Le projet de loi sur le « trou analogique » imposerait une loi secrète

A contribution to the first edition of the Carnival of Blog Translation. Anglophones can read the original post, which is translated here: Analog Hole Bill Would Impose a Secret Law, on Ed Felten’s post Freedom to Tinker. The choice has been influenced by the DMCA-like bill currently under discussion in France.

Ce billet est une contribution à la première édition du « Carnaval de la traduction » initié par Liz Henry. J’ai choisi de transposer dans un français j’espère à peu près compréhensible un billet du professeur Ed Felten de l’université de Princeton aux États-Unis. Son blog, Freedom to Tinker (cela donne « La liberté de bidouiller ») se tient dans les interstices entre le droit et l’informatique.

Alors qu’en France, l’Assemblée nationale considère une loi qui, bien que transposant une directive européenne, reprend plusieurs dispositions du DMCA américain, les États-Unis sont en train d’aller plus loin. Le Congrès débat actuellement d’un projet de loi qui, au-delà de la protection des dispositifs GDM (également appelés DCU ou DRM), vise à boucher ce qu’ils appellent le « trou analogique » (« analog hole ») : la possibilité de copier un enregistrement numérique potentiellement protégé en passant par les techniques analogiques. Voici ce qu’Ed Felten a découvert à ce sujet…

Si vous avez lu ce blog récemment, vous savez que je ne raffole pas de la loi Sensenbrenner/Coyners#[1] sur le « trou analogique ». Cette loi exigerait que tous les appareils vidéo analogiques fussent équipés de deux dispositifs techniques, appelés CGMS-A et VEIL#[2]. CGMS-A est raisonnablement bien connu, mais le système VEIL de protection des contenus est relativement récent. Je voulais en savoir plus.

J’ai donc adressé un e-mail à la société qui vend VEIL et leur ai demandé s’ils voulaient bien me faire parvenir une copie de ses spécifications techniques. Je me suis dit que j’allais bien les obtenir. Après tout, la loi rendrait les spécifications de VEIL obligatoires — les spécifications feraient effectivement partie de la loi. Ils n’allaient certainement pas proposer de voter une loi secrète. Ils n’allaient certainement pas dire que les citoyens ne fussent pas autorisés de connaître le contenu d’une loi que le Congrès est en train de discuter.

Après quelques allers-retours, la société eut l’amabilité de m’expliquer que je pouvais bel et bien recevoir les spécifications sous condition de signer, d’abord, leur contrat de licence. Ce contrat m’obligerait à : a) leur payer la somme de 10.000 dollars et b) promettre de ne parler à quiconque du contenu des spécifications. En d’autres termes, je peux connaître le contenu de la loi dont le Congrès est en train de débattre, mais seulement en payant 10.000 dollars à une société privée, et seulement si je promets de ne dire à personne ce qui est dans la loi, ni de participer à un débat publique là-dessus.

Pire encore, le contrat de licence ne couvre que la moitié du dispositif : le décodeur VEIL, qui détecte les signaux VEIL. Il n’y à pas moyen pour vous et moi d’être avertis du fonctionnement de l’encodeur qui ajoute les signaux VEIL à une vidéo.

Connaître les détails de ce dispositif est important pour pouvoir évaluer ce projet de loi. De combien cette loi, si elle entrait en effet, augmenterait-elle le prix d’une télé ? Dans quelle mesure gênerait-elle le développement futur de technologies nouvelles dans le domaine de la télévision ? Quelle est la probabilité que le dispositif empêcherait de faire des copies autorisés ? Dans quelle mesure le dispositif s’adapterait-il aux développements de l’avenir ? Toutes ces questions pèsent dans le débat sur cette loi. Et nous n’en pouvons répondre à aucune si la partie technique de la loi est secrète.

Ce qui nous amène à la question la plus intéressante de toutes : Les membres du Congrès eux-mêmes et leur assistants, sont-ils autorisés, eux, à voir les spécifications techniques et d’en parler ouvertement ? Sont-ils autorisés à demander conseil à des experts ? Ou bien, le contenu complet de ce projet de loi, est-il tenu secret même vis-à-vis des législateurs qui en débattent ?

