Blog of Alexander Noé

Those of you who have sent me mails might have noticed that i'm not responding as fast as before anymore. Also, it takes a lot longer to fix issues (of which users have found quite a few in AVI-Mux GUI), and i've not been working on PxScan/PxView for about half a year.

Well, I'm not a student anymore!

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Yesterday, the Conseil constitutionnel published its decision about the constitutionality of DADVSI. It censored some things, but parts that were supposed to assure a few consumers' rights, such as that someone who bought unplayable music may play it if he/she knows how. The entire decision can be found here.

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On June 29th, Netzpolitik published an article about how a German public state TV channel organized a chat with a so-called "expert" who made propaganda against DRMless music and against legal usage of Peer-to-Peer software in a way that went even beyond the initial version of the Amendement Vivendi Universal explained here and that clearly aimed at making people think downloading a free software packet like an OpenOffice image using BitTorrent was illegal in Germany. Also, this expert did what Vivendi recently did in France: Reversing the burden of proof and assuming everyone to be guilty until proven innocent...

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Today, both Assemblées have voted the text the conciliation committee presented about the DADVSI bill. It is actually funny that this date was chosen because usually the french parliament doesn't work on Fridays (the deputies have other stuff to do as well), and several opponents of the law inside the government party UMP already had other appointments, which has been known since a few months ago. Among those were Richard Cazenave, Bernard Carayon, Yves Bur and Alain Suguenot, who had demanded a second lecture of the law...

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The french government seems to think that it couldn't become any more ridiculous than it already is after all the hassle with this copyright bill. There is no other explanation for the way that government is trying to get a law voted that originally was supposed to punish the simply fact of playing a DVD on Linux with 3 years in prison and a fine of 300.000€.

The conciliation committee, officially announed on June 15th, was carefully selected by the government party UMP: Those who wanted to protect consumers' rights by supporting interoperability, such as Bernard Carayon and Richard Cazenave, were left out...

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Some of you might know that Plextor doesn't like students too much who give other people a choice about the software they want to use in order to use special functions of these drives. A change in the latest firmware update of the PX-755 requires me to update PxScan/PxView again, but this time I really have no idea if it is pure chance or a test if I'm still alive.

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The battle about this law is starting to finish: After one lecture in the Assemblée nationale and one lecture in the Senate, a conciliation committee was officially announced yesterday in the Senate (link). This committee will have to negotiate a compromise between the two laws voted by the two chambers of the parliament. It is supposed to convene on June 22.

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Today, Christian Paul, french deputy of the socialist party, published an interview with Independent Music Shop. This online music shop is selling music without any Digital Restrictions Management on it and thus allows consumer to play the music they bought. While the interoperability clause of the DADVSI bill was supposed to guarantee that people can play music they bought, the Senate wasn't very keen on having something like this in the law...

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In the early morning of May 11, the Senate has voted the DADVSI law after having made again a number of important changes. Most importantly, the amendment Vivendi Universal was reinstalled, as proposed by Michel Thiollière. Also, the senate has almost removed interoperability from the law.

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This morning, around 1 o'clock local time, the Senate did what Frédéric Dutoit already was afraid of: The Senate voted against the interoperability clause the Assemblée Nationale had introduced into the law. This clause was pretty friendly towards customers, as it did not only allow to break Digital Restrictions Management in order to make a work interoperable, but also allowed everyone who wants to make his software interoperable with something to demand the technical documentation required to do this. Even better, the requester could not be charged for this (except for typical fees for shipping, copying some sheets of paper and similar fees not going beyond a few euros). It also allowed decompilation of DRMs.

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The copyright reform in France is being debated in the Senate today, as well as on May 9th and 10th. During the last few weeks, the committee for cultural affairs has made several proposals that would prevent interoperability, make ICQ and FTP illegal, and create monopolies on music and movies.

At least two newstickers, (1) the register and (2) ars technica are now reporting rather wrong information. They just report stuff appearently without verifying any of the original sources. One might almost think those newstickers don't have anyone among their authors speaking french...

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One of the most well know amendments of the french copyright reform is the Amendement Vivendi Universal or amendment 150, which, in its original version, makes illegal the act of making any file sharing software that is obviously made for illegal file sharing. This would most likely include ICQ and MSN, maybe even protocols like FTP and HTTP. This amendment is called Amendement Vivendi Universal because it is Vivendi Universal who wrote it. The reason for ICQ, MSN etc being affected is that a judge could rule that a software not having any protection against illegal file sharing is obviously made for illegal file sharing. Now, a senator tries a new way of getting rid of this amendment without having to vote against it.

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The SACD (la Société des auteurs et compositeurs dramatiques) has sent a piece of writing to the french senate a couple of days ago which shows perfectly the goals this association is following. Those goals do not exactly seem to be basic rights of users, basic rights of clients buying CDs and DVDs or basic rights of artists...

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The fact that downloading protected works for strictly private use is currently allowed by french law has recently been confirmed again. Of course, this is a thorn in the entertainment industry's sight, and that is why the french minister of culture Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres is under extreme pressure.

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This is not the first time German legislation must seem funny for people outside Germany and less funny for people inside Germany. This time, the victim of a totally ridiculous court order is heise. More specifically, it's a totally ridiculous cease-and-desist order.

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The death of free software in France, supposed to be voted on 22nd or 23rd december 2005, had been rejected on 17th march, when the Assemblée Nationale introduced amendments guarantying interoperability. Michel Thiollière, french senator, wants to undo those changes (see DADVSI - Senator wants Amendement Vivendi Universal back). Now, demonstrations against Digital Restrictions Management, against the death of private backup and death of free software are planned, right after the entire country was blocked due to demonstrations against the 'First Contract of Employment' which removed protection against dismissal during a period of two years ...

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During 9 days of debates with nightly sessions usually not ending before midnight, once even at 4am, the Assemblée Nationale discussed the reform of french copyright. This debate was heavily influenced by organisations defending their own interests rather than the interests of those which should be the main point of interest: artists.

This aberration seems to continue in a way worse than most people probably would have imagined: A senator wants to undo pretty much all modifications, made by the Assemblée Nationale in favor of artists as well as consumers, to protect someone ... else ...

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