"With this wonderful new contract, a MacDonald's personnel manager will now have 732 days to decide whether a young box carrier is alright for his job"

Though it was brilliantly argued that we would be in line with other European countries if they had passed.

Ok, it's official, we're regressing.

These were still only about private copies, but we'll soon get to the really nasty parts of this law (ie the DRM and inter-operability parts).

I'll comment when I can, but for now I'm listening half-hearteadly.

I've never seen such a concentrated and distributed lack of intelligence in a group of people (UMP députés), and it's making me mad.

The Conseil Economique et Social, a consultative public organism, has released a memo a few days ago explaining that downloading should be cosidered as an act of private copying, and not of piracy (just like it is in a majority of European countries).

The union of teachers in France has declared that it would start civil disobediance about this law, as this law does not provide them with an exception clause that enables them to show what they want to their students. (ie they can now only show 30 seconds of a music clip, etc)

Talk about being brutally incompetent ... and who pays the price? Us.

Also, instead of the "global licence", ie a tax compensating for private copies on downloads, the government wants to put fines into place. This de facto creates a shift in revenues towards the government's budget, rather that to artists.

I think we've already mentioned this, afew or I, in one of the past diaries, but today it's been voted and confirmed.

But the truth is that the European directive is minimalistic, and several countries have implemented it this way. And that France is trying to go a lot further than the original directive. To the point of being absurd and near-fachist.

It goes something like this:

"Mr Minister, copyright on a particular media, is valid for 130 years. Please explain to me how your plan to implement DRMs everywhere, with an alleged 0-5 private copies allowed via copy mechanisms planned inside these DRMs, will make it possible for anyone to have a private copy that still works in 130 years, when technology will have totally change?"

(ie. if you're only allowed to make yourself 0-5 private copies only via a DRM, then how would you copy an old 8mm film onto a DVD, for example, if these represented two technological forms spread over 130 years).

They want to make it appear as though this is progress. pfff.

Why should schools or hospitals have to pay a tax financing pop singers anyhow?

Christian Paul (Socialist) has just asked the Minister to define the term "inter-operability" because he says he "fears that the government has no clue as to what it is".

The Minister's answer in a few minutes?

ps: forgive me for typos, grammar mistakes etc, I'm in a hurry and typing in two places (while listening to the debates)

"This CD is dangerous for your computer".

hehehe

The government seems to want the Army to be provided with any DRM source code that may threaten, in whatever way, national security.

Microsoft recently refused this in the UK.

This should be interesting ...

I was just chatting with them as I type, and they get cited by their usernames live at Parliament!

Excellent!!!

http://www.odebi.org/new/theme/

Since no exception from the blank media tax has been declared for hospitals, the Odebi Ligue calls all French internet users to download massively, as many illegal things as they can, in order to steal from the pockets of artists as much as artists will now be stealing from our hospitals.

Vanneste, the man leading the Commission that wrote this law (username "desesperately")

Wauquiez, the député who cited some of us live at Parliament. (his username is his name)

I had a bit of a run-in with Vanneste a few days ago, concerning Illegal Primes. I explained to him on his personal blog that this would be a problem and that there was thus no way for his law to control everything, and he came back to our forum after a month of absence there, to specifically target my comments there about Illegal Primes, calling them "juridically ridiculous". After which he proceeded with a call for the deletion of the French Wikipedia page explaining Illegal Primes.

ps: my username on the framasoft forums is "moddeur"

This is crazy (but good), and shows how dumb they are. TV is about to become totally digital, and is bound to be linked to the internet like it is to some extend in Japan (and is already very interactive with satellite packages like TPS or CanalSat)

So I can copy anything I see on digital TV, but not on the internet? hehe

In other words, if Sony decides that 0 copies for DVDs is what should be allowed, then 0 copies is what you'll get.

This de facto takes the issue of private copies out of the hands of legislators.

And Europe cannot be blamed here, as the 2001 European directive only states, in a typical freely interpretable manner (article 5): "Member States may or may not, implement exceptions [..] for private copies"

Text of the Directive (in French, sorry no time to find the English text as I am watching the debates and commenting on Framasoft at the same time):
http://www.freescape.eu.org/biblio/IMG/pdf/directive_ue_auteurs.pdf

This is tremendously horrible.

I'll be moving to Barcelona when my software is ready.

Now this Carrayon was one of the UMP rebels on this law, who voted against this law. In December that is. And suddenly, in March, he's totally changed and fully supports the government.

So, C. Paul cites an email written by Carrayon to a member of the Framasoft forums that I mention higher up in this diary.

Which Carrayon denies ever having written.

