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Anonymous Web Hosting Banned In France
An anonymous reader writes,"French free Webhosting services are now not so free anymore (In French!). In fact the French National Assembly has decided that anyone wanting to host some Web pages on a server has to identify himself. If this is not done, it's the server administrator who is responsible for any contents of the pages ... The immediate consequence for this is that free Web hosting services in France, like altern.org or multimania.com, won't be able to continue.
"
Dammit, I'm an Anonymous Coward! How will I get by without anonymous web posting? I'll starve, I'll
Oooh, web hosting.
Never mind.
Well, i'm french (and planning to leave the country by emmigration means because of all those problems btw) and as such i just want to add some points that i do think very few people outside of that pitiful country are not aware about:
- We are (also) restricted, by our governement will, to only one real ISP: France-Telecom, which is the only one with the ability to control local communications, all other ISP are in fact paying this one to have the right to use its phone lines. Non local communication costs are (obviously) set to so high rates that no individual or _even_ small company can afford the bill: the local rate is 0.28franc/minute (you need 6.6 francs to make one dollar), you consider it cheap as an american ? Then please consider also that the average salary a simple employee can expect is around 6800F/month (1000US$) and that about 24% of that money goes back to the french governement as income taxes and remember our little VAT rate: 20.6%, in that context you add the local phone bill. ;| ... i almost forgotten that this contract is _only_ available from 22:00 to 08:00, very easy when you are living with a family ! :( ... a day ! yes the number is correct ! As you can see, in that country 'freedom' is everything but a reality. ... because i never came to the point of installing it ! ;|
We do have some way to lower that phone bill if we pay for a kind of special contract which apply just to the Internet connection and which is restricted to only a couple of phone numbers (belonging to France-Telecom of course) called 'Primaliste Internet' then the rate comes down to 0.07fr/mn which gives about 4.5fr/hour, not that cheap hey !
There is also recently another way by subscribing to a special contract (whose name vary with the ISP) and which allow to connect within the same hours and not pay the phone line, of course it is quite expensive and usualy just enough to be useless for individual purposes. Furthermore only FT can sell those lines to other ISP and as such their number are restricted: about a week ago a french ISP had to refuse that connection to 300,000 people asking for it
You can also use ADSL, yes but as it is again FT which is allowed to install it, they delay, they take their time, a lot of time, in fact just as long not to get problems with the EU but long enough to be sure that the people do spend the maximum possible money before the year 2002.
Having a static IP ? Well a dream. Note that you can ask to FT for a permanent connection to the net with a static IP, only (!) 20000F/month (3000US$), and obviously you only have a restricted bandwidth that forbids you to do any ecommerce which would envolves large downloads like sharewares or anything alike, and i didn't said the cost of the installation (which is not included)
So, an acces 24/24-7/7 ? Simple: as the contract ends at 08:00 automatically but doesn't get back to the lower rate automatically at 22:00 and imagining that you manage to use it at least once, you'ld pay about 13000F/month (2000US$).
Free homepages are required, for individuals to express themselves, not only to display the picture of its dog, but also to talk about important problem which may lead to dangers if not stated from an anonymous point of view.
Is it a way to restrict people from doing so ? yes: look just at how many strikes are currently running in france and look at the very few number which are exposed through the media. But don't imagine that only that country is doing such things: why isn't it possible to find an US shop selling things internationaly ?
Yes, a lot of things needs to be done for freedom to become a reality. And as always, an elite chose and vote laws according to their needs, and usually it is money and power which are involved. If they really wanted to stop porn or whatever illegal things they would have just made pay for that to the ISP that way the ISP would have done ti's best to check after that, no they did involved the ID of the user, that way you can only display the image of your dog.
Sorry for my poor english.
PS: It cost me about 5US$ to type in that.
Just host your anonymous pages outside France (e.g., Geocities). Only the local French ISPs and French hosting sites will be hurt by this legislation. The French gov't must be filled with some real sharp thinkers, eh?
j'ai versé les granulations chaudes en bas de mes sous-vêtements à Paris par le passé.