(P.S.: Je suis autorisée à traduire ce billet car Ed Felten l’a mis à disposition sous contrat de licence Creative Commons. Merci.)

NDLT :

[1]: Noms des rapporteurs. [2]: L’acronyme VEIL signifie « voile ».


Oh bugger! (A public service announcement)

Le sketch The Word “Fuck” [mp3] [script], bien que confidentiel, a été largement attribué à Monty Python. Il semble que cela ait été par erreur : un témoignage affirme que l’auteur de la version finale fut un certain Jack Walker, connu pour ayant été «la voix de Disney» dans les parcs d’attraction de cette société. Ceci collerait également mieux à l’accent nord-américain cultivé qu’on peut entendre sur l’enregistrement.

I may have inadvertently contributed to circulating a falsehood. It concerns a brilliant bit of comedy that goes by the title The Usage of the Word “Fuck” or The History of the Word “Fuck” or simply Fuck, The Word. Neither the script nor the recording is particularly easy to find, but wherever I saw it referenced, it was attributed to Monty Python. The delivery and format are sufficiently Pythonesque that it never occurred to me to doubt their authorship, even though the cultured American-accented voice on the recording doesn’t seem to belong to any of the Pythons and the skit is not part of their famous collections.

This morning on IRC, Dan Dickinson kept insisting that this work couldn’t be Monty Python’s. He came up with a page that quotes an e-mail claiming that while the origins of the recording are still in the dark, the author and speaker of the final version was one Jack Wagner:

The guy who does the audio on the “Fuck, The Word” (aka “The Word Fuck”) track is NOT George Carlin, nor is it Monty Python, as is often credited.

It is the late Jack Wagner, the former ‘voice of Disneyland’.

I know, since I gave him the ORIGINAL copy on tape (before the internet) in 1989 during a time when we worked together. I have NO IDEA who did that version, but it was much shorter & the quality of the tape was quite poor. (Musicians, voiceover artists, engineers and other recording guys often traded tapes of rare & funny stuff. Unfortunately, quality was lost in generation after generations of copies.) Jack decided to re-do it, correcting some grammar and adding a few more examples of his own, then backed the whole thing up with the Vivaldi music.

I know this - I had the original copy and heard it first. Later, I heard from other techies at the park that he was so proud of it that he’d share it with everyone. I had always worried it would get him into trouble, but if ANYONE at Disneyland had ‘job security’, it would be him!

Years later when I heard it on the internet (the world’s bulletin board or bathroom wall), I just had to snicker. But we need to give credit where credit is due. His family may wish to forget it - the ‘park’ certainly does! - but he seemed to have been proud of it, so give him the creds.

The author of this missive wants to remain anonymous so as not to endanger his employment. But as anonymous e-mails go, this one is rather convincing. I’m happy to give credits to Jack Wagner. Even better: if this story is true, I see no reason not to make the recording [mp3] available for download.

Update, 2007-06-03: This little document is responsible for an astonishing part of my download bandwidth. I have therefore uploaded it to the Internet Archive and changed the link to their service. Many thanks.


  • 2005-01-11
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After letting Guillermito’s case settle down in my mind (and on the web) for a few days, some final notes (to complete what I wrote in parts one and two).

First, I got to meet Veuve Tarquine, the charming and knowledgeable law blogger, at Paris Carnet. She explained to me that the problem with Tegam’s (the software company’s) lawyer wasn’t that he was bad (as I had written), but given that it wasn’t at all clear that Guillermito had done anything wrong at all and made an excellent impression to boot, depicting him in a very bad light, implying (or implicating) that his motives were less than honourable, and obfuscating the technical issues were a valid legal strategy for Tegam.

