Re: [Trad April] Traduction "le logiciel libre: les menaces" Appel à relecteurs.

["Marc Chauvet" <marc.chauvet AT gmail.com>]

Bonsoir Jaaf,

Je vais relire ta traduction. Je pense que j'aurai le temps de renvoyer mes suggestions d'ici Mardi soir.

Bonne soirée :)
Marc

2008/9/7 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)








--
http://www.april.org/wws/info/traductions