have 2 two chances instead of 3 in the co-decision process).
The Commission will present another proposal for a Directive by end of January 2006. We have just a little more time to act.
M.
That's the wrong answer. Is not only up to the French citizen. Is likely to tell that the worldwide pressure that Amnesty International does on each single HR violation is void, but is not. All of us can do some, writing letters to the French Prime Minster AND the French President to tell them that they just CAN'T decide that "I'm not free to share my knowledge"... this is like to try to control my mind, so is a violation of the basic Human Rights... no way! All of us we MUST write them and collect undersignatures to the open letter and physically send it to them.
Don't think that this is just a French issue!
Cheers Pino
Jerome Dominguez wrote:
On Thu, Dec 01, 2005 at 09:19:41AM +1100, Ben Finney wrote:
On 30-Nov-2005, Jerome Dominguez wrote:
SNEP and SCPP tell Free Software authors: "You shall change your licenses." SACEM add: "You shall stop publishing free software," and warn they are ready "to sue free software authors who will keep on publishing source code" should the "VU/SACEM/BSA/FA Contents Department"[1] bill pass in the Parliament.
URL: http://www.fsffrance.org/news/article2005-11-25.en.html
What action can be taken by French citizens? By other people? How soon must action be taken?
I'm afraid that only French citizens can do something. The EUCD.INFO initiative proposes some actions : http://www.eucd.info/agir
The EUCD.INFO initiative was launched by FSF France.
Quoting Giuseppe De Francesco
tell them that they just CAN'T decide that "I'm not
free to share my
knowledge"... this is like to try to control my mind,
so is a violation
of the basic Human Rights... no way!
Totally agree. If a society is only healthy when economic, political and cultural powers have some kind of balance then this lobby is asking for domestic anger.
Moss
That's the wrong answer. Is not only up to the French citizen. Is likely to tell that the worldwide pressure that Amnesty International does on each single HR violation is void, but is not. All of us can do some, writing letters to the French Prime Minster AND the French President to tell them that they just CAN'T decide that "I'm not free to share my knowledge"... this is like to try to control my mind, so is a violation of the basic Human Rights... no way! All of us we MUST write them and collect undersignatures to the open letter and physically send it to them.
Don't think that this is just a French issue!
Cheers Pino
Jerome Dominguez wrote:
On Thu, Dec 01, 2005 at 09:19:41AM +1100, Ben Finney wrote:
On 30-Nov-2005, Jerome Dominguez wrote:
SNEP and SCPP tell Free Software authors: "You shall change your licenses." SACEM add: "You shall stop publishing free software," and warn they are ready "to sue free software authors who will keep on publishing source code" should the "VU/SACEM/BSA/FA Contents Department"[1] bill pass in the Parliament.
URL: http://www.fsffrance.org/news/article2005-11-25.en.html
What action can be taken by French citizens? By other people? How soon must action be taken?
I'm afraid that only French citizens can do something. The EUCD.INFO initiative proposes some actions : http://www.eucd.info/agir
The EUCD.INFO initiative was launched by FSF France.
Giuseppe De Francesco a écrit :
That's the wrong answer. Is not only up to the French citizen. Is likely to tell that the worldwide pressure that Amnesty International does on each single HR violation is void, but is not. All of us can do some, writing letters to the French Prime Minster AND the French President to tell them that they just CAN'T decide that "I'm not free to share my knowledge"... this is like to try to control my mind, so is a violation of the basic Human Rights... no way! All of us we MUST write them and collect undersignatures to the open letter and physically send it to them.
Don't think that this is just a French issue!
Cheers Pino
We can also build a team of translators. They are asking to trad-GNU to do it for the site. I can help for the begining.
M.
I'm on. I've no time to organize but any help I can give, count on it. I can translate: French into Italian French into English (british) Italian into English (british) Italian into French Italian into English (british) English into French English into Italian Spanish into Italian Spanish into English (british)
Cheers Pino
miluz wrote:
---->CUT<---- We can also build a team of translators. They are asking to trad-GNU to do it for the site. I can help for the begining.
M. _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list Discussion@fsfeurope.org https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion
Am Donnerstag, den 01.12.2005, 18:43 +0000 schrieb Giuseppe De Francesco:
I'm on. I've no time to organize but any help I can give, count on it. I can translate:
Please see http://www.fsfeurope.org/contribute/translators.en.html for an overview about how we handle translations.