Merci.
Spam is hardly rare in the Usenet.
By the way, does anyone else find these "two clicks and you are smack dab in the middle of child porn" a little hard to believe? Where are these numbers coming from, where do the activists keep finding all of this child porn? To they have a different definition of child porn than I do (maybe anybody under 60 baring their ankles?)
I read the internet for the articles.
The most sinister part of this, as far as I'm concerned, is that the administrator is now responsible for JUDGING what is legal and what isn't.
There are really only two ways to handle this 1)the administrator studies the law and becomes expert on all the subtleties and precedents AND defends his legal opinions in court, 2)anything that is even remotely questionable is banned.
If you thought IP laws were scary today, imagine what happens when your local ISP starts patrolling your site looking for anything that might possibly lead to legal action. Militant ISPs would make the whole idea of free speach and due process meaningless.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
This is mind-bogglingly stupid, it makes the Aussie censorship laws look almost progressive!
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"If child pornography is illegal, and someone posts it up on an anonymous webserver, anonymously, *someone* needs to be held responsible for getting rid of the content."
huh? first, your sentence doesn't seem to parse. this legislation does nothing to make someone responsible for removing the content. now i think you meant making someone responsible for the content.
why does someone need to be responsible for the content? if i enclose a whole bunch of child porn in an envelope and mail it anonymously is the letter carrier responsible? is the phone company responsible for obscene calls? no.
both organisations will try to help police and may even be required to do so. that's fine - require web sites to take down illegal contnet, and require them to try to trace the source if that's so important. not too keen on that either, but it makes more sense.
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
Why _won't_ the internet quickly lose its American influence? Its because of laws like this. Unless other countries adopt the democratic laws of the internet they will be in a weakened position to influence it.
:)
Yes, here in the US we are facing a similar stuggle, but our government is much slower.
Is internet access neary as cheap anywhere outside of the US as within it? Doubt it.
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
Uhh...I don't think the US Supreme Court has a lot of influence in France.
:)
Spoken by a person who has never played "Illuminati: New World Order" by Steve Jackson Games...
Jay (=
However, according to the summary, it doesn't just say that the content "becomes the responsibility of the webmaster", it also says that the person hosting the content can be imprisoned for six months. And it isn't clear how far the "responsibilty" of the web hosting company extends--would they be treated as if they had put up the content themselves, including criminal liability?
The implications may be fairly benign or they may be pretty serious. Someone with a better understanding of French law should look at it and explain its implications. But I don't think the law is as trivial as you interpret it to be.
Still, I also suspect that it isn't all that different from US practice. It's pretty easy to trace people through IP addresses and phone records. And you can bet that a hosting company that didn't keep log records and showed a pattern of hosting pirated data would be found liable by US courts. And if the US courts couldn't get them for that in a particular case, there are numerous examples where the police just wreak havoc on-site and confiscate equipment indefinitely "as evidence", which usually amounts to a pretty hefty punishment in itself. Give the French this: at least they spell out a policy that, for practical purposes, probably already exists in the US.
CmdrTaco says: "The immediate consequence for this is that free Web hosting services in France, like altern.org or multimania.com, won't be able to continue. "
.sig: Join AMSAT
Hardly. It merely requires that they make a creditable attempt to ensure users identify themselves when they register.
However, on Jan. 19, the French passed a law that said hosts had to provide this ID info to any third party. The original French article seemed quite emphatic that they were afraid of 'data harvesting' by commercial interests (in violation of European data privacy laws) not freedom of speech issues.
The January law was objectionable, and probably illegal in Europe. In its absence, the current law would simply force the hosts to have something to turn over (under court order), or take liability for the things that are said (if there was criminal or civil liability: libel, etc.). But combine the two laws, and it's mandatory publishing of private info.
(incidentally, a stopgap might be to automark watermark the info onto the page with a graphic, as Geocities does (did) with their logo. Human readable, and automated (hence cheaper than responding to individual requests), yet hard or impossible to harvest (I don't think current OCR would be up to it, given the highly variable page backgrounds) Clearly what the spammers want is a datadisk of 'all users'
BTW, will someone fill us in on what the French definition of 'due diligence' ('diligences appropriées') is?
