Tarmle ([info]tarmle) wrote,
@ 2005-12-02 23:39:00
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Entry tags:secrecy is weakness

Secrecy is Weakness: Windmills
The SNEP and SCPP (a "civil company of the phonographic producers" trans.) is in the process of lobbying the French government for a change in the law that will ban open software.

SNEP and SCPP have told Free Software authors: "You will be required to change your licenses." SACEM add: "You shall stop publishing free software," and warn they are ready "to sue free software authors who will keep on publishing source code" should the "VU/SACEM/BSA/FA Contents Department" bill proposal pass in the Parliament.

It appears that publishing Free Software giving access to culture is about to become a counterfeiting criminal offence. Will SACEM sue France Télécom R&D research labs for having published Maay and Solipsis (P2P pieces of software used to exchange data)?– (via FSF France -> Boing Boing)

All this does re-label a virtue as a crime. Even if this ridiculous bill is passed, open source software will continue to made available to French citizens from outside their jurisdiction. Much of the web runs on open and free software and one assumes they are not going to ban that. How exactly do you teach programming without 'publishing' source code? Will computer science lecturers be served with take-down notices as they chalk up the final semi-colon on the board? Will France simply stop training software authors?

If we do not communicate, there is no culture. Openness creates culture just as surely as secrecy will destroy it.

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[info]ia_wandering
2005-12-03 06:41 pm UTC (link)
This new is totally jaw-dropping... how such a stupid law could have passed ?! (or maybe I misunderstood : I'm French y'know ) all I hope at this moment is that the open source community (programmers who are a bit civilised) will react properly : what can we do ? will a "resistance" raise against such an attack (maybe annoucing more liberty-crippling other ones ?) ?

depressing.

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[info]tarmle
2005-12-03 07:56 pm UTC (link)
It hasn't been passed yet, thankfully, but the 'interested parties' are in the processes of lobbying the French government to make it law (as far as I can tell, I don't speak French myself so I'm relying on translations). I'd like to think that the proposal is just too preposterous to be taken seriously but that kind of thinking will only make it more likely.

There's bound to be organised protests and some carefully prepared official retorts that could stop this thing dead. I'm sure the Creative Commons will have much more to say on the matter.

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[info]ia_wandering
2005-12-05 12:45 am UTC (link)
I did a little research on the web (what I might have done first, I apologize for beeing such a looser, I won't do it again :-/), I even found a petition at http://eucd.info/petitions/index.php?petition=2 (in French) but I'm far not as confident as you are : if I don't doubt that there will be people to "struggle", this law still as all its chances to pass ! (that's why I thougth it did it already) Why ? because French people did a few years ago a huge and bitter mistake, which led to the political/social/economic/human disaster that we all call 'France' today. Since this day our governement made unbelieviable and civilised sense-hurting decisions that make me say that no one must see France as a great country anymore. An example : the crippling of the public research, the anti-strangers laws (making their access to health services and jobs more difficult), the laws to worsen job conditions (the 2-years test period), the law to glorify the French african colonisation and Napolean in History books ... Sometimes I just want to scram away from here...until I wonder where to go...

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