French Law on Data Processing, Data Files and Individual Liberties of January 6,

Electronic data processing is regulated in France, primarily by Law No. 78/17 of January 6, 1978 (the "Law"), Decree No. 78/774 of July 17, 1978 (the "Decree") and Decree No. 85/1203 of November 15, 1985, which incorporated into French law the Council of Europe Convention for the Protection of Individuals with Regard to the Automatic Processing of Nominative Information of January 28, 1981 (the "Convention"). The European Directive of October 24, 1995 has not yet been explicitly incorporated into French law.

The purpose of the legislation regarding data processing is to protect individuals against the abusive use of computerized data concerning them. Specifically, the regulated data is defined in Article 4 of the Law as (translation) "data which permit, in any form, directly or indirectly, the identification of the natural persons to which they relate, irrespective of whether the processing is done by a natural or legal person."