Liberté, Equalité, Fraternité ... err now hold on a second

France may soon enact the worst copyright law in Europe, sneaking it through in a legislative session scheduled for December 22 and 23. says Ming the Mechanic

Whilst I wonder why the French still don't get it. Command and control is over. The riots proved that.

I pondered myself about the reasons why Paris exploded - and its pretty obvious - ostracisation, poverty and all the terrible things that leads to. And there was the French government thinking they could control the news and the images of what was going on. I reflected back to the UK riots at Broadwater Farm, Brixton, Toxteth - and I think that you see the same issues - of a community deprived, and ignored that ultimately explodes. I lived in Sweden for two years - which out of all the Nordic countries has the most immigration. But you still feel these people are kept at arms length. Its no long term solution to the problem

But the point is that ultimately such policies do not work. What is the French slogan for their country
Liberté, Fraternité, Equalité? Hmmm, bit of a contradiction in terms here don't you think?

Cory Doctrow from Boing Boing says

Europe's equivalent to the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a controversial directive called the EUCD. Each EU state is responsible for implementing the minimum set of EUCD restrictions (which are far from minimal!) but each state can exceed the minimum, and the entertainment lobby pushes hard to see to it that they do. They've run amok in France, subverting the lawmaking process with a farcical wish-list of penalties, mandates and software bans.

Copyfighters in France have published a detailed alert in French; what follows is a loose, machine-assisted translation (substantive corrections gladly sought):

* A prohibition on all software that permits transmission [disposition is unclear without greater context] of copyrighted material that does not integrate both a watermark and DRM
* A prohibition on marketing or advertising such software
* These prohibitions include legal sanctions
* DRM mandates for digital radio transmission
* A universal wiretapping system for private communication [This is defined elsewhere as a system to check for, say, music files attached to email messages, and not one that would violate the "secret of private correspondence".]
* Creation of a universal filtering system for all ISPs

Vive la France shout the politicians and Jean Marie Le Pen, whilst I think a lot of young french people are thinking about how they can escape.

Sign the petition here for a free France

This is what Jeff Jarvis said about the riots and its relationship to new media, communities and the old notion of controlled censorship

One French media executive thinks he can control that debate. Jean-Claude Dassier, director general of the news service TCI, complained at the NewsXchange conference in Amsterdam that media attention given the riots in France was "excessive" (though in America, it surely would be the subject of round-the-clock cable-news coverage usually reserved for storms). He also admitted that he censored coverage of the riots, not only because he did not want to goad the rioters into worse destruction, but also because he did not want to give ammunition to far-right politicians. "Politics in France is heading to the right and I don't want rightwing politicians back in second, or even first place because we showed burning cars on television," Dassier said.

The man is deluded. He thinks that he can not only control the debate but that he still controls media: that if he doesn't show the images, they won't be seen. But he does not control media. No one does any more. Such anarchy may appear frightening at moments such as these, in stories as uncontrollable as this one. But we should not be fooled into blaming the tool for its misuse when the tool can also be used for good. Free speech is not wrong even if it is used to inspire violence; technology is not bad even if it is used to incite destruction.

Read the whole piece here

Comments

[Henry Peise]

People die for iphone 4 white is understandable, isn't it? The reason is quite simple, We all want to be differnt!

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