The VideoLAN Forums

Sorry this is totally OT but Im getting a bit worried. As this site is in English and hosted in France it seemed a good place to enquire not least because of the knowedge of the ECP guys....so it may seem a strange OT but I expect that the people here would know!

I read a lot here but don't post but I currently have a worry....
I run a 'charity' non-profit site for sufferers of a disease in Paris which is aimed at helping anglophones ...

I have recently started getting more traffic and someone drew attention of my site to the Assoc Franc De Intolerants a' Gluten which provides some paid for support, forums etc. in French for the same issue...

Since then I am being visited by IP's with no referer or search engine (the are going straight into the site) and specifically I have two pages one in french and one in English with the same info....

I have a .fr domain name (courtousy of FREE)

Now the visotrs are from places like Maire de Nanterre and then minutes later SITA (SITA-Societe Internationale de Telecommunications) on the same pages exactly with no search engine or referrer!

I wonder firstly who at the Marie de Nanterre wants information on a medical condistion in English and the same for SITA which are both places I don't expect anglophones working? and secondly why the direct connection, no search no referrer someone is typing the FQDN directly... or following an email and its a long domain name
http://linuxmigrations.hd.free.fr/glutenfree/
(feel free to take a look if you are interested in rare diseases)

My worry is I may have to represent everything in French as well as English, certainly from what I read on http://www.journaldunet.com/juridique/j ... 0518.shtml this seems if Im an enterprise then the website falls under media legislation?

The other thing is the corresponding French page they are visiting has lots of gramatical errors (I'm sure since I wrote it)

Does anyone know precicely the rules... am I going to be fined or just told to desist?

Si vous preferiez de reponder en Francais ce sera egalement utile

/!\ IANAL /!\
IMHO don't bother, you have a website whose purpose is to communicate with anglophones, nobody in the world would be mad enough to sue you.

/!\ IANAL /!\
IMHO don't bother, you have a website whose purpose is to communicate with anglophones, nobody in the world would be mad enough to sue you.

Yeah, you'd think so
I think I might have pissed off the Assoc Fr DIag Gluten ...
and its a bit complex because they probably provide the same information but to members only (and to be a member you have to pay but you get it back from SECU or 75%) but also if you call AFDIAG they will tell you there are no resto's in Paris ...
The Italian assoc by contrast has hundreds (or thousands) .. its FREE as in gratuit

One of my members is a lawyer and she asked her IT people at work... they laughed ... then I asked "what if someone complains ?"
Apparently its vague (see the article) ... if its professional its not OK ... if its home pages... it is OK ... but the sticky part is my site has membership and this means its not <<pages personelles>>
Further more .... even if its professional I can have En so long as the site is ONLY for etrangers... hey, if you couldn't eat bread wouldn't you feel like an outsider but seriously I have now got a sorry this site is for etranger's only disclaimer...and originally I was going to translate it as time allowed...

Now Im a bit scared ....of doing this...I heard of a bar which was closed down while they replaced the sign which had a "'" for the plural...

All this started when one of my well meaning members contacted AFDIAG and brought my site to their attention ... and I guess they would look really silly suing me themselves a bit like appearing in <<Le Canard>> but if they get someone else to complain (like a public official) then they skip this and they don't need to win... I can't afford to pay legal costs against the state even if they just investigate...
Im seriously thinking of just moving the site to a .be or .org domain but again its cost... at the moment its just on my home PC...