DADVSI law

DADVSI (generally pronounced as dadsi) is the abbreviation of the French Loi sur le Droit d’Auteur et les Droits Voisins dans la Société de l’Information (in English: "law on authors' rights and related rights in the information society"). It is a bill reforming French copyright law, mostly in order to implement the 2001 European directive on copyright (known as EUCD), which in turn implements a 1996 WIPO treaty.

The law, despite being initially dismissed as highly technical and of no concern to the average person, generated considerable controversy when it was examined by the French Parliament between December 2005 and June 30, 2006, when it was finally voted through by both houses.

Most of the bill focussed on the exchange of copyrighted works over peer-to-peer networks and the criminalizing of the circumvention of digital rights management (DRM) protection measures. Other sections dealt with other matters related to copyright, including rights on resale of works of art, copyright for works produced by government employees and exceptions to copyright for education and the handicapped, among other issues.

The law was highly controversial within France because of fears that it could significantly hamper free software and might also significantly restrict the right to make copies of copyrighted works for private use.

Some amendments to the bill, not present in the original version, would potentially require manufacturers to share their proprietary digital music formats with other software developers (by way of the need to provide the documentation necessary for interoperability). Because of this, a controversy arose with Apple Computer and associated US industry groups, who loudly protested in the US press; therefore, the DADVSI bill was sometimes referred to as the iTunes law or iPod law in the English-language press (see Interoperability and Apple controversy), although the law is not referred to in this way in France.

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