Amendement VU :
le pire du pire
French Parliament approves the worst copyright law in Europe
Paris, 30 june 2006,
The French Parliament has voted Friday, June 30th 2006 to approve the DRM bill called DADVSI (« droit d'auteur et droits voisins dans la société de l'information »). This bill was voted by raised hands instead of the electronic voting system normally used for solemn votes of that kind. This law is both unacceptable and unenforceable. The EUCD.INFO initiative publicly notes that the government has gone to the furthest in denying democracy, by having the bill finally voted on Friday, June 30, eve of the parliamentary recess. See « What does the new French copyright bill do ? » for a list of some of the known problems of DADVSI, including references to the articles in the bill.
Many members of parliament opposed to the bill thus could not speak against it, since the proxy voting system used at the National Assembly did not allow them to.
The EUCD.INFO initiative deplores, however, that many members of parliament from the majority, opposed to the bill, have preferred to abstain from this final vote by not being present in Parliament, rather than consciously rejecting a bill threatening the freedoms of the whole citizenry. It also deplores that the opposition members of parliaments have not attended this vote en masse.
The EUCD.info initiative now invites all members of parliament hoping to prevent the worst to sign, beyond the partisan divides, the recourse that the Parti Socialist will send before the Constitutional Council.
The French bill on author's rights and related rights in the information society is a bill reforming French copyright law in order to implement the 2001 European directive on copyright (known as EUCD), which is the Europe's equivalent to the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). This law drastically changes author's rights in France. DADVSI is the worst copyright law in Europe.
Christophe Espern of EUCD.INFO says « This bill was subjected to unreasonable lobbying pressure and menaces from the entertainment and proprietary software industries. The goal of this law is to impose DRM schemes in order to increase profits of few, but their profit is a side issue when millions of people's freedom is at stake. The French governement and the majority sold the freedom of French citizens to Vivendi, Microsoft and Apple ».
In December 2005, the EUCD.INFO initiative launched a petition against DADVSI, that requests that the legislative bill be removed from the agenda of the French Parliament. It has been signed by more than 170,000 French residents and by around 1,000 French organizations.
Frédéric Couchet of FSF France and APRIL says « We wish to thank all the signatories and those people who have taken the time to contact their deputies and senators. We lost this battle but the war is not over. We've been able to raise the awareness on Free Software, Interoperability and Open Standards in all social, cultural and economic activities of today. The wonderful mobilzation that has occured during this battle will, without any doubt, be very usefull in the follow-up of the fight».
EUCD.INFO is an initiative which was launched by FSF France (Free Software Foundation France) in December 2002 to fight the French bill on author's rights named DADVSI. EUCD.INFO is backed by APRIL (Association for Promotion and Research in Libre Computing, founded in 1996) and many other organizations.
You can read more information about DADVSI on :
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DADVSI
* http://eucd.info/index.php?English-readers
Some background :
In December 2005, the EUCD.INFO initiative launched a petition against DADVSI, that requests that the legislative bill be removed from the agenda of the French Parliament. It has been signed by more than 170,000 French residents and by around 1,000 French organizations.
The people behind EUCD.INFO have for months now been actively working to convince the government and the members of parliament to amend the bill. Some of the amendments they've proposed were voted into law by the French Lower chamber («Assemblée Nationale») in March 2006.
The text contained some deplorable provisos, among which the so-called "Vivendi-Universal" amendment, that implements fines and prison terms for the publishing of software "obviously intended" to provide copyrighted works to the public without authorization. But there were also some very positive changes regarding DRM. For instance, the guarantee that DRM not prevent interoperability, and the requirement that the source code for independent software that operates in conjunction with a DRM system be released. These aforementioned amendments were negotiated with deputies from the right and left wings. They were proposed by EUCD.INFO, which has been coordinating this bill's advocacy campaign. Article 7 of the text was a very good for interoperability and it is the only concession the government has made so far. These amendments were mistakenly called "the iTunes bill" by the Anglo-American press, even though they were adopted against the will of the French government. Read more on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DADVSI#Interoperability_and_Apple_controversy
The legislative procedure continued and the text went to the 2nd chamber where the French Senate did a major revision to the bill. Article 7 was rewritten to omit the guarantee of interoperability. The Senate voted to pass the bill in May 2005. Normally, the bill would be returned to the Lower Chamber for a second reading, but the government has decided to use a shortened "emergency procedure" : a committee of 7 politicians from both chambers finalized the text on Thursday, June 22th 2006 in a kind of conciliatory procedure. Most of the players who have been affected by the bill have asked for a second reading in the Lower Chamber.
Finally, Senate and Assemblée Nationale voted the text on Friday, June 30th. The final text rescind the guarantee of interoperability to introduce an administrative authority capable of adjudicating the possibility of reading DRM contents in order to achieve interoperability.