French could outlaw open source DRM, peer-to-peer

On May 4, the French Senate will debate a copyright bill that is widely expected to have a chilling effect on the development and distribution of open-source software for digital rights management (DRM) or P-to-P (peer-to-peer) file sharing. That's because the bill's provisions include a penalty of up to three years in prison and a fine of €300,000 (US$363,171) for publishing, distributing or promoting software in France that is "manifestly intended" for the unauthorized distribution of copyright works.

The developers of the open-source multimedia player VLC, which can read DRM-protected DVDs, consider themselves targeted. But the legal uncertainty over the term "manifestly intended" makes the bill's coverage so broad that it could even cover the open-source Web server Apache, which hosts over 60 percent of Web sites, opponents of the bill say. Open-source projects are thought to be more vulnerable than commercial operations because they typically have few resources at their disposal to defend legal actions.

France has been a strong supporter of open-source software, with many publicly funded bodies either using it or developing it. Legislation that punishes development and distribution of open-source applications could weaken projects based there, and tarnish the image of the open-source movement with users.

The text of the bill, entitled "Authors' rights and related rights in an information society," aims to transpose the requirements of the European Copyright Directive into French law. France is one of the last countries to transpose this European directive into national law, a situation that prompted the French government to rush the bill through its first reading in the National Assembly using emergency procedures. The bill will have its second and final reading in the Senate beginning May 4, and then must be approved by the president and finally published in the government's Official Journal before it can become law.

Deputies gave their assent to the bill on the afternoon of March 21, and within hours it had claimed its first victim: the French "mirror" of the development site for the open-source file-sharing application Emule.

The Emule project is hosted by Sourceforge.net, a collaborative workspace for open-source developers run by OSTG Inc. Sourceforge provides discussion boards, tracks source code changes and hosts downloads for around 100,000 open-source projects.

A number of Web hosting companies around the world, among them OVH SAS of Roubaix, France, offer local copies, or mirrors, of the complete Sourceforge site to spread the load. But soon after deputies voted, OVH Chief Executive Officer Octave Klaba wrote to his customers to tell them: "We are going to remove Emule from our mirror of Sourceforge."

As well as announcing Emule's impending removal from the OVH mirror of Sourceforge, Klaba warned customers that they too face a fine or prison for distributing P-to-P software, and said the company will close down any of its servers found running or hosting such software.

OVH's move has prompted French supporters of open-source software to open a "reserve" for endangered applications.

The legal threat posed by the bill is still imaginary until it becomes law, but the fear it is creating is just as damaging, according to Loïc Dachary, a spokesman for the Free Software Foundation France (FSF France).