make people aware of the danger in France concerning internet and computers individual rights

French people don’t care about their individual rights anyway.
Why would they have elected the smiler otherwise?

But i’m afraid it’s only a small part of the problem.

The bigger one: in the US, the major telecommunication companies (Bell, AT&T, AOL, etc.) are wondering: “Hold on. Users pay for their bandwidth, that’s fine. But the websites are not paying for the bandwidth used to display their content. Hey! There’s a bloody big amount of money to win there! Let’s make’em pay!”

You get the picture. The websites are forced to pay for their content to be displayed. Google, Microsoft, the New York Times, the Democrats and Fox News have more money than emerging web search engines, blogs, small political parties, opinion minorities, personal websites, small artists. Hence the former get viewed more than the latter, they have a bigger display window.

All the same for e-mail. “Hold on a sec! E-mail is still free, isn’t there a bloody amount of money to make from that?” And you find yourself having a quota of 15 free e-mails a day, unless you’re willing to pay a premium membership to your ISP.

Ultimately, this movement put to an extreme would lead the Internet as such to cease to exist, replaced by private networks, such as Bellnet, AT&Tnet, Cisconet, all with their specific pay plans, policies and rules. And not inter-connected, not free, and not neutral.

My friends, please: keep your eyes and ears wide open. It’s a bloody big deal.

:: prepares the armour for the battlefield ::

I did what I could (ie : extremely little), and I’ll do what I’ll can.

...make peer to peer file sharing legal!

Amazing…

:)

E2(IT) (Everything Is In The Title)

Organised by Linuxfr.org, a French portal dedicated to Linux.
All the details at http://linuxfr.org/2005/12/08/20026.html

http://eucd.info/index.php?English-readers

The official information translated, at last, into English.

Art. 27:

(1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.

(2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html

Article 27 :

« 1. Toute personne a le droit de prendre part librement à la vie culturelle de la communauté, de jouir des arts et de participer au progrès scientifique et aux bienfaits qui en résultent.
2. Chacun a droit à la protection des intérêts moraux et matériels découlant de toute production scientifique, littéraire ou artistique dont il est l’auteur. »

http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/lang/frn.htm

If you knew me, you’d know I wouldn’t send all this to 127 people in my contacts, extensively use my blog, internet foras, 43 Things, del.icio.us and all the like if I wasn’t dead serious. In fact, I do am dead serious.
I’m geeky, and I’m fighting for my rights when they tend to disappear. For this, I took the time to write you about what’s going on NOW, and to invite you to generously spread the word.

What’s going on?
The DADVSI bill (Droits d’Auteur et Droits Voisins dans la Société de l’Information—Copyright and Alike Rights in a Society of Information) has just been declared “urgent” by the French government; i.e. the government wants this law to be agreed on by the evening of the 22nd/23rd December 2005. Yes, that’s in less than 25 days. Yes, that’s two fucking days before Christmas. Yes, the French Parliament is going to be genuinely empty at that time, and yes, it’s outrageously unethical!

The DADVSI bill explained (DO READ!)Average time for reading this: 50 sec.
Very concretely, the DADVSI bill legitimates, allows and locks up the DRM (Digital Rights Management) and anti-copy software installed on just anything digital (CDs, DVDs, games, whatever has electronics in it! even your mobile phone! even your camera!). Ever heard of the Sony Rootkit affair? That’s it. All this is going to be installed, monitored and controlled by the Majors of the music industry (e.g. Sony), of the film industry (e.g. Universal, aka Vivendi), and of the proprietary software industry (e.g. Microsoft).

It’s as if your book editor forbade you to read with other glasses than theirs!

This nasty stuff will allow the Majors to monitor and control any digital activity (e.g. arranging photos taken from a Casio camera with a Nikon software, or listening to an MP3 from iTunes Music Store on something else than an iPod), and forbid them.
Anybody going round these control processes, either directly or not, will be accused of forgery or counterfeit (3 years of prison and 300,000 EUR fine—yeah it’s thousands, no coma here). All the same if you say to your peers that Linux is good. Linux allows people to do things uncontrolled, and hence Linux is plain evil.
And all the same for people developing, talking about or using any free software—or any software other than the one chosen (and sold) by the Majors.

More details
I strongly invite you to read the EUCD.info webpage: http://eucd.info/index.php?2005/11/16/182-appel-defendons-nos-droits-et-libertes (FR)
It is brilliantly explained for computer-dummies.
Average time for reading this: 3’30”

Everything in a synthesis (20 pages):
http://www.eucd.info/documents/dossier-eucd-v1-court.pdf (FR)
Or the complete version of the synthesis, with 30 more page of annexes and information: http://www.eucd.info/documents/dossier-eucd-v1.pdf (FR)

Links
The website summing everything up in real time: http://eucd.info (FR)
The French press talks about all this: http://news.google.fr/news?hl=fr&ned=fr&ie=UTF-8&ncl=http://www.hns-info.net/article.php3%3Fid_article%3D7300 (FR)
Average time for reading this: 20’, but more and more due to the growth of attention from the media.

What can be done?
Sign the online petition! More than 15,000 signatures in three days, it’s very motivating, but yet not enough. Keep spreading the word! http://eucd.info/petitions/index.php?petition=2 (‘Nom’ = last name; ‘Prénom’ = first name; ‘Informations complémentaires’ = occupation and location; ‘Adresse électronique’ = e-mail addr., needed for the confirmation of signature)

Every single way to contribute
Is on this page: http://eucd.info/agir (FR)
Average time for reading this: 4’

Of course, it’s all about signing the petition. But please, please, please also spread the word! Send e-mails, use your blogs, Technorati, del.icio.us, 43 Things, foras, newsgroups, Usenet, webchats and IRC… If the so-called Web 2.0 cannot help its users to fight for their rights, it’s but a piece of bullshit.

I’m almost crying while writing all this. Man, our parliament is about to vote a law that will say that we’re not to do what we want with our music, our books, our films, our computers, even! Let’s just not allow this to happen.

Now, let’s keep spreading the word!

Meso

Of which 4,500 only today!

Keep spreading the word!!

First step done : signed up the petition.