DMCA, EUCD, leave our freedom and free software alone! (PART I)
When my CICS colleague Luke Amos informed me about something scary going on between free software, e.g. VideoLAN, and the French legislature, I went to the VideoLAN website, alarmed, since VideoLAN is one of my favorite programs ever. What do I read in red bold characters, at the top of the page?
“VideoLAN might disappear due to new French/European legislation.” (VideoLAN, 2005)
What?? Do you mean the program that…
- reads almost any type of video without having to install the appropriate codecs (DivX, MPEG, AVI, WMV, DVD, VCD, etc.), and any DVD, blocked or not
- gives you a video server and IP VoD services
- enables you to stream from the hard drive, from DVD, VCD, satellite, Digital Terrestrial TV, to Windows/MAC/Linux/BSD/… computers, set-up boxes or PDAs (see VideoLAN streaming features)
- we use to “multicast” a bunch of TV channels on the LAN in my school (in France) and Ecole Centrale Paris (one of the top non-specialized French Grande Ecoles of engineering), where the program originated as a simple engineering project, then turned to a “WOW” project.
- the Google Video player is based of, as well as the IP TV over ADSL services offered by some French ISPs (free.fr).
- counts HP, IBM and AT&T among his partners.
ALL OF THAT FOR FREE and OPEN SOURCE.
Are you saying this program might disappear?!!
Needless to say I am slightly (I mean “very very” for those who do not get my irony) upset at that time. Then, I click on the link below without thinking - “Learn more”, it says – and the Awful Truth appears to me in all his scary dressing, here is the essence of the message, for those who are too lazy to click on the link:
“During the night of 22nd to 23rd December 2005, while everybody is preparing for Christmas, the French Parliament will rule about the "DADVSI" law. This vote will be made with minimal discussion, as an "emergency" has been declared on this law.
This law 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, 2005)
Not only they want to vote for a law that might kill many open source multimedia and Peer-To-Peer software, but they also want to do this sneaky-sneaky while everybody is enjoying the preparations for Christmas. What a wonderful gift!
Then, in the French version (under the English one) exclusively, there is an invitation to fight this “freedom-killing” bill in various ways. Sorry, mainly in French, but there is a link for English readers and you can read articles and documentation in English on the EUCD website that supports the movement against the “European DMCA” law.
I will explain in a next blog why many open source software are threatened to death by this law and what kind of protections governments and large companies (these are the only ones benefiting from such laws) are developing to enforce the DMCA/EUCD. “Bear with me.”
References:
VideoLAN, VideoLAN and the issue of EUCD / DADVSI, Retrieved 12/06/2005, http://www.videolan.org/eucd.html