US Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez declared that it would look at the law closely and support intellectual property rights, a comment widely interpreted to be supportive of Apple. The reaction from Apple and the US government was highly controversial in France. The Odebi league, a citizen's action group defending the rights of Internet users, told Apple to "mind its business and not meddle into the French legislative process" and pointed out that "if Apple wishes to do business in France, it has to respect the rights that the French enjoy"; the league also issued a communiqué titled Guterriez go home. Deputy Christian Paul published a communiqué meant to explain the intents of French lawmakers to Americans, without the media filtering. Christian Paul criticized the French government for making so much effort to please Apple: When Apple coughs, we now know that Paris sneezes [...] Apple has assured itself control over channels of distribution and sales by imposing a proprietary format. Representatives from Apple were heard by the Senate Commission for Cultural affairs. The Commission subsequently recommended that the interoperability provisions should be substantially reworked, and proposed amendments, most of which were adopted by the Senate. A notable exception is that the Senate rejected (by 11 votes against 10) an amendment from the Commission which suppressed the right to work around DRMs for reasons of interoperability. The text from the Senate introduces an administrative authority capable of adjudicating the possibility of reading DRM contents in order to achieve interoperability. Article 7 bis A introduced a loophole for designers of technical measures of protection who do not desire to share them for interoperability. It states that the mission of this administrative authority is to prevent lack of interoperability and other limitations when these are not desired by the copyright holder. It thus seems possible that designers of technical measures can work around the interoperability requirement by showing that lack of interoperability was desired by the copyright holders. The "Vivendi Universal" amendments Some amendments, adopted by both houses of Parliament, introduce civil and criminal responsibility for authors of software used for illicit copying of protected works. These amendments are widely known as the "Vivendi Universal" or "VU" amendments; that terminology was used by some members of Parliament, the reason for it being that, allegedly, these amendments were strongly pushed by Vivendi Universal, a major entertainment corporation. According to the Odebi League and