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France's Citizens Expected to Help Build Internet Blacklist
Corrupt links to a Sydney Morning Herald article which begins "The French state and internet service providers have struck a deal to block sites carrying child pornography or content linked to terrorism or racial hatred, Interior Minister Michel Alliot-Marie announced on Tuesday." The article is thin on details, but what it does say is bad enough: "Under the French plan, internet users, via a platform, will be able to signal inappropriate sites and the state, receiving the complaints in real time, will then decide whether the sites are to go on a so-called black list to be passed on to internet service providers to enforce site blocks." It sounds like the perfect way to organize an especially malicious DDoS attack. The French government has never been shy about wanting to "protect" French people by censoring Internet content, though.
Those guys in Europe really DO have better ideas than America! They are so open and free... oh... wait.
Yay, I have a sig.
http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/text/victories.html
...that the current French government cares more about giving the impression they're doing something that actually improving anything. Just like 80% of what they say, that *wonderful* idea will never see the light of day. ...remember Cairo, the french-funded Google killer? Yeah. That's what I thought.
Gotta love that "Everyone else is doing it, so why shouldn't we?" mentality.
Seriously though, I want to know exactly how this will work. Who gets to decide what sites go on the black-list, and how deep are they going to dig into a claim before a site gets taken down? I can see a huge potential for abuse here.
God, schmod. I want my monkey man!
http://www.premier-ministre.gouv.fr/fr/
Just keep submitting the blacklist submission site until it gets blacklisted. Problem solved.
This certainly has the potential for abuse, and it may be dangerous to give this kind of power to a few individuals in the state, but how could it be used for DDoS of systems other than the government's servers that receive the complaints?
That's what they call their new president and this plan lives up to the name. Massive censorship to "fight child porn" is a very American stupidity that I doubted any other state besides the Vatican would follow.
The SF Gate had another story about this four days ago. They point out that several other countries have done similar things. Everyone's censoring like it's 1998 again.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
If the French people are on board with this, and they find a way to make it work, then who are we to say it's censorship and bad? Why is incest illegal? Why don't we introduce children to sexuality? In the strictest sense, these things are malum prohibitum, not malum in se. If sexuality is good, then why forbid it between family members or children? We do that because these are things that, as a society, we believe to be wrong. And because we feel that allowing them would open the door to abuse, making the dangers of those behaviours outweigh their potential good.
If the people of France feel that the dangers inherent in certain pornography outweigh their good, then who are we to say out of hand this is a bad thing? I don't know how popular this law is in France, but it seems to me that if it's unpopular by the majority of people, it simply won't work. If the majority want it, they'll make it (for the most part) work. Sure you'll have people who will be able to circumvent it, but I don't see this as a system they are intending to be safe from circumvention. Just a national net-nanny system. If that's what they want, then I say we apply the live and let live to them as a group and say great - more power to you.
Does this mean the French government is encouraging people to search for child pornography? Because really, you have to go looking for that stuff specifically if you want to find it to report it.
I have nothing compelling to say
What's French for "whatcouldpossiblygowrong?"
It's Michèle, not Michel. Wrong gender. (And damn you /. ! I shouldn't have to know HTML entities to type simple accents !)
This
So now anyone who doesn't like what another person says on the internet can spread ugly rumors about them to the "gub'mint" and destroy them.
I'm sure everyone will applaud france's introduction of the ever so just "high school system" of internet enforcement.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
... the idea is to blacklist kiddie porn, by expecting people to tell the government "HEY LOOK AT ME, I'M LOOKING AT KIDDIE PORN AND THIS IS THE SITE I'M AT!!!"? I mean, really, do they actually expect people to admit they have knowledge of these sites?
Does this mean I can report any site of the French government, since the police and politicians are accused of not playing nice with the poor suburbs?
(Answer: No, it doesn't, since I'm not french.)
I keep on seeing regulations on "hate speech" and "racial hatred" referenced in Europe, an dwas just struck by the similarity to gun control efforts in the US. Specifically, there is a problem (violent crime/racial tension) with a root cause (poverty and historical discrimination/current discrimination and a history of sectarianism and ethnic pogroms), and the leaders are chasing after the tools (guns/speech) instead of the actors or the causes.
AND NEITHER ARE WORKING! The locations with the highest levels of gun control in the US also have the highest level of violent crime(NYC, DC, Chicago), and the places in Europe with the strictest speech laws have the most trouble with their minorities (Turks in Germany, N. Africans in France). Does anyone who is intellectually honest believe that the problem is that the laws are not strict enough?
