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FSF France: French Government Lobbied to Ban Free Software

“[On] Friday November 18th, 2005, French Department of Culture.
SNEP and SCPP… told Free Software authors: ‘You will be required
to change your licenses.’ SACEM add[ed]: ‘You shall stop publishing
free software,’ and warn they are ready ‘to sue free software
authors who will keep on publishing source code’ should the
‘VU/SACEM/BSA/FA Contents Department’ bill proposal pass in the
Parliament.

“It appears that publishing Free Software giving access to
culture is about to become a counterfeiting criminal offence. Will
SACEM sue France Télécom R&D research labs for
having published Maay and Solipsis (P2P pieces of software used to
exchange data)…”

Complete
Story

Complete
Story
(Français)

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