Traduction "le logiciel libre: les menaces" Appel à relecteurs.

[jaaf <jaa.f AT cegetel.net>]

Bonjour à tous,
Voici ma traduction. Merci d'avance à ceux qui vont relire.

José Fournier


--
José FOURNIER
4, rue Marcel Pagnol
78530 BUC
Menbre de l 'APRIL
Promouvoir et défendre le
LOGICIEL LIBRE
http://www.april.org/ 
http://www.gnu.org/

Free Software: the threats

1- Software patents

In France, as in Europe, software is not patentable because it is regarded as 
belonging to methods and algorithms – in the same way mathematics are.

And yet, for several years, big companies, have been pushing the idea of 
patent, pretending it would foster innovation. In fact, the effect is 
inverse: the innovation cycle in software being very short, forbidding access 
to a method, a software patent impedes  innovation instead of stimulating it. 

Contrarily to the “droit d'auteur” (copyright) (which today protects 
software creation, software patents act as a discrimination against (free or 
proprietary) software publishing SME which cannot afford to finance 
anteriority researches and disputes in order  to protect their software, but 
also to commercialize it without risk. The principle of patent is basically 
incompatible with Free Software. It implies significant implementation costs 
and utilization restrictions. If it were introduced in Europe, it would  
sharply slow the Free Software development and utilization.

We must oppose what is merely a Trojan Horse for a bunch of big publishers, 
mainly outside of Europe, which will be the only ones to benefit from the 
legal insecurity it creates.

2-Linked sales

At the moment, free access to the market doesn't actually apply to Free 
Software. With regards to the consumer market, Free Software faces coalitions 
between software publishers and hardware makers, despite the fact that their 
behavior is punished by the “Code de la consommation” (in English: 
Consumption Legislation) and despite the  negotiations led by the DGCCRF 
(note 1) to end this situation.

There is also a discrimination as for the access to public orders and to 
public services and more generally to public data. This discrimination is the 
consequence of the data formats in use: public authorities and public 
services do not  always choose  open formats which can be implemented by any 
programs. Now, as a consequence of closed format choices, access to documents 
is restricted to users of proprietary software capable to read them. For 
example, calls for tenders by administrations, made using closed formats, can 
prevent Free Software users from accessing public orders. In a similar way, 
the format choose by some public services to diffuse their content makes 
access by Free Software users impossible (e.g. Radio France, France 
Television). The problem is the same with public information (geographic 
maps, official documents...). 

As an answer to many Internet users' demand, this year, the French National 
Assembly decided to broadcast “La séance en direct” (The live session), 
in an open format, in order to guaranty to everybody an equal access to the 
National Assembly 's debate. Such initiatives must be encouraged. That is 
merely the meanings of the “Référentiel  Général 
d'Interopérabilité” (in English: “General Reference Book on 
Interoperability”), announced long before, and that will be implemented 
during the next legislature 's five year term.

3- DADVSI

The French “Loi sur les Droits d'auteur et Droits Voisins dans la Société 
de l'Information”  (in English: “law on authors' rights and related 
rights in the Information Society" voted last year, gave birth, on behalf of 
fight against counterfeit, to excessive extensions of copyright. This law, 
has introduced in our legislation, clauses which undermine the neutrality of 
technology, that is the principle according to which technology in itself, is 
neither good nor bad: only the utilization one makes of it can be acceptable 
or reprehensible.

Pretending that the users of a free program could modify it in order to make 
illegal copies, this law denies access to Free Software authors to the market 
of the multimedia readers intended to read only protected works. As a 
consequence, the discrimination, the Free Software developers and users have 
to face, increases.

Concretely, the DRM ("Digital Restrictions Management") makes the elaboration 
of  independent and open source software, capable of reading a protected 
movie or a musical work, legally very hazardous. Free Software users are de 
facto prevented from accessing the on-line music selling platforms whenever 
musical works are protected by DRM.

Moreover, the clauses referred to as “Vivendi clauses”, which accuse the 
peer-to-peer platform not containing DRM, arguing that they are, among 
others, used to exchange works without permission, represents also a serious 
issue to Free  Software. It is an attempt to censor Free Software authors - 
to deny them the right to use the P2P technology- while, only the users 
action may infringe the intellectual property of some authors and their legal 
beneficiaries, and while Free Software authors,by definition, are not able to 
prevent them from doing so.

In fine, this law is discriminatory. It unfairly burdens Free Software 
authors with an heavy legal insecurity. Some of them chose to go into exile, 
following the example of the Azureus peer-to-peer project manager, who 
migrated to the United States, a country which, like many other 
countries,facing the numerous perversions this law causes, increasingly 
discards the mirage of DRM.
A revision of the DADVSI law is unavoidable.

4- So called “Trusted Computing”

in addition to the claims made on behalf of proprietary rights, which do not 
exist in European Law, or on the deceptive pretext of fighting counterfeit, 
exaggerated claims, made on behalf of software security, grow in number in 
order to try to justify the implementation of new obstacles to fair 
competition.

Some dominant actors like Microsoft try to restrict interoperability with 
their software only to “certified software” complying with their own 
criteria. They oblige to take very expensive certification tests  which, de 
facto, excludes the voluntary authors and the SME. The outcome of such an 
approach is the so called “Trusted Computing” which, in fact, uses 
technical means to prevent  non certified software to  implement 
interoperability, that is to say communication between two independent 
programs. Such practices and mechanisms have to be rejected.

And as explained in a report on the security of information systems by the 
French member of parliament Pierre Lasbordes in 2005, “l'émergence de 
cette informatique de confiance conduirait un nombre très limité de 
sociétés à imposer leur modèle de sécurité à la planète, en 
autorisant ou non, par la délivrance de certificats numériques, des 
applications à s'exécuter sur des PC donnés.” (in English: “the 
emergence of this trusted computing would lead to a very limited number of 
companies imposing their security model to the whole world, by allowing or 
not, by means of the delivery of digital certificates, applications to run on 
given PCs only.”); that brings, in addition to the risks for privacy and 
national security, fair competition obvious issues.

Note 1: DGCCRF: Direction générale de la consommation, de la concurrence et 
de la répression des fraudes (in English: General Direction of Consumption, 
Competition and Treachery Suppression)