And for those who will say that the situations are totally different, because guns kill and words don't, remember that the next time France lets its southern region burn, and this time there are French citizens in the cars. For that matter, talk to the Jews - there are six million fewer of them and I don't think Hitler ever lifted a finger against one. He just spoke and wrote.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
This just in - 4chan unavailable in France.
Frenchfag here. What I think is that pedophilia is just a pretext to this governement. It have beens years a lot of laws have been tried to be applied against illegal downloads, all of them worse than the others. They give up on Oliviennes idea of law (head of a music seller in france), and like magic Odapi appears, for the good of all the people, against child pornography. Of course it sounds good, everyone is ok with a law like this, and no one will go further to understand the real goal. I mean when politics are putting in the same sentence "child pornography" and "illegal downloads" to make a justice-independant organisation that fill up filters, I am fraking scared.
Anytime you start to filter and suppress speech, you are well on your way to a troubling situation. Even if you allow majority rule, you can potential be blocking very important minority opinions/info.
No comprende? Let me type that a little slower for you...
I don't know where this piece of information come from, but there's actually no intention of creating a platform for the users to signal pedophile content. It'll just be a blacklist made by the police for french ISPs.
And actually, american ISPs (Verizon, Sprint & Time Warner) will be doing the same.
I think you should correlate your information with french websites in order to get a clear idea of the situation.
If anyone reads french:
http://www.pcinpact.com/actu/news/44113-charte-filtrage-etatsunis-pedophilie-pedopor.htm
This finally gives people an excuse to search for child porn in France! "Hey! I'm just looking for it to report it!"
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I'm sure there's no end of religious meddlers who've got nothing better to do all day than hunt down evil websites.
This law will keep them busy (and that's A Good Thing).
No sig today...
... for arguing incoherently. And yet none of the follow-ups are modded up.
There should be a contest to see who can game this system the quickest. First place goes to getting a French government website blacklisted. Second place goes to getting any government website blacklisted. Third place for any Google property Forth place for Facebook or MySpace (though MySpace might have an added perk since it's annoying). Fifth place for any major university This could be fun.
I'd write a script that would continually submit whitehouse.gov, loc.gov, foxnews.com, msnbc.com and encourage everybody to run it constantly. It'd be so bitchin'.
Seriously though, I'd like to know what this plan actually entails -- is it something simple you could get around by using a foreign DNS, or would you need full on TOR.
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
And if so, isn't France just creating a "Get Yer Child Porn Here!" list?
I wonder how many French will claim they weren't collaborators but were in the Resistance all along.......just like in 1944.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Porn wants to be free!
Can't say I have a problem with the French government attempting to censor child pornography. But who is it they are protecting? Certainly not French citizens, who are no prudes when it comes to sex.
The goal is to protect children who are being raped in front of cameras for profit.
I laud the French for their forward thinking.
"O my god! What you looking at?!" "Oh, uh, I'm just looking for sites to blacklist, of course!"
Hey! Look a Distraction!
I have no problem with someone stopping child porn. It's a terrible thing that needs to be stopped. But I have a problem with filtering child porn. You see, today it's child porn and everyone gets on board because it's child porn and everyone can understand it. But tomorrow it's dissent, things the government finds objectionable, until the internet that was free turns into the internet that sucks because of all the false positives. This is not a good thing. You need to increase the penalties for being caught with child porn to a level that scares people, not filter the shit. Filtering leads to filtering of other things, if it's easy the govenment will do it. If I were french I'd be calling for lifetime jail sentences for having child porn and no filtering.
Well, putting aside the problems with having a small group of people censor the internet, tasking this to a large group of people brings in other problems that didn't even exist with small groups. Here's a cute example:
Take a group of religions with websites. Each one considers all the others 'offensive', so they try to make an effort to have all of the other religions' websites censored.(the rationale may be "so what if its not child porn, it's still offensive") As a result, every single site has a large number of votes to be taken down. While it's somewhat karmic (I'd laugh), does the government plan on preventing this by having individuals go through and check every site that gets taken down? That's a lot of manpower necessary.
While this is a bit of a stretch, if you multiply this by all the groups in france for various organizations, beliefs, etc, something stupid is bound to happen. (ie. Banning wikipedia for having an entry on pedophilia?) There's too many people that disagree with each other that there are gonna be problems.
Well, at least there's still Peacefire.
