Hello,
Just to let you know that since December, 1st, editors must provide at least a non proprietary format for ebooks. While it's written in one of the lowest level of laws, it applies to everyone.
We may see things change a bit in the coming months on online stores.
Sources for French readers: http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFTEXT000029966188 http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFTEXT000029750455&a...
Best regards, Jil
Dear Jil,
Great news, thanks for mentioning it. By using Google Translate I concluded that this law is based on an earlier agreement between the writers union and the publishers union, am I right? And can be concluded that since there is word of a required non-proprietary format, that no form of DRM will be allowed? DRM based on an open standard by way of signing, and DRM based on changing the content for each user would both still seem to be allowed within this law. Not being familiar with all aspects of current e-book formats, I'm not aware of the state and development of DRM.
Kind regards, Nico Rikken
Hello Jil,
On Sun, Jan 25, 2015 at 02:47:39PM +0100, Jil Larner wrote:
Just to let you know that since December, 1st, editors must provide at least a non proprietary format for ebooks. While it's written in one of the lowest level of laws, it applies to everyone.
Thanks for sharing (good news for a change)! It seems that whoever made this happen deserves a price for the upcoming DocumentFreedomDay. :)
Greetings,
Guido
Jil Larner jil.larner@fsfe.org writes:
Just to let you know that since December, 1st, editors must provide at least a non proprietary format for ebooks. While it's written in one of the lowest level of laws, it applies to everyone.
Can you explain what the law actually requires, and of whom? Which particular people are required to do what?
Thank you for bringing news of legislation requiring freedom.
On 26/01/2015 00:31, Ben Finney wrote:
Jil Larner jil.larner@fsfe.org writes:
Just to let you know that since December, 1st, editors must provide at least a non proprietary format for ebooks. While it's written in one of the lowest level of laws, it applies to everyone.
Can you explain what the law actually requires, and of whom? Which particular people are required to do what?
Thank you for bringing news of legislation requiring freedom.
Hi Jil,
I searched both links (in French) for "propriétaire", "format", "drm", "ouvert" (open) and "éditeur" without success; I can't find any information about a mandatory open format, or anything about formats either...
@Jil or @Nico Rikken, can you quote the exact part of the text you're referring to? I can then translate for everyone if necessary.
Cheers, Nico
Le 26 janvier 2015 à 14:35 CET, Nicolas JEAN jean@fsfeurope.org a écrit :
Hi Jil,
I searched both links (in French) for "propriétaire", "format", "drm", "ouvert" (open) and "éditeur" without success; I can't find any information about a mandatory open format, or anything about formats either...
@Jil or @Nico Rikken, can you quote the exact part of the text you're referring to? I can then translate for everyone if necessary.
First link (http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFTEXT000029966188), Annexe, paragraph 4.2:
La rendre accessible dans un format technique exploitable en tenant compte des formats usuels du marché et de leur évolution, *et dans au moins un format non propriétaire*.
La rendre accessible à la vente, *dans un format numérique non propriétaire*, sur un ou plusieurs sites en ligne, selon le modèle commercial en vigueur dans le secteur éditorial considéré.
Cheers,
On 26/01/2015 14:54, Thomas Jost wrote:
First link (http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFTEXT000029966188), Annexe, paragraph 4.2:
La rendre accessible dans un format technique exploitable en tenant compte des formats usuels du marché et de leur évolution, *et dans au moins un format non propriétaire*.
La rendre accessible à la vente, *dans un format numérique non propriétaire*, sur un ou plusieurs sites en ligne, selon le modèle commercial en vigueur dans le secteur éditorial considéré.
Cheers,
Thanks Thomas! I must have mistaken one link for the other when I did not find "format"!!
So as a mea culpa, let me give a translation for it:
§4 "l'éditeur est tenu d'assurer une diffusion active de l'ouvrage" The editor has to ensure active circulation of the book
§4.2 "Pour une édition sous forme numérique :" And for a digital edition:
"La rendre accessible dans un format technique exploitable en tenant compte des formats usuels du marché et de leur évolution, et dans au moins un format non propriétaire." Make it available in a usable technical format, taking into account the market's usual formats and their evolution, and in at least one non-proprietary format.