The mail then resurfaces in our forum with full headers. (see below)

Then Carrayon says he was in his home town when it was written (ps: this he can easily prove).

But by doing so, he doesn't realize that he's just raised the issue of identity usurpation on the internet, And since punishing piracy etc is central to this law, this is an interesting event. Also, even it if in the end it doesn't change anything for us, it's at least a "compensation proof" that even the rebels were made to bend on their knees by the government, and that the lobbies are VERY STRONG.

Here is the mail exchange content, I will not translate it (basically Carrayon says that this law is shit in it).

> Bravo Mr Carayon. Vous avez montré cette nuit combien un député
> pouvait se comporter de manière minable en votant l'amendement
> Vivendi-Universal. Vous et votre groupe avez fait tout au long
> de ces débats la démonstration de votre mépris de la démocratie.
> Je ne sais pas entre incompétence ou corruption lequel de ces termes
> convient le mieux à votre groupe, peut-être les deux, en tout cas,
> sachez que des dizaines de milliers d'internautes ont assisté à vos
> turpitudes et à cette parodie de démocratie.
> J'espère que le retour de baton sera très violent, et pour ce qui me
> concerne, je jure devant Dieu que jamais plus je ne voterai pour une
> engeance telle que la votre et celà même si se représentait le cas
> de figure de la dernière élection présidentielle. Honte à vous.
> Je ne vous salue pas.

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From: Bernard Carayon - ?iso-8859-1?q?D=E9put=E9_du_Tarn? <bcarayon@assemblee-nationale.fr>
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Bonjour Monsieur,

Je vous invite à relire les débats et notamment l'amendement qui a permis de
limiter plus que fortement la portée du détestable amendement VU. Sans
l'intervention de Richard Cazenave et de moi-même, le troisième alinéa
excluant les logiciels de partage de la mesure n'aurait pas été voté.

Nous faisons ce que nous pouvons avec une mauvaise directive à transposer et
un texte de projet de li initial détestable. Merci de regarder les apports
(intéop - voir à la fin du texte, sécurité informatique (amdt 273), etc...)

Enfin l'insulte devrait rester étrangère au débat démocratique.
Bonne jouréne
Cordialement
Bernard Carayon

Article in French

DADVSI: les établissements publics de recherche et d'enseignements contraints d'ouvrir leur SI aux ayant-droits

En parallèle avec la très controversée licence globale, le projet de loi DADVSI vient de statuer sur un vide juridique concernant l'utilisation des livres, images, musique et autres supports en vue de l'éducation des élèves français. Le ministère de la culture vient donc de passer des accords « exception recherche et éducation » avec le ministère de l'éducation et les sociétés d'ayants droits. Par ce texte il contraint les établissements à ouvrir leur SI aux représentants des ayants droit à savoir des sociétés privées « afin de permettre l'identification des ?uvres visées par l'accord, un identifiant et un code d'accès à l'intranet ou extranet sont communiqués par l'établissement aux représentants des ayants droit. » Plus loin, l'article 10 spécifie les droits de ces agents : « Les agents assermentés de chaque représentant des ayants droit auront la faculté d'accéder aux réseaux informatiques des établissements afin de procéder à toutes vérifications nécessaires. ». Ces dispositions prisent sans aucune concertation posent de nombreux problèmes de sécurité et de confidentialité. Si les DSI n'ont pas encore fait entendre leur voix, le corps enseignant dénonce ce contrat avec les ayants droits et rejette en bloc les accords passés qui limitent et contrôlent leurs pratiques pédagogiques. Que diront-ils quand ils comprendront qu'ils ne peuvent même plus écrire sur leur réseau informatique en toute confidentialité ?

Question:

"Name two members of the French entertainment industry who are jubilating at the prospects opened up by the new DADVSI law (see: Internet Freedoms in France), to the point of being obscene."

Answer:

One of them is Costa-Gavras, who said "of course we can control the internet, they do it in Tunisia and China, but here we would be doing it for the right reasons"
http://www.lcpan.fr/droit_auteur.asp?tc=000629#000629
(it's a video ... his comment starts shortly after the 20th minute)

The other is Kyo, who said "of course we can control the internet, they do it in China"
http://www.silicon.fr/articles/14186/Sarkozy-veut-chasser-les-logiciels-de-P2P-Au-karcher.html

A good opportunity for anyone who wants to talk to them live (in French) on issues concerning the DADVSI law, as anyone registered can post on the forum (ie. no moderating before posting ... only after to filter out racist, pedophile and any other filthy comments).

FramaSoft is once again bringing direct democracy to France, kudos to them!