Possibly OT :-) New Canadian Voice in Digital Rights Issues

[Evan Leibovitch]

Walter Dnes wrote:

>2) France is considering legislation mandating DRM in all software.
>It would effectively outlaw linux as we know it or, at the very least,
>make programming a government-licenced/regulated activity.  As I said
>before, the alleged goal of the legislation is to protect the
>"intellectual property" of a bunch of scantily-clad-seventeen-year-old
>screeching sluts, and some potty-mouthed rappers.  However, the side-
>effects are very bad for open source.  For the full article, see...
>http://iht.com/articles/2005/12/09/business/openside.php
>  
>
First of all, on an IP-related issue France can't do something that is 
out of step with the EU, which while not itself completely open source 
friendly has refused to allow (or honour) US-type software patents. Most 
of the EU has already adopted many of the measures being debated.

Secondly, the French public sector is a large user of open source; the 
country has been one of the more Linux-friendly in Europe and is the 
home to the largest distribution vendor outside the US, Mandriva. It is 
highly unlikely that the French government would do anything that would 
legally curtail the use of open source; it is not a coincidence that 
France is one of the last two countries in the EU to implement the DRM 
directive.

Lastly, in any context I would caution that "is considering" is a very 
far cry from "has enacted". The article pointed to above explicitly 
states that there is no plan to attack FOSS, so I would be careful about 
being needlessly alarmist. Indeed, Microsoft is also against the more 
extreme French measures, which along with requiring DRM also requires 
the publishing of DRM code. This is not a traditional "FOSS versus 
proprietary" fight so much as it is one of content-provider rights 
versus programmer and consumer rights. The battle lines are different, 
and FOSS and proprietary developers are generally on the same side of 
this one.

- Evan

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