French Government Lobbied to Ban Free Software

Ricardo Andere de Mello gandhi at quilombodigital.org
Fri Dec 2 13:35:45 UTC 2005


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
>  
>
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-- 
Ricardo Andere de Mello
Presidente do Quilombo Digital
55 (11) 3271-7928 / 55 (11) 9917-7722




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