"La rendre accessible à la vente, dans un format numérique non propriétaire, sur un ou plusieurs sites en ligne" Make it available for purchase, in a non-proprietary digital format, on one or more websites.
As Nico said, this appendix to the law text is named "Agreement between the 'permanent writers council' and the national publishers union", and a.k.a. something like "best practices" (Code des usages). It is also stated that this agreement will be discussed every five years, or before that if both parties concur to do so.
Cheers all, Nico
Nicolas JEAN jean@fsfeurope.org writes:
So as a mea culpa, let me give a translation for it:
Thank you for that work.
As Nico said, this appendix to the law text is named "Agreement between the 'permanent writers council' and the national publishers union", and a.k.a. something like "best practices" (Code des usages).
I'm still no wiser as to who is affected by this law and what exactly they're required to do.
Can someone please give a broader context for this, for someone who knows nothing of the specific institutions named here?
That is, what would you put in a press release for a foreign audience who knew nothing about the prior situation nor the French legal system nor the specifics of these institutions? What is the good news?
Hi,
On 26/01/2015 20:46, Ben Finney wrote:> Can someone please give a broader context for this, for someone who
knows nothing of the specific institutions named here?
That is, what would you put in a press release for a foreign audience who knew nothing about the prior situation nor the French legal system nor the specifics of these institutions? What is the good news?
I skipped the part by which the French Parliament has given its legslitative power to the Government. It's common practise in France, when it comes to laws the Parliament has no time to investigate (they're more focused on making laws from the politic agenda, which doesn't necessarily mean they focus on useful or meaningful laws). The drawback is that there is no parlementary work to rely on in order to understand the full extend of the law. In this very case, should the Parliament had worked on the law, we would know if “non-proprietary” meant no DRM, or just no non-proprietary DRM.
Anyway… The more intellegible news follow:
On November, 12th 2014, the French government rejuvenated the intellectual property law regarding book publishing, which was last updated in 1992, in order to include both changes in contractual and in technological matters. In this last field, a particular attention was drawn to e-book publishing, for which the law redirects to a code of practises. It appears the union of writers and the syndicate of book publishers have made mandatory for the e-book to be “available in a usable technical format, taking into account the market's usual formats and their evolution, and in at least one non-proprietary format.” By decree, the Minister of Culture has made this code of practises applicable to all authors and publishers in France.
This is great news for Free Software users, as it promotes the ePub format further. Users of Linux will be able to read all e-books without running into compatibility issues.
However, the case of DRM is a bit more complicated. As of today, there is no open specification of DRM for e-book [someone, please double check this], which forces publishers to provide an ePub without DRM (to match the “non-proprietary” obligation), but the coming months will show if publishers play the game of full interoperability, or if they release non-proprietary DRM in order to comply with their new obligation.
Stakes for the publishers are high, as the obligation for non-proprietary e-book is at the heart of the contract by which they obtain exploitation rights from authors. That is, should the publisher not comply, the author can withdraw digital rights for his book and give it to another publisher.
Anyhow, this code of practises begin written by authors and publishers altogether, it seems France is turning down the transformation in which a book you owned became an e-book a company controls for you. Let's hope France will continue to walk toward open litterature.
That should give a base for a PR. I hope.
Best regards, Jil
Jil Larner jil.larner@fsfe.org writes:
Anyway… The more intellegible news follow:
Thank you for decribing this situation for non-French free software advocates. It does sound like a significant improvement.
Thank you very much for your explanations.
On Tue, Jan 27, 2015 at 08:06:59PM +0100, Jil Larner wrote:
worked on the law, we would know if “non-proprietary” meant no DRM, or just no non-proprietary DRM.
[...]
However, the case of DRM is a bit more complicated. As of today, there is no open specification of DRM for e-book [someone, please double check this], which forces publishers to provide an ePub without DRM (to match the “non-proprietary” obligation), but the coming months will show if publishers play the game of full interoperability, or if they release non-proprietary DRM in order to comply with their new obligation.
