Lastest published news

Paris, September 19th, 2014. Press release.

Following the Consumer law of March 17th, 2014, and the publication of its decree on September 17th, 2014, French consumers will be informed of the presence of DRM—the “digital handcuffs”. April welcomes this positive development but reminds us that true protection of consumer rights requires a pure and simple ban on DRM.

On August 14th, 2014, the website of the German show Tagesschau published a trade agreement between the European Union and Canada [de] called CETA (Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement)1. This text, which had been discussed for several years, was finalized over the past few months without any of its content being known.

• 1. The document can also be downloaded from the April website.

On July 14, 2014, April responded to a consultation of the European Commission on certain dispute-resolution processes provided for by the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), aka Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA).

The Free Software Foundation published their Email Self-Defense and their infographic in 6 new languages on Monday, June 30th, 2014. It is now available in English, German, Brazilian Portuguese, French, Russian, Turkish, and Japanese. The goal of this guide is to show everyone that email encryption is a necessary, easy, and accessible way to fight mass surveillance with free software.

On June 14th, 2014, Tesla Motors' CEO Elon Musk announced that the company was opening up the use of its patents, thus renouncing to prosecute those who would use its technologies. The electric-car manufacturer explains that patents are useless for innovation, and goes as far as comparing a patent application with a lottery offering a lawsuit as its sole prize.

Paris, 28 May 2014. Press release.

As part of its fight against DRM, April supports the International Day Against DRM of May 6th, 2014.

Sadly now known as HeartBleed, a vulnerability in OpenSSL has been discovered this Monday, April 7, 2014.
It potentially exposed all encrypted communications (webmail, online shopping, banking ...) since 2 years and allowed their potential decryption.
Because OpenSSL is free software, this vulnerability could have been effectively managed, from a purely source-code side as well as a deployment side and community involvement.

April endorses the text of the international petition against forced bundling of software with computers, which was proposed by the Aful group working on “racketware” (Aful is another French NGO devoted to the promotion of free software).

Forced bundling [fr] is one of the threats to free software against which April regularly speaks out.

In a few hours the European Parliament will vote on the regulation concerning the European single market for electronic communications. This vote in plenary will be the most important vote on the rights and freedoms of citizens since the rejection of ACTA in July 2012. With the right amendments adopted, this text will put in place solid measures that protect Net Neutrality throughout the European Union.

April supports Document Freedom Day, which will be held on 26 March 2014. The Day's aim is to remind people of the importance of having truly open document formats. Such formats allow citizens, consumers, governments and companies to use the software of their choice while retaining long-term control over their documents and their data.

For the 2014 edition, we encourage everyone to educate as many people as possible to the importance of open standards, citizens as well as public officials.

On January 29th, 2014, Jérôme Hourdeaux, a Mediapart journalist, was heard [fr] by the joint National Assembly/Senate task force concerning access to administrative documents.