It's getting pretty chilly in France

As my colleague Gwen Hinze (EFF) puts it "Evil afoot in France"! really, it's worth looking at the intense debate on where copyright law is taking le Droit d'auteur.

The copyright and related rights in the information society bill (DADVSI) (n°1206) which the French government has been debating for 2 days (rushing through it by using an emergency procedure) goes much further than the EU Directive. Of course, it legalizes technical devices installed by CD and DVD publishers and imposes criminal penalty against people who attempt to remove the TPMs. It could make it illegal to create a compilation of music files, to transfer the files, to lend a CD, to read a CD with a free software or to make a copy of it for private use.

We're talking about 3-year jail sentence and a fine of 300 000 Eurosf for acts such as converting to MP3 format a protected file, publishing technical information, designing distributing software that would allow access even if the main purpose is not to bypass protection (which is not the case in the EU Copyright directive) etc.

Of course, here we have the DMCA and it's been chilly too. But I think it could be worse in France where limitations and exceptions are...extremely limited. So far it seems that the only exceptions addresses the obstacles face by the disabled users (while the EU Directive allowed exceptions for research, education etc). More when things become clearer.

Find more, mostly in French here:

http://eucd.info/index.php?English-readers

http://www.framasoft.net/

Philippe Aigrain:
http://www.debatpublic.net/Members/paigrain/blogue/votes/

http://www.temps-nouveaux.net/article.php3?id_article=151

Stream of the debate info
http://forum.framasoft.org/viewtopic.php?t=12852

les amendement sont à
http://recherche.assemblee-nationale.fr/amendements/resultats.asp?NUM_INIT=1206

les députés sont listés à
http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/12/tribun/comm3.asp

et le compte rendu officiel devrait être à:
http://assemblee-nationale.fr/12/cra/2005-2006/109.asp

texte du projet de loi :
voir http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/12/dossiers/031206.asp