A copyright bill known as DADVSI (droit d'auteur et droits voisins dans la société de l'information), was passed by the French Parliament on June 30 2006.

the part about interoperability sounds not good.

Considérant, en premier lieu, que la saisine de l'autorité de régulation a pour objet l'obtention d'informations techniquement complexes et pouvant relever du secret industriel ; que le législateur a entendu limiter cette saisine aux seules personnes susceptibles de tirer utilement parti de ces informations en vue de favoriser la réalisation de systÃ¨mes compatibles ; que la différence de traitement qui en résulte, en rapport direct avec la finalité poursuivie, n'est pas, dÃ¨s lors, contraire Ã la Constitution ;

44. Considérant, en second lieu, que les dispositions contestées ne portent pas atteinte au droit au recours des consommateurs, des associations qui les représentent ou des titulaires de droits de propriété intellectuelle ; qu'ils pourront en effet exercer les actions nécessaires Ã la défense de leurs intérÃªts devant les juridictions compétentes ;

so there's going to be this watchdog mandated to monitor and arbitrate in questions of interoperability and in particular, to get technical specs for others to write drivers and stuff. But the consumer can't file a complaint with them: only software houses, service providers and such can (and manufacturers) and the CC basically says these "are the only people who might possibly find these informations useful in order to effect interoperability of technical systems" grrrr.... so what about the small free software programmer? well, they're going to get organised in some sort of legal entity thing is, what this CC does is in practice:

they say "ok, this is what you WANT to do and HOW you go about it" ... "your peers (the MPs) say that this, this, this and this point are contrary to constitutional principles....

let's take them one by one: THIS is something you WANT to do -- you CAN'T do that, are you totally mad? :) [rare case] THIS is how you GO ABOUT doing something ... you can't do it this way. the article/paragraph/number whatever is invalidated. THIS is again how you GO ABOUT doing something ... well, ok, this particular notion is not well-defined ("interoperability") ... so let's just scrap this half-phrase... otherwise, well, if that's what you want, the constitution doesn't say you can't... ("it is not manifestly unconstitutional") what they WON'T do is rewrite the law / legislate

Links

Documents

DADVSI on Wikipedia
What does the new French copyright bill do?