FITUG e.V. Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft

French Liberty of Communication Act

------- Forwarded message follows ------- Date sent: Fri, 02 Jun 2000 16:58:34 +0200 From: Meryem Marzouki <meryem.marzouki@dial.oleane.com> Subject: French Liberty of Communication Act To: gilc-plan@gilc.org Send reply to: gilc-plan@gilc.org

Dear Gilcers,

As you may have noticed in item 12 of last GILC Alert, the French Senate has now examined in its second reading the Liberty of Communication Act regarding ISP liability and users anonymity. Most important modifications are :

- Host providers, which are requested to keep complete personal information corresponding to online names of private individuals, are now subject to "professional secret", in the sense that they cannot disclose these information unless upon judicial request. This very good measure, which IRIS has requested for a long time, is however introduced in the article of the law which we want to be dropped, since this item is the one introducing anti-anonymity on web sites and other Internet services.

- The penalty for violation of this law article has been divided by two : 3 months jail instead of 6 months, and about US$ 3,500 fine instead of about US$ 7,000. This apply to companies/organizations which don't provide complete and accurate information to the public as well as to host providers which don't keep complete and accurate information corresponding to online names of their subscribers.

For more detailed information you can refer to IRIS press release (in French) dated May 31st : http://www.iris.sgdg.org/info-debat/comm-senat0500.html

We keep trying to work on more significant changes, although this is not easy...

Next steps will be : mid-june 2000 : 3rd and last reading by the National Assembly Autumn 2000 or early 2001 : examination of a draft law on the information society, which will tranlate into our national law the EU E-Commerce directive.

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