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France Votes Tuesday On Net Censorship
angry tapir writes "French lawmakers will vote next Tuesday on a proposal to filter Internet traffic. Part of a new security bill, the measure is intended to catch child pornographers. However, once the filtering system is in place it will allow the government to censor other material too. Slashdot has previously discussed Australia's proposed ISP-level filter."
As an Australian, dare I say I'm waiting with bated breath. The French dumping that section wouldn't help our cause, but passing it would hurt it - the Aus govt is already looking for rationalisation and "me too!" works for voters here.
The whole bureaucracy we have to put up with in these times is far worse when they attempt this bullshit to lead attention away from false promises and actual governmental improvement. Fuck the system basically, especially when there's no history of revolution over here.
In Germany, a law was passed called Zugangserschwerungsgesetz. It said the Federal Criminal Police Office delivers secret list of blocked domains to the ISPs. After the elections in 2009 the government changed and even though the law has come into effect, the new coalition prevented the feds to give out the list. So de facto, Zugangserschwerungsgesetz has been rejected now.
This is partially the success of the German Pirate Party, which both thrived because of this law proposal (membership decupled in a few months) and forced a public discussion about this law (otherwise it'd just be rubber-stamped: "oh, this law is against kiddie porn. Good!"). It astonished me that the PP actually succeeded to bring common sense into the debate, because politicians often tend to turn of their brain when they hear "kiddie porn". Partially the success was also due to an online petition which had 134,000 signatures (which made it by far the most successful petition in German history).
It is also doubtful that the Zugangserschwerungsgesetz will pass German's highest court, the Federal Constitutional Court, which in the past has proven to value human rights (such as article 5 of Germany's constitution) very highly.
Child porn, the European root password to society. In America, it's "terrorism". I'm sure the politicians rejoice that the people let themselves be programmed to respond in such a simple way to these root passwords...