I certainly find it interesting that the original French article doesn't express any real outrage at: "Les auteurs de sites web doivent donner leur identité à leur hébergeur préalablement à toute communication publique sous peine prison."
[My translation: "Web authors must identify themselves to their hostsite before publicly publishing, under pain of prison" -- up to six months, I believe. In other words: don't lie on your registration form.]
My new
If you can go to bed, knowing you did a valuable thing today, you're very lucky. If you can't... it's not bedtime
- All french citizens with web pages on french servers are required to id themselves
- All french citizens with web pages on any web server are required to id themselves
Obviously the latter is a bit more restrictive. In any case, here's bablefish's translation:_______
2B1ASK1
Well.. at fisrt, this kind of made sense to me. I used to think this way. Look at this picture:
I have a computer. It's mine. I own it. I have an internet connection. I put software on my computer to allow anyone on the internet to use it as a platform to, say, put up software. Now... am I not responsible for what my computer does, within reasonable limits? If I am knowingly hosting something illegal, it *IS* my problem.
This ruling goes farther than that, saying that even if I wasn't aware of it, if I cannot identify the person who is responsible, then it is as if I am directly responsible.
The problem is.. what is the 'web' ? Usenet? Web sites? what about when protocols change? I think this can be looked at in a fairly simple manner.
1) It is your computer. Ultimately, it is your responbility what that computer does, within reason.
2) If you are knowingly allowing your computer to be used for a criminal purpose, then you are guilty by association, and are contributing to the crime.
3) If you are participating in a large distributed system, of which a small part is being used for an illegal purpose, you should be required to take reasonable measures to prevent this use, if possible. in other words, if you run an NNTP server, why should you be able to carry alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.pedophilia? Certainly, if you didn't know the group existed, you are not at fault, but if you know it's there, are you not reasonably guilty?
They mean "free" as in "libre" (liberty) not as in "sans coute" (without cost) ; this distinction is clear in French but not English. See e.g. http://www.opensource.org/free-notfree.html for an extended discussion.
... liable for six months in prison]
Here is a Babelfish translation plus my attempts to clean up the French->English mapping. I knew that high school French would come in handy someday....
The national assembly votes the identification a priori authors of Web sites under penalty of prison. [The French Nat'l Ass'y votes for prior identification of website authors, under penalty of imprisonment]
Summary:
The authors of Web sites must give their identity to their shelterer before any public communication under sorrow prison. [Website authors must identify themselves to their ISP/Web host before going public, on penalty of imprisonment.]
In the absence of identification the shelterers are responsible for the contents and liable six months to prison.
[... the hosts
The national assembly voted yesterday March 22 [on] a bearing amendment on the responsibility for the shelterers [hosts] of Web sites.
This vote intervenes after the vote of the senat [sic] on January 19 which prevoyait [previewed] the obligation for the shelterers [hosts] to communicate the identity of an author to any third interessé [interested party] under penalty of six months of prison.
All the Web sites for which the identity of the author is not known a priori [beforehand] are legally under the leading [primary] responsibility of the shelterer [host]. To release me [myself] from this responsibility I should [would need to] obtain the identity of each of the 48000 users of altern.org.
Well on the ecommerce [the e-commerce sites] will be content, what could be better than a file customer [customer on file] which the law obliges you to constitute [identify?] by leaving you any latitude to exploit it commercially.
The objective of this law seems to be the installation of a phenomenon of self-censorship on the level of the shelterer [host] who must proceed to ' diligences appropriées' [with 'due diligence'] following a setting of residence of a third [installing a third party home page?]. And on the level of the author who beyond the preliminary declaration under penalty of prison, [the author] does not have any insurance when [faced] with the marketing of his identity.
This law goes against the European legislation, and to that of all the democratic countries.
This vote is not definitif [final], a third and last reading must take place. But it will be a question of rounding the angles [reconciling] between the text of the senate and of the assembly thus one can fear still worse.
