Stallman on French DRM bill
p2p news / p2pnet: What’ll stop hard-core commercial company Apple Computer from browbeating the French government into killing an anti-DRM bill?
“Thousands of French youth in the streets.”
That’s the view of Gnu founder Richard Stallman.
“France has pulled back from an all out attack on Apple’s iTunes Music Store, watering down the law which nearly forced Apple to allow non-iPod users to listen to music from iTunes,” as The Register summed it up.
The bill threatens people’s freedom to watch DVDs using free software, and is designed to make French citizens submit to the will of media companies, said Stallman, “delivering the closing keynote address at the Paris Capitale du Libre conference on Monday night,” states ComputerWorld.
Friday is the last day of the parliamentary session before the long summer vacation and the French parliament will vote on the bill on that day, says the story, the Senate in the morning, the National Assembly in the afternoon.
Formally, Authors’ rights and related rights in an information society, the bill is also known by its French abbreviation, DADVSI.
Stallman, president of the Free Software Foundation, ” won over his Paris audience Monday night by addressing them in French,” says ComputerWorld:
“Liberté, égalité and fraternité,” he said, “Freedom, because free software gives everyone four freedoms unavailable with proprietary software; equality, because it gives everyone all the same freedoms, and brotherhood, because everyone belongs to the same community of interest.”
ComputerWorld also has Stallman saying, “Those who don’t recognize freedom are in the process of losing it. We can see that here, with the DADVSI law.”
Jobs isn’t having everything his own way, however.
He recently lost his attempt to crush freedom of speech in the US when he tried, and failed, to use American laws to force online journalists to reveal the names of confidential sources.
Digg this story.
Also See:
watering down – Apple reality-distortion field, June 26, 2006
ComputerWorld – Take French copyright battle to the streets, June 27, 2006
attempt to crush – Massive win for online journalists, May 26, 2006
p2pnet newsfeeds for your site.
rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss
Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win – Mohandas Gandhi
