The DADVSI draft law (French EUCD Transposition) made its first step on 21 March, with 286 votes in favour and 193 votes against. In an unusually crowded National Assembly, 501 out of the 577 Members of the Parliament took part in the vote. All the votes in favour came from representatives of the Conservative government party, which has the absolute majority. The NO votes repartition is: 7 from the government's party (14 abstentions), 162 from the Socio-democrat, Communist and Green opposition (4 abstentions), and 24 from the Liberal Democrat Centrists (4 abstentions).

The result is largely a victory for the cultural industry majors: the 'global licence' idea is over, copyright exceptions granted by law are few and painless; while downsized, a penalty regime for unauthorized upload or download of content protected under intellectual property legislation is still in place for non commercial use; DRMs circumvention is assimilated to counterfeit, unless for research purpose; an administrative authority has been created to decide on the allowed number of private copies for cultural goods, with no minimum granted by law; and, most importantly, the so-called 'Vivendi Universal amendment' has been adopted, criminalizing P2P software edition and dissemination.

However, the draft law brings important progress on the interoperability side: not only DRM vendors are required to open their technology to competitors, but also commercial platforms are required to make their files compatible with any player. This has soon led to strong criticism, with Apple accusing France of "State-sponsored piracy" and Americans for Technology Leadership (an industry coalition including members such as Microsoft) claiming that such measures "strip away the intellectual property rights of companies". The issue seems serious to US Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, who backed Apple protests.

The draft law will go to the Senate, where discussions are scheduled in mid-May. Not only copyright, but also competition is clearly at stake now. No doubt that French Senators already start facing strong lobbying.

EDRI-gram: What's so special about French EUCD transposition? (15.03.2006)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number4.5/franceeucd

Sign Of The (Digital) Times: France's Struggle With A New Copyright Law (18.03.2006)
http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/index.php?p=248

Draft law adopted by the National Assembly (in French, 21.03.2006)
http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/12/ta/ta0554.asp

A compilation of reactions on the French draft copyright law (since 22.03.2006)
http://eucd.info/index.php?2006/03/21/288-dadvsi-code-nirvana-or-night...

(Contribution by Meryem Marzouki, EDRI-member IRIS)