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.

Comments

Re:See guys!

[Anonymous Coward]

Go Ireland!

Then it's very fortunate...

[Anonymous Coward]

...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.

Re:See guys!

[Anonymous Coward]

That sounds like hate speech to me!

The Internet should be nothing but puppies and rainbows!

Not a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Just keep submitting the blacklist submission site until it gets blacklisted. Problem solved.

Re:DDoS?

[gutnor]

Post some kiddie porn on a forum and report.

But well that all depends on the sophistication of the system. The real time part is probably a key element. Defacement followed by report could put a site off-line for a few hours/days or maybe months since getting removed from a blacklist is always much harder.

If the French people are on board... good

[Excelcia]

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.

Re:If the French people are on board... good

[erlehmann]

Why is incest illegal?

Most certainly because many people fear that the risk of disabled children is higher in incest pairings. Few, of course, want to continue this thought and forbid haemophiliacs to procreate. It's an irrational, inconsequent thing, you know.

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?

Libertarians. Making victimless actions crimes is an authoritarian thing, where you pass on your morals on others without any connection. Your rhetoric is flawed, btw: You seem to be advocating absolute moral relativism on libertarian grounds - but that leads into a inherent chaotic system without any moral directives at all. Finally, let me be the first to ask: If the people of Yemen feel that the dangers inherent in homosexuality justify the death penalty, then who are we to say out of hand, this is a bad thing ?

Re:If the French people are on board... good

[Anonymous Coward]

Child pornography is illegal in most countries, so I don't think blocking access to those sites is particularly controversial. What might be controversial is the idea of giving a government agency a broad charter to block access to any site that might be considered dangerous to the public welfare. This is exactly what the Chinese government has been doing, and they use their authority to censor sites that are even mildly critical of the government, as well as those that might be promoting "dangerous ideas" that conflict with the mores of society.

It's a slippery slope. It's not unlike the path that the Bush administration went on after 9/11 to monitor the communication of suspected terrorists, which sounds rather reasonable, only it came to be interpreted as a charter to monitor practically any electronic communication sent or received by anyone in the US, without a court order.

Re:If the French people are on board... good

[epee1221]

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.

You mean, "if that's what they _all_ want," yes? Otherwise, a policy like this runs counter to the "live and let live" idea.

Re:If the French people are on board... good

[mrbluze]

Few, of course, want to continue this thought and forbid haemophiliacs [wikipedia.org] to procreate. It's an irrational, inconsequent thing, you know.

It's why society will continue to oscillate between eugenics/interventionism/social conservatism and hurt-no-one/social liberalism.

So often I hear staff in my department say "these imbeciles shouldn't have a license to have babies", out of sheer frustration at.. well.. imbeciles. But it could just as well be any group. It's just one logical (and not irrational) 'solution' to disease and perceived inferiority. Compassion is its antithesis, whose logic is a little more subtle I would say.

Finally, let me be the first to ask: If the people of Yemen feel that the dangers inherent in homosexuality justify the death penalty, then who are we to say out of hand, this is a bad thing ?

Not wanting to defend the grandparent poster too much, but 'who are we' is 'a powerful nation with nukes'. But we are not more intelligent than those in Yemen and believing ourselves to be morally superior to them is based mostly on arbitrary measures.

My approach is to ask 'is banning access to child pornography going to prevent harm to children'? We don't really know, actually, because it may well push the crime further underground and make the creators of the pornography harder to catch.

I think the flaw in the thinking (in France and elsewhere) is the assumption that 'thinking bad is equal to doing bad', which has Christian origins. This is what is behind the basis of criminalizing activity which is materially victimless. There is the argument that if you kill off the market, there won't be incentive to produce the pornography, but this has been proven wrong before.

Re:If the French people are on board... good

[MSZ]

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.

That would be fine, anyone not wanting to see something should be free to not look at it. Or free to get some pussified internet feed instead of the real thing.

However, if I understand this correctly, the system will not work this way. No majority opinion, no vote - just some little bureaucrat reviewing anonymous(?) tips and putting whatever he feels nasty on the black list. I bet there will be a small group of self-righteous people with a mission to find, report and demand any site they find objectionable be blacklisted, closed or otherwise destroyed. Problably we'll find there "think of the children" crowd together with "destroy non-PC views" hatemongers with some religious nuts sprinkled on top (lots of islamic fanatics immigrating).