Possibly redundant here but there is no possible working DRM in effectively free software, because the goal of DRM is to remove some freedoms from the user. I think the closest is some tivo-like scheme in which the software would be free but unrunable when modified. You can have open formats for DRM as long as reading the material depends on some private key the user doesn't have, and any software that uses it either has to be propietary or signed and prevented to run with the private key if modified. It's not something we still don't have, it's something that can't happen because requirements are contradictory. Software freedom requires the ability to decode and copy the content, as part of freedom 0, and DRM needs to prevent it. Free software needs control to be granted to the user and DRM needs control granted to the rights holder.
publishers have made mandatory for the e-book to be “available in a usable technical format, taking into account the market's usual formats and their evolution, and in at least one non-proprietary format.” By decree, the Minister of Culture has made this code of practises applicable to all authors and publishers in France.
I wonder if the publisher may work around the arret by publishing a work in two versions, one proprietary market usual format and one non-proprietary obscure or DRMized format that noone can really use. They would expect profit from the first version and compliance from the second. Imagine for example one book published in both Amazon format and GPG encrypted ePub without publishing the private key needed for decrypting it (would that count as publication? I hope not) . You could even have readers that can read the encrypted ePub if unmodified software is run which can then be given the private key by some TPM module (à la secure boot) or internet server (à la remote attestation). I'm oversimplifying but I hope you see what I mean.
Stakes for the publishers are high, as the obligation for non-proprietary e-book is at the heart of the contract by which they obtain exploitation rights from authors. That is, should the publisher not comply, the author can withdraw digital rights for his book and give it to another publisher.
I think it's still good news, compared with places where we don't even have this requirement, and it may be an excuse for publishers to leave a DRM nightmare that as happened already in music is not profitable, and turn to interoperable, open format and wider-market ebooks that people buy even if they could copy because they have the right price and convenience.
I don't have a clear definition of "proprietary" though (or "non-proprietary"). I might be overpessimistic.
Anyhow, this code of practises begin written by authors and publishers altogether, it seems France is turning down the transformation in which a book you owned became an e-book a company controls for you. Let's hope France will continue to walk toward open litterature.
I hope so, because I haven't looked into any details, but I'd like this debate to have included the readers, the public, not only right holders. I guess they're represented by government, not even Parliament in this case, but the authors and publishers are represented both by government and their associations, so it's still unbalanced.
On 29/01/2015 16:14, xdrudis@tinet.cat wrote:
I wonder if the publisher may work around the arret by publishing a work in two versions
The publisher has to make the book public and readable. It would seem that as there is an available book without DRM, there is no reason for a version with DRM, and that if Amazon want the book they publish to be filled with DRM, the publishers won't agree to support that cost anymore. It's how I see it. However, the lack of access to the debate between parties make it pure supposition.
I don't have a clear definition of "proprietary" though (or "non-proprietary"). I might be overpessimistic.
(In France) Officially, the use of the word "proprietary" is discouraged in the law, and it to be understood as "exclusive system" (I never heard of it before today), which would mean in the context of e-books, that the e-book is designed to be readable on the specific material of a specific maker. So it would mean that if the e-book requires Acrobat to be read, it is proprietary. The same applies to the Kindle, and so on.
(Btw, please note that most of the French legal translations are never used in common language, and often poorly selected regarding IT)
http://www.culture.fr/franceterme/result?francetermeSearchTerme=propri%C3%A9...
I'd like this debate to have included the readers, the public, not only right holders. I guess they're represented by government, not even Parliament in this case, but the authors and publishers are represented both by government and their associations, so it's still unbalanced.
The fight (call it negociation) was clearly between authors and publishers. The point about non-proprietary ebook is a detail in a settlement that was more to limit abuses from publishers and publishers-that-publishers-don't-call-publishers. The main purposes of this law and the linked code of practises are: – to forbid publishers who make authors pay to benefit from a "publishing contract" (that has serious legal consequences); – to specify what is really expected from a publisher to consider they are publishing, and that the legal framework of a publishing contract applies (in which we find the obligation to provide non-proprietary ebook); – to ease the ability for authors to withdraw form the contract with not serious publishers (until then, authors were blocked with exclusive exploitation rights granted to a publisher that didn't promote the book and the ruling of the judge was long and uncertain).
