Decius wrote:
] This isn't a criminal statute. Its civil. If you reverse
] engineer my software I can sue you. Whether or not you or I
] need to have actually been in France I'm not sure, but I'll
] bet that cases which are unrelated to France have little to be
] concerned with.

No, this was a criminal case, not a cival case. The judge ruled that jail time was not an appropriate in this case for violating the equivilant of their DMCA (article 335.2 of the IP code).

In a seperate unrelated matter, the company in question is also seeking in civil court 900k euros for damages.

I don't know if the DMCA is much worse, as I can't actually find the text of 335.2, and if I could it's unlikely that there's a version translated into english.

The DMCA, in many ways, is not nearly as bad as this. It does not outlaw reverse engineering in any general way, and it has several provisions exempting the forms of reverse engineering it does outlaw.

The DMCA is bad, but it seems to me that the france decision is much broader in scope.

RE: Publishing exploit code ruled illegal in france