If a user finds a site that has child porn on it, it's most likely the user is there on purpose. So I doubt that user is going to click the "inappropriate" button. It's not like Stumble took them there. Also how will someone DDos attack a site using this method?
Can I bum a sig?
Not buy'n it.
And hell, even if it were a concern, I'll take the risk. And if society doesn't act to protect these children, then it will be those kids who are at risk.
I have no sympathy for freedom of speech arguments when it comes to child-pornography and other such forms of snuff-films.
And you're right: false positives in the criminal justice system is bad. When an innocent person goes to jail for a crime he or she did not commit, that is a stain on the justice system itself (along with a terrible injustice for the individual involved).
Censoring child pornography is not to protect adults who like to watch the stuff. It's to protect those kids who were abused in front of a camera for profit. They have a right to privacy. And that right trumps your supposed right to unprotected "free speech."
What is different is that the French have created an actual mechanism to report such sites:
This strikes me as maybe a slightly better way sites are blacklisted in the United States: Individual ISPs just block the site at random, or someone sues someone else in court. By having an official list, ISPs can't ban a site for possible political or competition reasons and claim they're trying to stop something else. There have been several cases where birth control or pro-choice sites have become unavailable and the ISP claims it was merely attempting to shield the eyes of poor innocent children from non-friendly material.
I am not sure of the best way to handle this situation, but since the French government is attempting to do what other Western democracies are attempting to do, I can't quite call this exactly the rise of fascism.
OK, most of us can agree that kiddie porn is a bad thing. Terrorism, well I have no idea of how you judge that, but racial hatred? Honestly, if we banned racial hatred we would have to burn 95% of the history books out there.
Hows this? Take an account of the conflict in Bosnia Herzegovina. A Muslim account will be called racist/hate-driven content by many Serb; same goes for vice versa (well, only if you are a Serb, for everyone else it would be called honesty).
My own kids are 28 and 23, consequently anyone under 30 looks like a kid to me (and yes this includes most of the police force). However I have to ask, is there such a thing as a 20yo French virgin? I say this because there is a huge difference between images of a prepubecent child being physically and phycologically abused and a 20yo bonking on the internet for money. One is evidence of a vile crime, the other is a modern day implementation of the oldest proffesion.
Of course there is a huge grey area between pubecence and 21, my take on the pre-teen links is that some are 'honeypots' (no pun intended), ie: they are set up by law-enforcement. Most are simply pettite 18-20yo's with their hair in pigtails, it's quite obvious the sites are aiming at the pedeophile market. Personally I hate the idea that rock spiders still have their genitals attached let alone the idea people would provide this kind of material for them, but as Larry Flynt would say, the only thing most of these sites are guilty of is bad taste.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
That tiny red dot is the point of that post rushing away from you so fast it's red-shifted.
Silly! Don't you know that the international bankers are also puppets? They are controlled by the **AA!
Don't pick on France too much for this. This is indicative of a wider attitude among all EU governments, especially the EU beuracracy itself. Witness their threats against Ireland for daring to vote against the Lisbon Treaty. The previous EU constitution was shot down by French and Dutch voters, so this time, the EU simply decided it would bypass voters completely (hey, nice tactic) and rush it through European legislatures instead. The only problem is that Ireland's constitution forbids such a thing there. Big issues like that must be decided by national referendums. The EU is already talking about ways they can simply bypass Irish voters now. They've developed a troubling "we know best" attitude there, and Europeans won't be able to vote out the EU power structure the way they can vote out their own legislators. Rather than the exception, this kind of information micromanagement is likely to become the rule in Europe, with governments deciding what info is acceptable for public consumption, for the "public's own good".
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Very good link, thanks ! I mean Albino Black Ship site, I'll take a deeper look at it some day. As for the French Military Victories link, I don't think it could be considered offensive in any way. It's a very widespread kind of easy humour targetting overwhelmingly numerous poorly educated people. I've not tried it but the real search result would probably lead to when the French battleships kicked the ass of the English Kingdom's navy allowing the formation of the U.S.A. Anyway that was a worthy troll attempt, the A.B.S. site looks quite interesting.
In fact when they forbid some sites, or make a black list it works the other way around, they only select the best sites with child porn and the people that like it will use that list with a proxy to get access. Why everybody is thinking of child pornography, when what leads to it is just psycho-social problems? And it is the same problems that cause other thousand of problems. It would be more wise to try some non common solution to this social problems other than copy other government idiot solutions just to say to the people that they are doing something "against" it.