Concerning the future of altern.org, as opposed to what I said yesterday before taking note of the exact text, I can continue to exert [work] as long as I accept my new role of watchdog.
Valentine lacambre.
PARTS:
The voted text has [of] the assembly on March 22. (version complete with format pdf).
Discusses and text voted with the senate on January 19 2000.
Discusses and text voted at the national assembly on March 22 2000.
press release of the AFA
ACTIONS:
Write with those which control us [write to our government] {great transliteration eh?}.
Write to the Prime Minister.
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
Let me say first that I see no problem whatsoever with the implications of this amendment by the National Assembly. While there are a couple problems in the implementation, most notably for free webservers in the Geocities vein, I have nothing against the alleged loss of privacy in this case.
It all comes down to the balance between accountability and anonymity. Despite this change, the French are not restricting free speech in any fashion. They are simply stating that if you need to say something stupid, you need to put your name on the bottom of it. Rather than use the cliched child-porn example, let's use hate group websites. I don't know what France's laws against the promoting of hatred are like, but I assume they are stronger than Canada's by virtue of having been on the doorstep of the Holocaust. I don't believe that having such a site on the web has any redeeming qualities but for educating people in the effects of hysteria. What this new law says, is that if someone is hosting such a site, they are fully responsible by law for facing the consequences unless they have a proven identity onto which they can pass the buck, so to speak.
This simplifies things greatly and in fact makes things more "free" (libre) for the providers. They are allowed to host anything whatsoever. All that this does is clearly state their responsibility for content.
Recently (in the last couple years), there was a great deal of attention given to a similar situation with a web-hosting company in southern British Columbia. A site was hosting several hate sites, and the maintainer refused to give the identities of the American based clients. I never did hear what the Supreme Court of Canada decided on this case, but throughout the lower court proceedings, the host had been ordered to take the sites down on several occasions, and the order was blocked by appeal in all attempts. Free Speech in Canada is almost -too- unrestricted.
Anyway, it was an interesting proceeding to watch. All that this new French law does is make the line clear between the service and content providers.
------
If a tree falls on an anonymous coward yelling 'first post' in the forest, does anybody hear?
no not funny, insightful, I for one am tired of hearing all the crap to the effect of "Your children are 2 clicks form child porn" in the last issue of readers digest their was an article on CyberAngels, online stalking and child porn, Typical "Save the Children" I mean they called an IP address a secret computer ID number and called traceroute a special tool to track down users.
I for one am tired of media fascination with child porn+net how many times have you heard the media go on and on about child porn without mentioning the net?
my grandma came over to visit for a week, she thought that the net was all about porn and was shocked that my parents would allow me to access such a thing, I explained that the net is like a big city: there is a "Good" and a "Bad" side of town, but I have yet to stumble onto some child porn, and with it being "2 clicks" away from anywhere had any existed I think that I would have ran into some by now...
This is especially relevant in France. Corruption and "gentle" coercion have tradition in France. The government routinely threatens physical violence against anybody who might reveal state secrets, which can be something as trivial as the President de la République having an illegitimate kid.
Back in the old days, the French gummint could prevent the spread of uncomfortable information by threatening the author, then his publisher and finally his printer of abusive "contrôles fiscaux", or worse, by threatening the life of their wives and kids. Now, with the Internet, the government no longer has this ability, and they desperately want it back. The new media allow information travels faster than you can say "écoutes téléphoniques", and if you start threatening people, hundreds more will just mirror. They could easily shut up Jean Edern Hallier who tried to publish the old fashioned way, but a few years later, they couldn't stop Pascal Barbraud.
Hey idiots, everybody understands that the Président de la République may have an extraconjugal lovelife, or *gasp* that he may get old and ill. But nobody understand why you tried so desperately to hide these facts.
> So they're a bunch of musical instruments? Wow, I never knew =P
I guess you never heard French people talk - pure music.