People, if you mean those who buy and read books, were not part of it and it's not in French habits to include them. France isn't a country where there is such a thing as a global discussion about important matters. Only when the law goes too far and strong lobbies oppose to it, you may see a surge of citizen implication to counter it. For the last years, media have been excelent in avoiding this kind of behaviour to happen, but that's another topic :)
xdrudis@tinet.cat writes:
Possibly redundant here but there is no possible working DRM in effectively free software, because the goal of DRM is to remove some freedoms from the user.
The freedom of the software that implements DRM is a matter of what freedoms the recipient has. There is no contradiction between “you have these freedoms in this work” and “this work implements DRM”. So the DRM can work just fine in free software.
What I think you're implying is that DRM cannot be expected to *remain* in such software, because the recipients have explicit license to do so; and then the DRM-free derivative will spread, again by the explicit license recipients have to do so.
But be clear: the original, DRM-enabled work is free software and the DRM works fine. That is, after all, what allows the chain of events afterward.
I think the closest is some tivo-like scheme in which the software would be free but unrunable when modified.
Yes, that's an obvious example of free software implementing DRM.
There is *other* software on the device — the firmware, if I understand correctly – which refuses to run modified versions of the free software.
So the recipient remains free to modify the software (and, if they choose, cease its implementation of DRM), but the *device* as a whole is not free because it then refuses to run the modified software.
It's not something we still don't have, it's something that can't happen because requirements are contradictory. Software freedom requires the ability to decode and copy the content, as part of freedom 0, and DRM needs to prevent it. Free software needs control to be granted to the user and DRM needs control granted to the rights holder.
Merely being contradictory doesn't stop these requirements from being enforcible by law :-/
What is needed is not just a declaration that there is a contradiction, but a *resolution* of that contradiction to give recipients explicit freedom to exercise their rights under the law.
On Fri, Jan 30, 2015 at 12:13:54PM +1100, Ben Finney wrote:
xdrudis@tinet.cat writes:
Possibly redundant here but there is no possible working DRM in effectively free software, because the goal of DRM is to remove some freedoms from the user.
The freedom of the software that implements DRM is a matter of what freedoms the recipient has. There is no contradiction between “you have these freedoms in this work” and “this work implements DRM”. So the DRM can work just fine in free software.
What I think you're implying is that DRM cannot be expected to *remain* in such software, because the recipients have explicit license to do so; and then the DRM-free derivative will spread, again by the explicit license recipients have to do so.
Correct, thanks for making it explicit.
But be clear: the original, DRM-enabled work is free software and the DRM works fine. That is, after all, what allows the chain of events afterward.
Ok, I was just assuming it won't exist because nobody will write it because it may not remain so. Anyway, one could theoretically write it (if only to prove a point).
I think the closest is some tivo-like scheme in which the software would be free but unrunable when modified.
Yes, that's an obvious example of free software implementing DRM.
And that's why I said effectively free software, not just free software. GPL 3 was written among other reasons to help ensure the software freedom was effective, not merely rethorical in these cases.
There is *other* software on the device — the firmware, if I understand correctly – which refuses to run modified versions of the free software.
So the recipient remains free to modify the software (and, if they choose, cease its implementation of DRM), but the *device* as a whole is not free because it then refuses to run the modified software.
Yes, but possibly the content will not work in another device because it won't be decryptable or whatever, so the software won't be useful.
It's not something we still don't have, it's something that can't happen because requirements are contradictory. Software freedom requires the ability to decode and copy the content, as part of freedom 0, and DRM needs to prevent it. Free software needs control to be granted to the user and DRM needs control granted to the rights holder.
Merely being contradictory doesn't stop these requirements from being enforcible by law :-/
Merely being legal does not make something being produced or sold. For me there is a difference between humans (judges, etc.) enforcing law on other humans and devices enforcing law on humans. Or what does a purchase mean when the seller still controls what the item sold does after the sale, etc.
What is needed is not just a declaration that there is a contradiction, but a *resolution* of that contradiction to give recipients explicit freedom to exercise their rights under the law.
By resolution you mean DRM should be outlawed or DRM circumvention should be legal ? I agree.