What all of this stuff is just going to do is to make companies go broke, and encourage piracy even more! ----- Original Message ----- From: Gary Wood To: blindcasting@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Saturday, December 31, 2005 2:33 PM Subject: Re: DADVSI This law does not sound good! ----- Original Message ----- From: Michael Babcock To: Programming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Cc: blindcasting@xxxxxxxxxxxxx ; FanfictionTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ; blindgamers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Saturday, December 31, 2005 1:16 AM Subject: DADVSI I dont know if this would affect any one here, but thought it should be passed on. It is directly copyed from the vlc web site: What is DADVSI ? The DADVSI (roughly "Author Rights and other Rights in the Information Society") 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 is directly impacted, most notably for its DVD reading capability (all Linux DVD reading software has the same problem). Should this law be passed as it is written, this would seriously hinder VLC's development. The french website eucd.info collects a large number of related articles and documentation, and has a dedicated english-speaking section. Discussion about this law has started in the french National Assembly, and will resume on January, 17th. A nice fact is that many MPs, both from the Government's political party and opposition were very aware of the possible impact of this law on Free Software, and there was a real debate on the first part of the law. The most important parts (mostly about DRM and Peer-To-Peer) will take place in January, so the battle is not over. It is thus very important to keep spreading the word about the dangers of this law. We would like to thank all the people involved in miscellaneous information actions, and the MPs that raised concerns concerns about this text, thus allowing a general public awareness about these issues.