In fact, that's why blockheaded envious Anglos can't ever understand French philosophers, because they think a book of philosophy should sound when read like a 1950s IBM technical manual. Even Germans have more sense than that. Dim Anglos! Have you no hearts for art? Oh well, whatever, nevermind.
As for the moron above you in the thread, yeah sure, that land which blessed this dismal ball, as it doesn't deserve, with Brigitte Bardot and Laetitia Casta, now that there's obviously a country fulla faggots, sure, you bet, like duh, you moron.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
The problem with the French law is, as other posters have pointed out, that the provider is also criminally liable. I'm not sure what the law actually states (my French isn't good enough, nor do I trust Babelfish to grab all the nuances one'd need for a legal analysis), but if merely removing the webpages probably won't be good enough. So, a poor newbie sysadmin, gets cracked, starts serving anonymous content, and he's probably liable. Great.
The French Socialist party has long prided itself for years on being the force of reason and liberatrism... some might debate this... anyways, that comment was intended to mean a rather large *sigh* at watching the *sarcasm* "intellectual elite" of France be so devoid of vision in the face of technology.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
For people like me various "free" services have been almost 100% necessary. In truth the net was a very cost prohibitive area until these things started apearing. Most people can't afford to quit their jobs and go at something they formely did as a hobby full time with ramifications. Plus it's quite hard to justify the use and implimentation of something that costs quite a bit.
I have no idea about France or how their people view things of this nature but I think that it significantly raises the bar on the ability to publish almost any content on the net at all almost in any form. Anonymity is a side issue from the get go. Also now that you have something concrete to loose (namely yourt over priced access to network computing resources) there is incentive to be "good".
Basically what this does is force anyone critizing the government to make their views much, much more painful. Admins are just being pressured into becomming much more greedy and natzi like with things. In all practicality there is little reason not to allow free homepages.
However this is one thing that does indeed worry me. Apparently many people who do software development seem to think that they must force each and every application to have some component to send data back and forth across some network interface. Also almost all of the applications on freshmeat are geared for people creating networks with machines that they have complete control over. This is very bad indeed.
When you look at how much such services cost initially and how much they are not decreasing as a whole there is a really bad problem.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
France is not especially a large bastion of freedom in the first place. I also seriously doubt that the US takes it's cues from France in any way. Although in theory 1984 is possible it is not realistically attainable in any way. Eventually people revolt and do something rash, the government looses money, people don't care anymore and the system collapses, etc. I would also make the bold statement that myself and each ad every person that is currently alive in this world will be dead and nothing but dust before 1984 can occur even on the most optimistic timetables.
Plus there is the issue that perhaps no one realizes. France is a democratic country not a communist one controlled by a dictator. France is also on our side (the US). Last I checked no one is getting randomly slaughtered in France for what they say, nor are there any really large quantities of political prisoneers that could have been possibly jailed. Also realize that 1984 concerned itself with a location of theworld which did not include France in the least so there is a minor problem.
What I see a bigger problem is that the creation of content is becomming much more of an intensive process and costs more and more. I think people don't have any idea how much it takes to create your own content providing system. Now maybe on slashdot people pull 6-7 digit salaries but I do not and I would also wager that most of the people in France don't either. Now we are not simply content to have standard HTML and graphics dynamic content and various levels of java, javascript, and other things are also required and other server side mechanisms that almost no one can really have without a supreme sacrifice. What I see as happening is that the average Joe is going to get screwed not by the government but by inequal distribution of the ability to speak and convey information. Sure I can be as smart as einstein but if I have a page a geoshitties and you have something like http://www.jimmycoolslashdotter.com with all sorts of dynamic content and maybe say 100Gb of page space that you can fill with almost
anything you like and make it look good what does that do? When will it be possible to connect an arbitrary PC to the net and give such preformance?
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
Under the law, does the name of the host need to be publicly available, or merely accessible to the government (though the webmaster for instance). The first outright bans anonymity. The second establishes responsibility for content. Under the second it would also still be possible for webmasters who trusted their users (or monitored them) to allow fully anonymous hosting (at some liability to themselves).
The significance of this depends a great deal on the details of the law. I hope that if it is a reasonable one.