Re:If the French people are on board... good

[mrbluze]

First, deliver the proofs. Scientific, not anecdotal. Not all the proof can be equally 'scientific' because the ideal scientific process itself would have to be 'unethical' in many of these circumstances (unless you could do a computer simulation of reality). But, for example, underaged sex does have a correlation with increased sexually transmitted infection with increased incidence of infertility, etc. etc. Eg: this recent abstract and MANY others. It's unlikely to change, either, because compliance with medication and condoms is poor already, and poorer still with decreasing age.

All of the things I mentioned have scientific evidence to support them. But no, not all of the evidence is a randomized double blinded case-control trial! Most of it is epidemiological.

I am only this short of invoking Godwin's.

I know full well that this process of reasoning can lead to full blown Nazism/eugenics/badness. I am just arguing that, without moderation, society gravitates towards this kind of stuff, because superficially it makes sense.

I know everyone shuns religion nowadays (often for good reason), but people are deceiving themselves (and doomed to relive the past) if they think society will be any more enlightened or less brutal without it, or without some kind of replacement to promote compassion and moderation.

Wait.. What?

[Cathoderoytube]

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.

French internet will become high school! YAY!

[plasmacutter]

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.

Re:Peer pressure

[owlnation]

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.

It's the wikipedia model. Which, of course, we all know to be fair, free, trustworthy, high quality, and not at all run by cabals or excons.

Re:DDoS?

[nfk]

That may be a valid point, depending, as you say, on the sophistication of the system, but it is still not a distributed attack. The only way I can imagine a distributed attack is if the system is automatic and there is a threshold above which a site is flagged, but that is not the impression I got from reading the article.

Racial hatred:europe::gun control:us

[R2.0]

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.

Re:Racial hatred:europe::gun control:us

[no1home]

Somebody mod the parent up! R2.0 really nailed the issue on the head. As I commented here on /. for the story about the ISPs agreeing to filter based on the blacklist provided by the non-governmental group with no community oversight, it isn't going to work! If you want to protect the kids (like most of us do), then quit wasting time, money, and energy on garbage like this and go after the pervs and the server hosts.

What makes this interesting is the difference in implementation and how it's wrong. The U.S. version is derided because there is no oversight, no accountability. This French version, which seems so open and democratic will most likely end up being yet another implementation of McCarthyism.

Re:Racial hatred:europe::gun control:us

[R2.0]

On the French side: cheap labor and noblesse oblige (the bad kind)- you know, helping those poor dark people out despite their ungratefulness.

On the Algerian side: jobs and being treated better than in Algeria - independence from France doesn't mean the new Algerian government was any better.

Pedophilia is just a pretext

[WizHard]

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.

Re:See guys!

[cayenne8]

Seriously...how do the people in EU, like France...put up with this nonsense about censoring speech....like 'hate speech'.

I just don't get it....that is such a large hole you can file things to censor anything. What is wrong with publishing I hate ? I mean, as long as you are not directly inciting violence against such...to where it might really happen?

I mean...I hear in Germany...they can't publish things...even factual things or sell items that are Nazi related? It was, after all...a real part of their history. It just seems to try to stifle real history, and idea. If you can't learn from history, aren't you destined to repeat it?

I know a lot of things suck in the US, but, you can for the most part...say or publish most any idea you wish....even if it is distasteful to many others. It won't land you in jail or anything, but, you may risk public discern and alienation. Although, I do see things like this happening here.....talk about banning the rebel flag, etc.

Anyway...I think anyone should be able to say or display what they wish...after all they are just ideas, words and symbols....grow some thicker skin and get on with your life and feel free to promote your own ideals.

Re:As in "protecting children from sexual predator

[dasmoo]

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.

Never Underestimate Stupid People in Large Groups

[thomasinx]

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.

Re:Peer pressure

[Reziac]

The citizens of France should send their government's websites to the blacklist. That way they'll be sure not to be exploited by internet scammers and the like.

Read the Article Anyone?

[qazwart]

The article begins talking about how the State of New York (Hey! That's not France!) made a deal with the three big ISPs to block child porn. The article also stated:

Among other countries that have already implemented similar measures include Britain, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Canada and New Zealand.

What is different is that the French have created an actual mechanism to report such sites:

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.

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.