http://www.videolan.org/eucd.html
http://eucd.info/index.php?English-readers
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=170002&cid=14168989


"During the night of 22nd to 23rd December 2005, while everybody is preparing for Christmas, the French Parliament will rule about the "DADVSI" law. This vote will be made with minimal discussion, as an "emergency" has been declared on this law.

This law is the French transcription of the european EUCD (European Union Copyright Directive) text, which itself comes from the american DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act). The main goal of this law is to restrict the rights of digital content purchasers. It most notably forbids them from working around technical content protection measures. Doing so, writing or publishing software allowing to do so, or even merely talking about ways to do so becomes an offence that can be punished with three years in jail."

The banning free software (specifically open-source I think is more accurate) part of this, won't happen. If the french government really is that stupid then they'll have some reconsidering to do when the country has to take Apache and other evils off all their computers and they have no internet and their businesses can't function.

I suspect they - just like many other countries - will be stupid enough to do it..... and then in a few years, they'll see the effects of those laws becoming more and more illusionary laws. The big picture is that in the long run, all those issued illusionary laws will have the effect that everyone is a criminal, therefore rendering the distinction between "legal" and "illegal" void..... which in turn opens the door to punish, jail and destroy at will.

OT: How is it, that lately is has become normal that "controversial" laws are rushed through as "emergencies"? So much for democracy, lol.

- Lyx

If anybody ever tries to take away my Doom II mods, so help me God...

IMO, it doesn't really matter whether they pass it or not. You cannot legislate away social and societal changes.

The ultimate effect of laws like these is to push development of this sort of thing underground and to increase the overall amount of "piracy" going on. Why? Because ultimately, protections on digital content:
a) do not stop piracy (as any protection can be removed),
b) decrease the value of the content for the consumer since they get in the consumers way when he wants to do things that he feels he should be able to do (example: play iTunes Music Store content on players other than iPod's, or play Napster content on iPod's, and so forth), and
c) increase the price of the content since the companies charging for it are attempting to maintain their monopoly position and thus can continue price gouging the consumer (example: RIAA member's complaining about iTMS not allowing flexible pricing).

Now, because the consumer is being asked to pay a higher price (thanks to C), for content of lower value (thanks to B), he's more likely to resort to "illegal" means to get his music instead (thanks to A).

The end result is inevitable: collapse of all major recording labels that continue to use DRM. It's really only a matter of time, and silly unenforcable laws like this only give these companies more rope on which to hang themselves.

But that's just my 2 cents.

<sarcasm>
Sounds like there will be lots of money to be made in the intermediate-phase...... with almost everyone being a criminal, and the giants running amok..... imagine all the work and stress put on trials, judges and lawyers.... oh, and jail wardens..... plus the construction-work needed to built more jails....... hmm, that may indeed bring unemployment down, or at least halt it.
</sarcasm>

I think in the long run you're going to be right. This applies to far wider issues than we're discussing here too... All the name of progress hey!

Yup, thats what i meant - its not like this kind of "changes" is restricted to digital music or software.... stuff like this is going on in almost all aspects of our lives...... but hey, it has to become *really* worse for it to become better again.... i wonder if we will see something like "cold civil wars" in the future...

Any member nation of the EU has to adopt EU directives into national law ... this is part of the EU contract.



It doesn't directly come from DCMA ... but it was surely inspired by it ... and the american music/movie industry's lobby is a powerful one indeed ...