Steve
This specific bill (which has passed the Parliament and Senate readings, and now only has to go back once to the Parliament after the Senate's corrections before it can be made law) has exactly two consequences:
:)
1: Unless you are a big company, there is no way you can devote the manpower to register all your users. Exit the small content providers.
2: Anyone who wants to post anonymously will open a page on Geocities or somewhere else, where such a legislation doesn't exist.
What the government fails to see is that there is exactly 0 difference and 0 added cost accessing a WWW page stored somewhere in New Zealand, for example, rather than France. So the net effect isn't to make "illegal" content disappear or more easily prosecutable. It's to change it's URL
My french isn't that good, but the article seemed to indicate that anyone hosting a web page with no means of identifying authorship was in violation of this new law. As far as I can tell, any agency that allows someone to put up a page under their domain, in france, is responsible for that page if they cannot supply the author.
.fr, and requiring all french domains to be in some manner registered.
So what keeps french citizens with beefs against the government from posting their revolutionary propaganda to, say, a US public hosting page? It doesn't seem like this accomplishes anything but the inconveniencing of harmless teenagers creating their first web site... anyone else would be just as well served getting foreign hosting.
It would have been more effective for a government with such anti-liberty tendancies to take control of these public hosting sites and make them more intrusive without being obvious - IE, requiring an email to send access password to, requiring it to be
Not that I advocate totaltarian governments. No, not I.
[goosestep off, stage left]
-- Still waiting for the Nike endorsement
What if some US legislators think it's a good idea and try to pass it as law? If that should happen it will become increasingly difficult for other countries to remain havens of anonymity.
Precedents can be dangerous. It doesn't matter if there are workarounds.
----
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Can't you guys read the whole thing before going ballistic???
So, for the laymen, this has not happenned yet, and if it does, it will be challenged in the European court.
--
Umm, there's no way the french government to block people from using US and other countries free servers. In other words, this is just another great law that will be a huge pain in the butt and do nothing positive for the French.
It's nice to no that we in the USA are not the only ones being governed by idiots.
Click here to read too much about my personal life
I think you think to highly of your country. It was just a few months ago that the US department of Justice proposed eliminating Anonymity on the Internet. Now, I'm not sure exactly what this entailed (since there isn't really any true anonymity on the net other then IP spoofing). Mostly likely email, but it could probably be read to include websites as well. It?s a widely known fact that just about anyone 'inside the beltway' doesn?t know jack about the 'information cyber web'
Yes, the US does have a constitution that protects the rights of its citizens (god, I almost said users). But from where I'm standing, it looks like there being eaten away to serve corporate, and law enforcement desires. This is the same Nation that passed laws saying that copyrights should be extended 90 years after the author's death (and you can bet they'll be extended again by the time Mickey mouse's © is up). This is a nation who's FBI who wants wiretapping technology built into routers, and the ability to wiretap international satellite phone.
To be honest, it doesn?t really seem like America is that far from the nightmares of Orwell and Gibson. And a lot of western/European countries are following their lead.
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
The law started well. It was first designed to solve the altern.org vs. Estelle "Bimbo" Halliday scandal. So it started well. But then ... as the law was being passed in the parliament, some zealot deputy or senator ammended with delirious requirements. Somehow, as that usually happens, those went unnoticed and passed.
But there is worse than what Valentin points out in his small blurb. Here's a fucking insane part of it: you may get 6 months of jail and/or $100k of fines if you misidentify yourself on a bulletin board. Now isn't that insane? Or just plain ridiculous.
Plus that's the kind of law the Scientology will loooooove. They'll be able to get the name and addresses of their opponent, they won't have to spend money researching them to send their hordes of drone picketing outside their home with "XX is a pedophile" signs.
Anyway, everything is not lost, the law might be challenged before the constitutional council. But I'm extremely disappointed by the weak coverage in the press.
Making changes to the TOS "demanding" that users include contact info isn't enough, because if the users DON'T, then BigHostingCompany is responsible for the content. To the French, it is "your problem" if the people hosting on your server didn't put the identification, because YOU are responsible for their content.