Thanks, Reinhard
On Thursday 01 December 2005 18:43, Giuseppe De Francesco wrote:
I'm on. I've no time to organize but any help I can give, count on it. I can translate:
French into English (british) Italian into English (british)
Italian into English (british)
Spanish into English (british)
Cheers Pino
If you like, send/link anything in English; I may be able to get it on groklaw.net or other blogs
Chris Lingard
Chris Lingard a écrit :
If you like, send/link anything in English; I may be able to get it on groklaw.net or other blogs
I resume:
- Write an open letter, "and collect signatures to the open letter and physically send it to them". - Write an article for the call + open letter on Groklow and other blogs. - Receive and translate individual letters (handle translations)
Is it ok? What do you want me to do?
Monsieur Le président de la République Palais de l'Elysée 55, rue du faubourg Saint-Honoré 75008 PARIS http://www.elysee.fr/ecrire/index.html
M. Le Premier Ministre Hôtel de Matignon 57, rue de Varennes 75007 Paris http://www.premier-ministre.gouv.fr/acteurs/premier_ministre/ecrire
French Parliament _Adress of National deputies:_ http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/12/tribun/comm3.asp For each, on "ADRESSES", - electronic adresses - physical adresses (Name + Casier de la Poste, Palais Bourbon, 75355 Paris 07 SP)
M.
Chris Lingard chris@stockwith.co.uk
If you like, send/link anything in English; I may be able to get it on groklaw.net or other blogs
Here's a JFDI translation of http://eucd.info/index.php?2005/11/14/175-exclusif-amendement-interdisant-le... I'm not an experienced translator and I've deliberately changed some tenses to make it feel better in English, but I hope I've not changed any senses. I've no idea whether the French was easy to read to begin with. The law reads like legalese to me ;-)
Exclusive: VU/SACEM/BSA amendment forbidding software not equipped with technical measures.
An amendment to the proposed DADVSI law has the aim of making criminal counterfeiting out of publication, distribution and promotion of all software susceptible to being used to open up data protected by author's right and not integrating a method of controlling and tracking private usage (technical measure). All software permitting downloads is concerned, such as certain instant messaging software (chat) and all server software (P2P, HTTP, FTP, SSH). This surrealist amendement has been redirected from its start by Vivendi Universal, then reworked by many members of the Sirinelli commission, a commission of the High Council of Literary and Artistic Property [CSPLA].
-----
As well as constituting a death blow to the rules of law giving the right to publish free software that can open data by electronic routes - and therefore to carry harm to freedom of expression and to the moral rights of divulging of the authors of free software - the forseeable impact on innovation ("chilling effect") and on free association of this amendment is evident. Tomorrow, all software allowing a new use should pass through the filters of the majors. All software not carrying a Microsoft, Sony or Apply software spy will be illegal.
This amendment seems to be inspired by the proposed SSSCA/ CBDTPA law, an American law proposal that was finally rejected because it threatened the American economy and national security.
At the time, the American branch of the ACM, an assocation of informationalists founded in 1947, wrote to the senator proposing the law:
In our society, we have achieved technological excellence, research leadership, and educational preeminence in the world through the free exchange of information and the freedom to innovate. Copyright was intended to support those goals, not restrict them for entertainment companies. The explicit embodiment of "fair use" provisions in the law has contributed to our many successes. Any further legislative action - such as the SSSCA - which focuses on constraining or outlawing technology instead of penalizing behavior can only serve to weaken our educational systems, impede our technological dominance, and interfere with our electronic security. {Note 2}
That applies perfectly to the VU/SACEM/BSA amendment... apart from the fact that France is not in a situation of "technological dominance"...
Notes
1. it is not possible to make a technical measure in free software, given that a technical measure takes control of the computer by secret mechanisms. It's totally contrary to free software, which permits mastery of the system by the user through openness of the code. See our communique to the office of the minister of industry.
2. ACM, USACM Letter to Sen. Hollings on SSSCA, 2001 http://www.eff.org/IP/SSSCA_CBDTPA/20010926_usacm_hollings_letter.html
-----
Is assimilated to a crime of counterfeiting:
1st - the act, in knowledge of causing, publishing or putting on public access, under any form that it is, a software manifestly destined to put on unauthorised access to the public of works or objects protected by a literary and artistic right that doesn't understand the measures for, by a state of technology, preserves these protected works or objects against an unauthorised use.
2nd - the act of publishing or putting on public access, under any form that it is, a software other than that described in the 1st above, since, having knowledge of that which the software is manifestly used for the putting on unauthorised access to the public of works or objects protected by a literary and artistic right, the publisher has not taken measures, by a state of technology, to preserve these works or objects protected against an unauthorised use.
3rd - the act, in knowledge of causing, of directly promoting the putting on public access under some form that it is or the use of a software described in 1st or 2nd above.
4th - the above provisions apply without prejudice to the application of the provisions of article L121-7 of the Penal Code and those of the law of 21 June 2004.