Second, Lunar’s curiosity is piqued by something that made me wonder, too, ever since I started reading Eolas. The law professions aren’t very male-dominated any longer, in practice. There are loads of female judges, trial lawyers and even prosecutors. I wrote “even” because I can’t help thinking of a state-sanctioned strict father model at play in the role of the prosecution in France. So the symbolic side is a different matter entirely. All right, addressing lawyers as “Maître” can’t be much helped (yet), since “Maîtresse” already has two meanings#[1]. But the general sluggishness about feminine forms of professional titles makes me wonder what would happen if someone said “Madame la juge” instead of “le juge”.

There’s also the surprising development (surprising for those unused to the jack-booted thugs of the propaganda wars) in the comment sections of the two lawyerly blogs that help the non-legal public understand the case and the trial (Veuve Tarquine and Eolas).

Who, I wonder, benefits from multi-posting, under various nicknames, positive comments on ViGuard, and from making Guillermito look like an irresponsible cracker and copyright infringer, in short, following the same discourse strategy Tegam’s lawyer used? This commenter takes the cake: first the accusation of being a snitch (corbeau, literally raven or crow) hurled at Veuve Tarquine, then (translation mine):

Photo of the painting of a Justice in Paris's courtroom number 10

Guillermito must be convicted because he has broken the Law, and the prosecutor was perfectly right in his closing statement. The commentaries directed at the prosecutor are apalling in a society that respects the Rule of the Law. It’s a disgrace!

[praise for ViGuard snipped]

I can’t stand geeks who fuck around.

[more praise]

Veuve Tarquine’s articles are offensive and dim-witted. It’s a disgrace!

(Il faut que Guillermito soit condamné, car il a transgressé la Loi et le procureur a parfaitement raison dans son réquisitoire. Les commentaires à l’encontre du proc sont consternants dans une société de droit. C’est une honte ! […] On a marre des informaticiens qui fouttent [sic] la merde ! […] Les articles de Veuve Tarquine sont insultants et débiles. C’est une honte !)

Er, oops? Dim-witted abuse indeed, but by whom?

It is precisely one of the under consideration whether Guillermito has broken the law at all. There has never been a case like this in France. And even if he has, it’s the prerogative of citizens in a democracy to disagree with the law and to work for its change. All our blog posts are minuscule grains of sand, infinitesimal additions to a body of documentation about the weaknesses of copyright law, as some of us see it. Just because Veuve Tarquine is a lawyer she’s still entitled to think for herself.

As for her finking on poor Tegam because she agrees with everyone including the prosecutor that their software isn’t very good, well, that’s ridiculous.

To finish, I found an image of the very painting of Justice I referred to in part 1, one Veuve Tarquine’s blog! And she has given me permission to use it here. Many thanks!

P.S.: ZDNet Australia has an article today. And so has The Register (thanks, Mookitty).


[1]: Apart from the obvious one, female elementary and kindergarten teachers are called “Maîtresse”.


Rule of Law and of the free market (part 2)

Le procès de Guillermito, deuxième partie en anglais.

This is the second part of an article on Guillermito’s trial for criminal copyright infringement. The first part is here. It is not my goal to summarise the entire case: I am not a lawyer, copyright law is different in every country (and my knowledge of it little more than hazy), and I also don’t have […]

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Rule of Law part one

Le proces de Guillermito pour contrefaçon de logiciel. Pour une excellente collection de liens en français, voir chez Laurent.

  • 2005-01-05
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The new year started with a bang#[1]: Steph is visiting Paris. The more common tourist attractions aren’t good enough for this Anglo-Swiss star of the francophone blogosphere, so after lunch and some pleasant conversation, we went to a criminal trial. Not any old trial, of course, but Guillermito’s. French blogs are talking about the case […]

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  • 2004-11-11
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Nice crop of downloadable online media. The political first: Ifilm has Theo van Gogh and Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s film Submission as an Apple Quicktime (.mov) file. Via Viewropa. Still on Viewropa, I found this collection of mp3 Rock/Pop songs that are available for download. As a fan of Beth Gibbons, I was particularly taken with […]

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