A French proposal to change the way DRM is protected under law has been
hijacked by entertainment companies and DRM vendors, and now promises to
be one of the worst DRM laws in the world.
Previously, we
wrote about the new French DRM law proposal, which held out the
promise of being the first real attempt in the world to balance the
legal protection of anti-user technology with the public interest. The
activists of EUCD.info were concerned that the proposal was being
hijacked by Universal/Vivendi, and this has come to pass.
EUCD.info's Jérémie Zimmermann sent us the following,
shocking account of how the French law went from being fair and balanced
to being a one-sided gimme to entertainment companies and their
arms-dealers. Don't miss the last paragraph, where Jérémie
announces EUCD.info's planned street-demonstration on May 7, at 2PM at
the Place de la Bastille:
Jérémie writes:
The French Senate will consider a major revision to its copyright law on
May 4th, 9th and 10th. This law will implement the EUCD (the European
equivalent of the DMCA) and change French author's rights and copright.
It was voted by the first chamber on Feb 21st. This will be the final
parliamentary step of the examination process, as a shortened "emergency
procedure" was called on such a crucial subject.
The Senators are grouped by commissions. The "Commission of Cultural
Affairs" that is in charge of this law voted for proposed
amendments. They were made public a few days ago, and the
"rapporteur" (overseer/project leader) of the law, M. Thiollière will
defend them so they can be examined and voted during the public debates.
There's bad news for a revolutionary proposal (Article 7) that requires DRM
makers to allow anyone to build interoperable technology. This was
strenuously
objected to by Apple and the US Department of Commerce but it was
unanimously voted in at the last moment during the first meeting. Now it
stands to be completely neutered:
- Gone is the requirement that anyone may ask a regular court of
justice to force a DRM publisher to give information needed for
interoperability. Now a "high regulation authority of technical
measures" will have sole discretion as to whether this information will
be available. - Previously, "information needed for interoperability" covered
"technical documentation and programming interfaces needed to obtain a
copy in an open standard of the copyrighted work, along with its legal
information." Now this has been changed to "technical documentation and
programming interfaces needed to obtain a protected copy of a
copyrighted work." But a "protected" version of the work can't be played
back in a different player, which means interoperability won't be
attained with this clause. - Previously, the only condition for receiving information needed for
interoperability was to meet the cost of logistics of delivering the
information. Now, anyone wanting to build a player will have to take a
license on "reasonable and non discriminatory conditions, and an
appropriate fee." When using information attained under such a license,
you will have to "respect the efficiency and integrity of the technical
measure." - DRM publishers can demand the retraction of publication of the
source-code for interoperable, independent software, if it can prove
that the source-code is "harmful to the security and the efficiency of
the DRM." - A clause put forward by EUCD.INFO (a
organization that sprung from the Free Software Foundation France, and
whose members helped write this article) has been radically altered.
Previously, it stated that "A protocol, a file format, a method of
transforming or encrypting information cannot be as such considered as a
technical protection measure." Now it has been changed to "The
components of a technical measure, like a protocol, a file format, a
method of transforming information, are still protected by the article
XY." This is an article in the existing French industrial property law
describing what is patentable and what isn't. Thus, this clause now
imposes software patents on France! - Article 7bis has been struck. This Article required DRM publishers
to disclose the source-code of their systems to special computer
security division of the French Army in charge of military infrastructure.
This all shows that the "Cultural Commission" has failed utterly to come
to grips with the social cost of legal protection for DRM — free
competition, protection of innovation, computer security, technological
independence, privacy, etc. They've been captured by DRM lobbyists and
the content industries. The new Article 7 follows the exact recommendations from
Thomson an ex-French company that isn't worth much by now, except
for its patents and some DRM project that Microsoft is interested in.
The French Libre Software associations are calling on their members and
supporters to contact
their Senators and tell them what's
wrong with Article 7. STOPDRM.info, a new organization that organized
flash-mobs in music superstore and in front of the
stockholders-meeting of Vivendi-Universal will continue organizing
events and protests. Feel free ask more info by contacting the members
of the EUCD.INFO initiative and to come along the anti-DRM march
starting at 2PM, Place de la Bastille, on May the 7th.