Prediction: Mass exodus of web servers, a la Australian and p0rn sites.
Actually, napster IS enabling something.
To you and I, it adds nothing for us. We already already highly proficient at moving data around the internet ( and other ways ) and can do it much more efficiently.
Napster enables those who don't have these skills to do it anyway. You only have to look at the fact that SO many people use napster now to see that it is true. Napster provides a user interface to people that they can comprehend and use to share mp3.
And as to an 'underground'.. you are bang on. We don't NEED the web. we can do many other things, in different ways.
Slashdot claims, in a headline, that "anonymous hosting is banned."
Read the little blurb, and it says that not at all. It says that if a webpage does not clearly identify the page owner, any content on it becomes the responsibility of the webmaster.
So either A) the page owner puts up identification, so it's no longer anonymous, or B) the hosting service takes on all responsibility, thus rendering it directly liable for anything that gets posted. B) is, IMHO, not terribly likely.
Granted, the law might not state "anonymous webpages are illegal", but the effect is the same. No more anonymous hosting within the boundaries of France.
Makes sense to me. If child pornography is illegal, and someone posts it up on an anonymous webserver, anonymously, *someone* needs to be held responsible for getting rid of the content.
Illegal content is still illegal. And was illegal before this. Sensible AUPs would disallow illegal content.
What's so wrong with that? Unless the French government is really pushy, sounds to me like it'll only become a problem for webmasters who have users that post illegal content.
"Why do you want to be anonymous if you don't have anything to hide?"
What about commentary on political or social issues? If someone is trying to express an opinion without prejudicing an audience either for or against the expresser, they need anonymity. If someone is trying to avoid flames (or sometimes physical threat), they need anonymity. If someone is blowing the whistle on corruption in business or government, they might also need anonymity.
Ideally, no one would be anonymous. Because ideally, no one would have need to be so.
However, it also seems that many people misunderstand the notion of "personal freedom". The original notion of personal freedom, as advocated by Locke and others, state that with freedom come a set of responsibilities. The fundamental aspect of these responsibilities deal with not depriving others of their freedoms as well. Therefore, governments attempt to produce laws that are "fair", striking a set of codes that, together, attempt to create a balance between freedom and responsibility.
It all works in an ideal world, but we all know that we do not live in an ideal world. Citizens of democracy have a right to know what the legislations their governments attempt to impose upon them, and an obligation to not blindly reelect those officials who deprive these basic rights in a callous manner.
Now, I hate the french as much as any fashionable American, but you have to admit, they did hook us up in the Revolutionary War.
There is a substantial difference between forcing webmasters to remove illegal content on a web site when it has been discovered and making them ciminally liable for not knowing who it was that posted the material.
The article states the penalty is a prison term of 6 months: Good lord, some poor smuck newbie sys admin gets his web site cracked by script kiddies posting warez in an obscure sub-directory and for that he gets a criminal record and 6 months in jail?
Arguing such a scenario was not the intent of the law plays foolishly into the hands of those who would use it to crush your voice of dissension.
This is nothing but a thinly veiled attempt to restrict content to government sanctionned distribution channels. More is the shame that a Socialist party would be the channel for such an egrerious afront to individual freedoms.
I'm sick and tired of people raising the specter of pornography everytime they want to take away my freedom.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
Slashdot claims, in a headline, that "anonymous hosting is banned."
Read the little blurb, and it says that not at all. It says that if a webpage does not clearly identify the page owner, any content on it becomes the responsibility of the webmaster.
It basically ramps up the responsibilities of those who own the machine.
Makes sense to me. If child pornography is illegal, and someone posts it up on an anonymous webserver, anonymously, *someone* needs to be held responsible for getting rid of the content.
What's so wrong with that? Unless the French government is really pushy, sounds to me like it'll only become a problem for webmasters who have users that post illegal content.
Those web hosting services *can* continue, right? They'll just probably be modifying the TOS to enforce their users to supply names and contact info.
