REGISTRATION DOCUMENT AND FINANCIAL REPORT - Iliad

6. OVERVIEW OF THE GROUP’S BUSINESS
6.6 REGULATORY SITUATION
• Law 2004-801 led to a considerable increase in the possibilities of conducting compliance checks relating to
the processing of personal data, substantially strengthening the powers of oversight, investigation, injunction
and sanction available to the French national commission for information technology and freedom
(Commission nationale de l’informatique et des libertés, or CNIL). Furthermore, any failure to comply with
the provisions of Law 2004-801 is now subject to harsh criminal sanctions. The possible offences and related
penalties are set out in Articles 226-16 to 226-24 of the French Criminal Code. Such offenses are punishable
by a fine of up to €300,000 and 5 years’ imprisonment.
Concerning spam, Article 22 of Law 2004-575 of June 21, 2004 on confidence in the digital economy prohibits,
as from December 22, 2004, “direct marketing by means of automatic calling systems, fax or email, using, in any
form whatsoever, the contact details of a private individual who has not given prior consent to receiving such
material by said means”. Any unsolicited commercial correspondence sent by email to private individuals
therefore now requires prior permission from the person to whom it is sent.
Regarding location data, Articles L.34-1 and L.34-4 of the Post and Electronic Communications Code, as
amended by Law 2004-669 of July 9, 2004, state that such data may only be processed if it has been made
anonymous, or if the consent of the users or subscribers concerned has been obtained. Location data may only be
processed for the sole purpose of providing a specific value-added service and only for the length of time that
this service is provided. The users concerned must be informed in advance of the type of location data which will
be processed, as well as of the purpose and duration of the processing and whether the data will be relayed to a
third party. Users must be able to withdraw their consent using a simple means and free of charge, apart from the
cost of actually transmitting their withdrawal of consent.
Concerning directories, Article L.34 of the Post and Electronic Communications Code states that subscribers
must be given the opportunity to decide if their personal data should be included in a public directory and, if so,
which data may be included. No charge should be made for being excluded from a public subscriber directory, or
for checking, correcting or removing personal data from the directory in question (Article R.10 of the Post and
Electronic Communications Code).
In the course of its business, the Group records and processes statistical data, including in particular data
concerning the number of visits to its websites. Technical means identifying customers’ main areas of interest
and online behavior are also used with a view to optimizing the Group’s services. In order to offer its services,
the Group collects and processes personal data. The majority of the databases it has established for this purpose
have been declared to the CNIL.
Legal protection of databases
The principal innovation included in the Directive adopted on March 11, 1996 (Directive 96/9/EC) is the creation
of a sui generis right which aims to ensure the protection of any investment made in obtaining, verifying or
presenting the contents of a database for the limited duration of the right, it being specified that this investment
may take the form of financial and/or human resources. This Directive was transposed into French law by Law
98-536 of July 1, 1998, providing for this sui generis right, independently of the protection offered by copyright,
in order to protect the producers of databases.
Article L.341-1 of the French Intellectual Property Code provides that the producer of a database, understood to
be the person taking the initiative and bearing the risk of the investments relating to setting up the database in
question, benefits from protection of the content of the database “when its compilation, verification or
presentation involves a substantial financial, material or human investment”. This protection is independent and
applies without prejudice to the protection resulting from copyright or any other right relating to the database in
question or one of its component parts, pursuant in particular to Article L.112-3 of the Intellectual Property Code.
The producer of the database therefore has the right to prohibit any substantial extraction of the content of its
database and any reuse of this content. Article L.342-2 of the Intellectual Property Code also states that “the
producer can also prohibit the repeated and systematic extraction or reuse of parts of the content of the database
that are not qualitatively or quantitatively substantial when these operations manifestly exceed the normal
conditions of use of the database”.
Iliad – Registration Document 2007 - 57