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French Government Lobbied to Ban Free Software

Thu, 2005-12-01 23:21 — Uwe Hermann

From FSF France:

Friday November 18th, 2005, French Department of Culture. SNEP and SCPP have told Free Software authors: "You will be required to 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 proposal pass in the Parliament.

WTF? This has got to be a joke... Please tell me this is a sick joke.

(via MJ Ray)

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Fri, 2005-12-02 00:20 — Anonymous (not verified)

Re: French Government Lobbied to Ban Free Software

Unfortunately it's actually true (kind of).

The proposal (which was written by, guess who, Vivendi Universal) would specifically ban software that allows to share digital contents without implementing DRM. If taken to the extremes this would in theory apply even to FTP or SSH or HTTP servers.

Of course the music industry is as dispectable as ever.

Fri, 2005-12-02 00:47 — Uwe Hermann

France and Free Software

Hm, this is really, really bad news. So, what can we (inside and outside of France) do?

Uwe.

Fri, 2005-12-02 14:35 — Anonymous (not verified)

France and Free Software

All the information is there:

http://eucd.info/

Unfortunately it's in French only... but if you feel concerned, please circulate the info and sign the online petition. That's the very least we all can do.

BTW, your name seems to indicate that you are German or Swiss ? If so, a good idea may be to ask your Deputy to contact his/her French counterpart and express his/her concerns. Or, better yet, to ask him/her to put the matter to the attention of your own Parliament and Government. Digital freedom is at stake here, there is a real chance that these Frenchies will not make such a silly move if they know that the whole Europe is watching them?

PS: I'm serious about this. The fact is that the French Government wants this voted during the NIGHT FROM 22 to 23 DECEMBER : so far for transparent democracy. If we could obtain some political reactions from France's European partners, it would probably have an effect.