TFA states that french ISPs have "struck a deal" with the government, but the truth is that there's only the government claiming that.
Right after the statement hit the press, the ISPs issued their own statements through the President of the national FAI association representing them, telling how they had not been consulted and had not agreed to anything, how they had not changed position on the inefficiency of any filtering scheme, and how the statement by Mme Alliot-Marie was unilateral goobledegook lacking technical and juridical relevance.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
The potential good of the filter is outweighted by the harm it will cause. I say "potential" good because the filter isn't going to stop child porn at all. Imagine a room with a dozen windows and atleast one door. Imagine the child porn as a pile of gold or some such in the center of this room. Now picture someone closing this door, nailing it shut and building a brick wall infront of it. That's the child porn filter. They didn't bother doing anything about the windows, though.
and 2chan.ru and 7chan and 12chan...
fuck karma, I like saying the truth better
Just the idea of blacklisting is bad. The ministress (is it correct?) is announcing it as a measure to protect young and sensible internet users. But as the blacklisting would be held by the government, how can you claim there will be no abuse of its usage?
Furthermore, this blocking will be based on DNS since french network is too wide and all entry points are simly impossible to filter.
This is a bad idea as most of the websites in France are obscene, they, along with germany and several parts of europe have heavy concentrations of spammers, scammers, animal and child porn freak sites... Not to mention the vast corruption and things on their government's own sites... France will have to effectively block 90% of their own hosts to make this effective... See also the criminal stuff dedibox.fr and wanadoo willingly harbors and refuses to take down...
I admit it: it's not an easy joke but ... a real Google search result. Didn't expect that from my unique search site, will make me reconsider them as the first source for answers to most of my questions. Finally I understand all the critics against that site on /., which frankly I've never understood before (Well, I don't use their mail and apps, which also can explain why).
Thank you for enlightening me on their hidden side.
When I lived in Germany I once asked an old German man why the Germans followed Hitler. His reply in German was, "Luegen haben kurze beine."
Translated into English, this means, "Lies have short legs."
Lies are like rodents, they scurry around, get around.
Based on Europe's history, I can understand why they want to censor "Hate Speech". Their's is a no tolerance policy, for a philosophy that almost destroyed their collective way of life.
My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my Father! Prepare to die!
I love France, but I can't trust them to determine what constitutes 'hate speech'. They will let the most violent jihad site continue and force Likud sites to be blocked.
Now France in the mother of western civilization, but they don't have two wide oceans protecting them from monsters. This has led them over the centuries to develop the tendency to talk tough but roll-over whenever someone shows up on the border with the ability to disrupt their version of the soft life. When someone else shows up to defeat their common enemy, then they turn so brave, noble, and courageous.
I do like France and French people. French culture and English culture are parallel universes. So much incredible stuff doesn't cross over between them. But when it comes to politics, most of the French really are just 'surrender monkeys'. It's a flaw in their national character. I accept it. But I won't let them decide what constitutes a 'hate speech' site.
Any websites slightly critical of Israel will be reported over and over again until they're added to the list.
no more french at 4chan?
... if I ever come across a webpage with kiddie porn, you can rest assured I'm sending the link to the cops. I have no issues with having an easy reporting system.
I want to play Free Market with a drowning Libertarian.
The swedish parliament is voting on the new big brother law ("FRA-lagen") on wednesday.
FRA-lagen pa TV4 (Swedish only, but please click anyway)
Also, if you live in Sweden and you feel that there is anything wrong with having someone read your emails and listening in on your phone conversations, please be at the "Riksdagshuset" at 8:00 in the morning on wednesday to tell your delegate how you feel.
---
I used to be anonymous, but now I'm just a coward
...who fink back on them and your rapidly get the entire sex online industry gets blacklisted. Since people can't watch porn anymore, they start going to food and gardening and news sites - which get blacklisted eventually by angry ex-porn-site-owners who have no business anymore.
Internet grinds to a halt in a few months.
Interesting idea.
Viva LOL France.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Is that it, France? I used to have a cat that thought that way. It got squished by a truck. I think it was hiding then, and its last thought was "Lucky guess!"
This amounts to official, systematic evidence-tampering instead of prosecuting those crimes that are too heinous or too indicative of gross negligence by law enforcement to be prosecuted under public scrutiny, which is exactly why the Patriot Act and the Protect America Act have the same kind of crap in them. This is all smokescreen for the next major failure to apprehend terrorists before they achieve their objective, and for CIA child prostitution rings.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/may2005/260505newleads.htm
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..