---------
Hope that helps,
Whoops! The last few paragraphs weren't my last draft (bad undo button...) and this one was barely comprehensible:
[to make counterfeiting of...] 1st - the act, in knowledge of doing so, of publishing or putting on public access, in any form whatsoever, a software manifestly destined to put works or objects protected by a literary and artistic right on unauthorised access to the public, that doesn't understand the measures for preserving these protected works or objects against unauthorised use by a state of technology.
Sorry about that... hope you got the gist anyway. I now return you to commentators who are awake at the prompt.
MJ Ray wrote:
Whoops! The last few paragraphs weren't my last draft (bad undo button...) and this one was barely comprehensible:
[to make counterfeiting of...] 1st - the act, in knowledge of doing so, of publishing or putting on public access, in any form whatsoever, a software manifestly destined to put works or objects protected by a literary and artistic right on unauthorised access to the public, that doesn't understand the measures for preserving these protected works or objects against unauthorised use by a state of technology.
Sorry about that... hope you got the gist anyway. I now return you to commentators who are awake at the prompt.
Well I propose that software includes calls to validation scripts to implement such measures, and that such scripts be specifiable by environment variables in order to upgrade such scripts to provide the er.. latest enforcement that is avilable.
That would meet the requirements of the law? Which seemed to suggest that ir was lack of control that was objectionable.
Sam
On Fri, 2005-12-02 at 08:13 +0000, Sam Liddicott wrote:
Well I propose that software includes calls to validation scripts to implement such measures, and that such scripts be specifiable by environment variables in order to upgrade such scripts to provide the er.. latest enforcement that is avilable.
That would meet the requirements of the law? Which seemed to suggest that ir was lack of control that was objectionable.
Can you modify the variable to use a script that always returns true? Yes.
Then that strategy is likely illegal under that law.
Rui
Rui Miguel Silva Seabra wrote:
On Fri, 2005-12-02 at 08:13 +0000, Sam Liddicott wrote:
Well I propose that software includes calls to validation scripts to implement such measures, and that such scripts be specifiable by environment variables in order to upgrade such scripts to provide the er.. latest enforcement that is avilable.
That would meet the requirements of the law? Which seemed to suggest that ir was lack of control that was objectionable.
Can you modify the variable to use a script that always returns true? Yes.
Then that strategy is likely illegal under that law.
How sure are you that the law writers have sense? How about LD_PRELOAD and chums? There are too many ways to patch after distrbution such checks. There is no working DRM scheme yet apart from XBOX 360.
Let the OS developers do their best to protect authors rights, the fact that they know their best is not good enough is not the point (unlike makers of proprietary software who make money out of claiming their DRM is good enough).
I'm only partly serious
Sam
On Fri, 2005-12-02 at 09:58 +0000, Rui Miguel Silva Seabra wrote:
On Fri, 2005-12-02 at 08:13 +0000, Sam Liddicott wrote:
Well I propose that software includes calls to validation scripts to implement such measures, and that such scripts be specifiable by environment variables in order to upgrade such scripts to provide the er.. latest enforcement that is avilable.
That would meet the requirements of the law? Which seemed to suggest that ir was lack of control that was objectionable.
Can you modify the variable to use a script that always returns true? Yes.
Then that strategy is likely illegal under that law.
You can do the same with proprietary, closed source, software. Have you ever heard of disassemblers and binary patches ?
Simo.
On Fri, 2005-12-02 at 15:06 +0100, Simo Sorce wrote:
On Fri, 2005-12-02 at 09:58 +0000, Rui Miguel Silva Seabra wrote:
On Fri, 2005-12-02 at 08:13 +0000, Sam Liddicott wrote:
Well I propose that software includes calls to validation scripts to implement such measures, and that such scripts be specifiable by environment variables in order to upgrade such scripts to provide the er.. latest enforcement that is avilable.
That would meet the requirements of the law? Which seemed to suggest that ir was lack of control that was objectionable.
Can you modify the variable to use a script that always returns true? Yes.
Then that strategy is likely illegal under that law.
You can do the same with proprietary, closed source, software. Have you ever heard of disassemblers and binary patches ?
I know that, you know that, and anyone with two fingers of forehead knows that.
But some don't have the foggiest idea and think that that is OK.
RUi
On Fri, 2005-12-02 at 14:08 +0000, Rui Miguel Silva Seabra wrote:
On Fri, 2005-12-02 at 15:06 +0100, Simo Sorce wrote:
On Fri, 2005-12-02 at 09:58 +0000, Rui Miguel Silva Seabra wrote:
On Fri, 2005-12-02 at 08:13 +0000, Sam Liddicott wrote:
Well I propose that software includes calls to validation scripts to implement such measures, and that such scripts be specifiable by environment variables in order to upgrade such scripts to provide the er.. latest enforcement that is avilable.
