[matilda] DADVSI

[Chris Malins]

Thought this might be of interest to Matilda supporters, information 
courtesy of VideoLAN


What is DADVSI ?

The DADVSI (roughly "Author Rights and other Rights in the Information 
Society") 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.

VideoLAN is directly impacted, most notably for its DVD reading 
capability (all Linux DVD reading software has the same problem). Should 
this law be passed as it is written, this would seriously hinder VLC's 
development.

The french website eucd.info collects a large number of related articles 
and documentation, and has a dedicated english-speaking section.

Discussion about this law has started in the french National Assembly, 
and will resume on January, 17th.
A nice fact is that many MPs, both from the Government's political party 
and opposition were very aware of the possible impact of this law on 
Free Software, and there was a real debate on the first part of the law.

We would like to thank all the people involved in miscellaneous 
information actions, and the MPs that raised concerns concerns about 
this text, thus allowing a general public awareness about these issues.

The most important parts (mostly about DRM and Peer-To-Peer) will take 
place in February, so the battle is not over. It is thus very important 
to keep spreading the word about the dangers of this law.

Update (January 18th) : The french Ministry of Culture has started 
presenting a new text for this Feburary session. Good news ! With the 
old version, users and developers of VideoLAN could be threatened with 3 
years in jail and a 300 000 euros fine. Now, users could only get a 
small fine (something like 40 euros), and developers would only get one 
year in jail and a 100 000 euros fine.