Re: Impact of French DADVSI law on Free Software and OCaml (was: Re: [Caml-list] Slashdot)

[Francis Dupont <Francis.Dupont@enst-bretagne.fr>]

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 In your previous mail you wrote:

   > « Les logiciels et les bases de données sont soumis à l'obligation de
   > dépôt légal dès lors qu'ils sont mis à disposition d'un public par la
   > diffusion d'un support matériel quelle que soit la nature de ce
   > support.

=> the last part means the rule applies only when softwares and
data bases are distributed in *a physical medium*.
BTW this is the physical medium which should be legally registred.

   > « Sont également soumis au dépôt légal les signes, signaux, écrits,
   > images, sons ou messages de toute nature faisant l'objet d'une
   > communication publique en ligne. »

=> this is more about the usual confusion between the Internet and
an online service. I suggest to push the word "publique" (public
in English) to its limits (:-).

   > Should Xavier Leroy et al. registred OCaml each
   > time a new release is made? Should we declare all the images on the
   > OCaml web site? Should the OCaml bug database be registred?

=> if you distribute a CDROM with the whole OCaml on it, you have
to register it. This is an extension of the law for books (~500 year
old in France).

Regards

Francis.Dupont@enst-bretagne.fr

PS: DADVSI is about DRMs and tries to enforce DRM support in any software
which can transfer a file. As a side-effect open source should be forbiden
because it makes too easy to remove the DRM code.
This will be voted only if our PMs don't read the laws they adopt and
will be applied only if our judges do the same (I trust the seconds
far more than the firsts, unfortunately it is not the first case of
a law about computers which is fully silly, for instance to intend
to attack a computer system is enough to go in jail in France so
if you really attack a computer you'll be convicted for something else :-).