That would meet the requirements of the law? Which seemed to suggest that ir was lack of control that was objectionable.
Can you modify the variable to use a script that always returns true? Yes.
Then that strategy is likely illegal under that law.
You can do the same with proprietary, closed source, software. Have you ever heard of disassemblers and binary patches ?
I know that, you know that, and anyone with two fingers of forehead knows that.
But some don't have the foggiest idea and think that that is OK.
Then our duty is to make that basic information available and to let people know that even hardware keys never stops someone willing to infringe and that making source code unlawful is just stupid and unnecessary.
Simo.
Simo Sorce wrote :
Can you modify the variable to use a script that always returns true? Yes.
Then that strategy is likely illegal under that law.
You can do the same with proprietary, closed source, software. Have you ever heard of disassemblers and binary patches ?
I know that, you know that, and anyone with two fingers of forehead knows that.
But some don't have the foggiest idea and think that that is OK.
But the point made by the law is not the ability to bypass the protection scheme: the point is 1) some people bypass it [so it must be possible :-)] 2) AND the provider of the software did/does not take all appropriate measures to protect the copyrighted works, giving the state of the art (litterally "en l'état de la technique" is "in the (given) state of the technology")
So, if you apply the average protection scheme (publishing only binaries, a bit of obfuscation), it should be ok.
However, if you supply the sources, which can be easily read and modified, well, judges will probably think you helped counterfeiting...
Judicael.
MJ Ray a écrit :
Chris Lingard chris@stockwith.co.uk
If you like, send/link anything in English; I may be able to get it on groklaw.net or other blogs
Here's a JFDI translation of http://eucd.info/index.php?2005/11/14/175-exclusif-amendement-interdisant-le...
Thank you very much. I've transmitted it.
M.
On Thu, Dec 01, 2005 at 11:32:49PM +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
Chris Lingard chris@stockwith.co.uk
If you like, send/link anything in English; I may be able to get it on groklaw.net or other blogs
Here's a JFDI translation of http://eucd.info/index.php?2005/11/14/175-exclusif-amendement-interdisant-le...
Thanks.
According to a mail received on trad-gnu@april.org mailing list Sebastien Blondeel blondeel@clipper.ens.fr is handling the coordination of the translations. I send to him your translation.
Jerome Dominguez a écrit :
On Thu, Dec 01, 2005 at 11:32:49PM +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
Chris Lingard chris@stockwith.co.uk
If you like, send/link anything in English; I may be able to get it on groklaw.net or other blogs
Here's a JFDI translation of http://eucd.info/index.php?2005/11/14/175-exclusif-amendement-interdisant-le...
Thanks.
According to a mail received on trad-gnu@april.org mailing list Sebastien Blondeel blondeel@clipper.ens.fr is handling the coordination of the translations. I send to him your translation.
I've sent it yesterday. Camille Moulin is handling coordination for trad-gnu, but if you rather to ignore it and my participation, it's ok. I'm free now.
M.
Quoting miluz miluz@free.fr:
Jerome Dominguez a écrit :
According to a mail received on trad-gnu@april.org mailing list Sebastien Blondeel blondeel@clipper.ens.fr is handling the coordination of the translations. I send to him your translation.
I've sent it yesterday. Camille Moulin is handling coordination for trad-gnu, but if you rather to ignore it and my participation, it's ok. I'm free now.
It seems there was a little misunderstanding: please contact Sebastien Blondeel blondeel@clipper.ens.fr he's the one in charge of the coordination. I was ready to help in case no one else was available, but apperently, that's not necessary anymore. Have a nice day. Camille
miluz a écrit :
Jerome Dominguez a écrit :
On Thu, Dec 01, 2005 at 11:32:49PM +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
Chris Lingard chris@stockwith.co.uk
If you like, send/link anything in English; I may be able to get it on groklaw.net or other blogs
Here's a JFDI translation of http://eucd.info/index.php?2005/11/14/175-exclusif-amendement-interdisant-le...
Thanks.
According to a mail received on trad-gnu@april.org mailing list Sebastien Blondeel blondeel@clipper.ens.fr is handling the coordination of the translations. I send to him your translation.
I've sent it yesterday. Camille Moulin is handling coordination for trad-gnu,
The problem is solve.
It seems that coordination between FSFE and FSF France needs time. Also don't use french government adresses now (I'm not agree, but it's like that).
If someone want to talk to a french organisator of http://www.fsffrance.org/news/article2005-11-25.en.html Please, contact Loïc Dachary to : +33 1 42 76 05 49 asap
M.