DADVSI

Loi DADVSI (generally pronounced as dadsi)[needs French IPA] is the abbreviation of the French Loi relative au droit d’auteur et aux droits voisins dans la société de l’information (in English: "law on authors' rights and related rights in the information society").

The law, despite being initially dismissed as highly technical and of no concern to the average person, generated considerable controversy when it was examined by the French Parliament between December 2005 and June 30, 2006, when it was finally voted through by both houses.

Most of the bill focussed on the exchange of copyrighted works over peer-to-peer networks and the criminalizing of the circumvention of digital rights management (DRM) protection measures.

Normally taxation is reserved for legislation, a prerogative of the French Parliament, but a statute endowed an ad hoc commission to set the rates and conditions for this tax.

In March 2006, the Cour de cassation, France's highest court in civil and criminal matters, ruled in a decision nicknamed Mulholland Drive (from the name of a DVD involved).

Legal scholars noted the following: In response an amendment was added to the DADVSI law by the National Assembly, which established a "right to the exception for private copy."

The DADVSI law unexpectedly rose as a somewhat well-publicized topic in national French politics in December 2005 with the vote of the so-called "global license".

Because of various circumstances, including the replacement of Aillagon by Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres (UMP), the bill was presented very late to the French Parliament and was initially to be examined in the National Assembly on December 20, 21 and 22, 2005 just before the Christmas holidays.

[2] The examination of the draft law by the National Assembly, initially seen as a quick matter preceding the Christmas break, was marred by several incidents, the best known being the vote on the first amendment of the "global license" (see below).

Minister of Culture Donnedieu de Vabres had promised that he would have the law sent for another reading by both houses if the differences between the texts adopted by the Assembly and the Senate were too great.

The case was made in Parliament that millions of French Internet users, especially among the young, currently traded files on computer networks and that it was thus unrealistic to turn them into felons.

Bernard Carayon, UMP deputy for the Tarn département, denounced lobbying, pressures and even blackmail on the part of certain groups on national TV.

A number of parliamentarians said they had never seen such intense lobbying from all sides, including a grassroot effort from Internet users and free software advocates which inundated them with letters and emails.

For instance, François Bayrou, head of the center-right UDF party, criticised how the minister submitted a last minute pair of amendments of seven pages completely changing the criminal penalty system applicable to illegal copies of copyrighted material, and for creating a de facto "police of the Internet".

[7] In its March 15, 2006, edition, the Canard Enchaîné investigative weekly reported that Debré had complained that Donnedieu de Vabres was "a zero, who put us in the shit and, from the start, dragged us into an adventure".

The initial version of the bill punished most acts related to illegal copying of copyrighted material, including working around anti-copy systems, as a felony[10] counterfeiting, with a maximum sentence of 3 years in prison and/or a €300,000 fine.

In the current state of the law, CPI L335-2 and L335-5 punish as counterfeiting the act of publishing copyrighted works without the authorization of the rights holders, with a maximum sentence of 3 years in prison and/or a €300,000 fine.

The "legal license" was promoted by the alliance public-artistes Archived 2006-07-01 at the Wayback Machine ("public / artists alliance"), composed of: It was backed by a number of politicians, both on the left (members of the French Socialist Party such as Patrick Bloche and Christian Paul) and on the right (members of the UMP such as Christine Boutin and Alain Suguenot), who defended it in the National Assembly.

French broadband connections typically cost €30 a month for rates up to 16 megabits per second, digital TV and unlimited VoIP phone calls.

Proponents of the law contended that: Opponents contended that: In the evening sitting of the Assembly on December 21, the first of the series of amendments establishing the global license (identical amendments 153 as proposed by UMP deputy Alain Suguenot and 154 as proposed by deputies from the French Socialist Party) was voted by a 30-to-28 margin,[11] much to the dismay of Culture Minister Donnedieu de Vabres.

It was initially thought that the minister would request another examination of the controversial amendment by the Assembly; however, the head of the UMP group in the assembly, Bernard Accoyer, stated that the French Parliament had demonstrated that it was not a chambre d'enregistrement (a chamber for registering the wishes of the executive) and pointed out that the text was only at the beginning of its examination by Parliament, which has two houses, which seemed to suggest that he expected the amendment to be struck down in the Senate.

Politicians across all French political parties have declared free software to be important for France, since it provides competition in a field dominated by extra-European corporations.

Politicians from several parties (among whom Alain Carayon and Richard Cazenave from the ruling right-wing UMP, François Bayrou, president of the center-right UDF) pushed amendments aimed at ensuring interoperability of DRM systems.

These amendments stated that: It is unclear, though, whether these clauses would apply to DRM providers who not choose to avail themselves of the specific legal protection that the law grants to DRMs.

The Odebi league, a citizen's action group defending the rights of Internet users, told Apple to "mind its business and not meddle into the French legislative process" and pointed out that "if Apple wishes to do business in France, it has to respect the rights that the French enjoy";[16][17] the league also issued a communiqué titled Guterriez go home.

The text from the Senate introduces an administrative authority capable of adjudicating the possibility of reading DRM contents in order to achieve interoperability.

Some amendments, adopted by both houses of Parliament, introduce civil and criminal responsibility for authors of software used for illicit copying of protected works.

This article could make it mandatory to implement technologies such as SNOCAP into peer-to-peer transmission programs, as proposed by Sylvie Forbin from Vivendi Universal.

They argue that the vagueness of this test makes it impossible for citizens to know what is allowed and what is disallowed, whereas counterfeiting of copyright works may be a felony offense, and thus that the law is unconstitutional because it is unintelligible.

Copyright certificates were not providing any protection and that software sold by its author during a decade in more than 140 countries does not deserve the "originality" criteria because it was "banal", prior art in the market segment being already available.