Noryungi's Journal: France amends its anti-DRM laws.

In a surprising victory for open source and peer-to-peer, French lawmakers have voted to legalize music and movie downloads, a move that was supported even by representatives close to the government. It seems that a majority of representatives have understood the risk that this law would pose to the free flow of information over the Internet and to the legality of all open source software (including software such as FTP or Apache), while the position of the largest recording companies (DRM good ! Open Source bad ! P2P evil!!) was proved to be falsed by a large French Consumer Association. If the law passes with its amendments, downloading music and movies will be legal in France, provided individual users do not make a profit and pay a small tax which will be collected by their ISPs. Unfortunately, the French government has vowed to fight the changes to the law. The fight goes on... More information and opinion here, here and here.

I submitted this to Slashdot a few minutes ago.

A few personal comments :

1. That kind of decision makes me proud to be a Frenchman... ;-)
2. The fight goes on. I do hope that the law will retain its amendments, and that the French Senate will also resist the government's pressure and keep the amendments.
3. This law was going to forbid the development of Free Software and anti-DRM software. Needless to say, I am against it!
4. The level of corruption in this whole mess is absolutely stunning: it seems that the French RIAA and many large companies (Microsoft, Apple, Virgin, etc) actually sent their lawyers and lobbyists to supply 'information' and demo their technologies to the lawmakers. You can't get any more corrupt that this.