France is battling Europe's notion of what electronic books are. At the moment, contrary to Europe's advice, France taxes ebooks as books (5.5% in France) while Europes wants ebooks to be taxed as services (20% in France).

This law plays on that distinction, considering that DRMed books are licences hence should be subject to 20% VAT while non DRMed books are indeed books hence subject to low tax.