While I’m writing this post, my mail box contains 1055 bug reports for the PDFreaders campaign. In other words, if we discard the double reports, at least 1000 institutions have been spotted doing exclusive advertising for non-free PDF readers… While launching this campaign, we knew that this practice was quite widespread. The more we see these advertisings, the more two questions keep coming :
- Is this practice legal ?
- since advertising online presupposes fees, how much money would proprietary companies pay to advertise on a normal website ?
Concerning the legal basis
I’ve had a quick look at the French Code du commerce (code of trade), and unsurprisingly the state prohibits any actions that goes agains the competition, and the code forbids people to use the public domain to do advertising. The only advertisings that the government can do is for its own policies.
For more details :
Sont prohibées même par l’intermédiaire direct ou indirect d’une société du groupe implantée hors de France, lorsqu’elles ont pour objet ou peuvent avoir pour effet d’empêcher, de restreindre ou de fausser le jeu de la concurrence sur un marché, les actions concertées, conventions, ententes expresses ou tacites ou coalitions, notamment lorsqu’elles tendent à :
1° Limiter l’accès au marché ou le libre exercice de la concurrence par d’autres entreprises
In short : any action that hinders, restricts or falsifies the competition on a market is prohibited, namely when it restricts the entry to the market for some companies.
Let’s have a look at one other article of the same Code of commerce…
Il est interdit à toute personne d’offrir à la vente des produits ou de proposer des services en utilisant, dans des conditions irrégulières, le domaine public de l’Etat, des collectivités locales et de leurs établissements publics.
In other words : it is forbidden to use irregularly the “public domain” of the state to sell or offer services (we just now have to define whether or not the website is part of the public domain…)
I’ve not been able to search for the law in other european countries, but please tell me if you know anything of the laws there regarding competition and public advertising…
Concerning the cost of advertising
To advertise on the Internet is no way a gratuitious practice… We know that a governmental support for one product is a very good advertising for one software provider (or actually for any other service providing or producing company), I would actually be very interested to know how much it costs in the different European countries to advertise on a website, just to make a calculation on how much money the proprietary PDF readers companies spare in being given the priviledge to advertise on governmental websites, while all their competitors have to struggle only to be known…
Any idea or estmation ? Comments are welcome.