Anonymous Coward comments are, in a sense, anonymous webhosting.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Sounds dumb to me for another reason. They are going to kill the ISPs and thus Internet industary in France. ISPs have to prove the identity's of all persons having a web page. So if they can't they get fined or jailed. So what do the ISP's do instead, remove all pages. If someone in France wants a page they have to goto another country (Hopefully the USA, since I am resident of that country and it would make our economy stronger).
No ISPs? Then French will leave France and work in other countries when it comes to eCommerce, they Next Big Thing.
Linux O Muerte!
Anonymity has always been outlawed in France, this is the summary of a bill before the french national assembly to codify a law banning all anonymity on any internet service physically on french territory.
As this article points out, the law is not yet final, but one more vote will make it final. The bill was unopposed by the clueless elected officials, because it merely confirms the internet must follow existing french law.
The new law will require all web hosting services to verify the identity of every person putting a web page on their servers, and must turn over that identity to any person who ask for it, including any cop or government official, as well as any private citizen. There is no requirement to publish the web authors information on the web page, merely to maintain a copy and to give it out when asked. It also says that if the web site owner can't or won't turn over the identity of a user, then its 6 months in prison.
The immediate downside of this law if it passes is that altern.org will have to kick off all users, and only let back on those who can prove their identity in one of the ways acceptable to the french government (carte d'identity, permis conduire (driving permit), or passport, as well as proof of residency of a current phone or electricity bill).
As Valentin points out, if this law passes in france, then it could quite well become law in all parts of the EU. That is frightening, but might happen.
The uncertain thing is what happens to people in other countries using french web hosting services and cant travel to france to prove their identity. As the law is currently written, french web hosting can only allow identified users on french soil, and all others must be kicked off.
ahhh, c'est les francais
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Anyone remember how this case got started?
This all came about over a copyright fight because model Estelle Hallyday did not like that nude photos of her had been scanned from a magazine and posted to free website AlternB.
One VERY important note from the original case is that the plaintiffs did not even TRY to identify the poster of the "offending" material. They specifically targeted the ISP. In fact, it seems that it would have been quite trivial to identify the owner of the pages.
Article from March, 1999 in Wired News
The implications of this decision are FAR worse than a cursory examination would reveal.
The National Assembly passes law requiring Web site authors to identify themselves
under penalty of imprisonment.
Summary:
Web site authors must identify themselves to their hoster before any public
communication can be made, under penalty of imprisonment.
In the absence of an identification, the hoster is responsible for the site's
contents and is liable for up to six months in prison.
Yesterday, March 22, the national assembly approved an amendment dealing with
the responsibilities of Web site hosters.
This law follows from the vote of
the Senate on January 19 which required Web hosters to disclose the
identity of any author to a third party under penalty of six months in prison.
All Web sites whose authors are unknown are the legal responsibility
of the hoster. In order to free myself from this responsibility I would
have to obtain the identities of each of altern.org's 48,000 users!
Of course, the e-commerce industry will be happy. What could be better than
requiring customers to reveal their identities, leaving you the possibility
of commercial exploitation?
The goal of this law seems to be to enact self-censorship on the level of the
Web hoster, and on the level of the author who, after giving up his identity
under penalty of imprisonment, has no insurance that his personal identity will
not be used for unfair profit.
This vote, however, is not definitive. A third and last reading must take
place. But it will be a question of reconciling differences in the texts
put forth by the assembly and by the Senate, so the law could conceivably
get worse.
As far as the future of altern.org is concerned, contrary to what I said
yesterday before reading the law's exact text, I can continue to host
sites as long as I accept my new role as watchdog.
[Note: I, the translator, take no responsibility for discrepancies
between the translation and its original version on altern.org.]
kugano
Who the heck do the french think they are? Have they ever heard of the Bill of Rights? Don't they realize that we have rights in America that they have to respect. If they don't, we'll have to take them to court. Those Supreme Court guys have this funny tendancy to uphold the constitution.
French people piss me off.
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The new orange petal fuckers is coming for you and he has a big belt buckle.