French Net Censorship Plan Moves Forward

angry tapir writes "French lawmakers have voted to approve a draft law to filter Internet traffic that Slashdot previously discussed. The government says the measure is intended to catch child pornographers. The Senate, where the government has a majority, will soon give the bill a second reading. If the Senate makes no amendments to the text, that will also be its final reading, as the government has declared the bill 'urgent,' a procedural move that reduces the usual cycle of four readings to two."

Comments

Bon chance!

[edittard]

Bon chance avec ça!

P.S. Preimer!

Re:Bon chance!

[Anonymous Coward]

The fallacy here is that this measure will do nothing to stop the PRODUCTION of child pornography.
 
Wait, that can be shortened.
 
The fallacy here is that this measure will do nothing.

Re:Bon chance!

[BrokenHalo]

The fallacy here is that this measure will do nothing.

I wish I could say otherwise, but you're wrong about that. It will do nothing to stop the production or spread of child pornography, but it will constitute another erosion of freedom of speech or information.

Governments all over the world are using the child porn issue as a stick with which to beat their citizens (I am posting from Australia), but it seems the regular law enforcement bodies are actually pretty good at catching a lot of the malefactors without any such draconian legislation.

Re:Bon chance!

[FriendlyLurker]

The fallacy here is that this measure will do nothing.
I wish I could say otherwise, but you're wrong about that. It will do nothing to stop the production or spread of child pornography, but it will constitute another erosion of freedom of speech or information.

I wish I could say otherwise, but even this is not entirely correct. The measure will actually HELP the spread of child pornography.
It's pretty simple really:
1) Net censorship will eventually of course mean less access to "illegal" information. For example access to information deemed illegal at sites like Wikileaks.
2) Without widespread access to "illegal" information such as the illegal ACTA leaks, there will be little to no organized resistance to the ever-tightening Copyright and IP laws and treaties being signed (ACTA, GATS, TRIPS etc)
3) Strict IP and copyright laws keep third world countries poor [1]. The majority of Child Pornography stems from human trafficking from third world countries, an unfortunate risk of growing up in a third world country [2].
...

If the French Government really cared about Child Pornography, it would be taking studies like [1] below seriously and not playing cloak and dagger with treaties like ACTA.

[1]

Commission on Intellectual Property Rights declared the internationally-mandated expansion of intellectual property (IP) rights unlikely to generate significant benefits for most developing countries and likely to impose costs, such as higher priced medicines or seeds. This makes poverty reduction more difficult. The intensively researched, 180-page report is entitled Integrating Intellectual Property Rights and Development Policy. It is the culmination of much study and follows on more than a dozen meetings and workshops, 17 working papers, an exhaustive literature review of the field, visits to several developed and developing nations and a major conference. The report makes some 50 recommendations aimed at aligning IP protection with the goal of reducing poverty in developing nations. Topics include IP and health; agriculture; traditional knowledge; copyrights, software and the Internet; and the role of WTO and WIPO in advancing developing country interests. The Commission is an independent international body made up of Commissioners from both developed and developing countries with expertise in science, law, ethics and economics. The Commissioners come from industry, government and academia* (see list of Commissioners below). "Developed countries often proceed on the assumption that what is good for them is likely to be good for developing countries," said Professor John Barton, Commission Chair and George E. Osborne Professor of Law, Stanford University. "But, in the case of developing countries, more and stronger protection is not necessarily better. Developing countries should not be encouraged or coerced into adopting stronger IP rights without regard to the impact this has on their development and poor people. They should be allowed to adopt appropriate rights regimes, not necessarily the most protective ones."

http://www.biotech-info.net/independent_commission.html

[2] Third world are the major "Source Countries" of child pornography and other human trafficking related crimes.

Re:Bon chance!

[MrNaz]

You really think copyright protection is about copyright? It's about maintaining the monopoly on culture and social psychology that Big Money currently has. It is secondarily about ensuring that any potential threat to the current status quo vis a vis the alliance of first world governments is identified, monitored and nipped as soon as it matures into anything of substance.

Try having another French revolution with modern governmental controls in place.

Re:Bon chance!

[DrSkwid]

And the terrible fact that web based CP is not how it's distributed any more, paid for cp is done through virtualisation connected to via encrypted VPN. These laws are ridiculously out of date / lies.

Why stop there?

[calibre-not-output]

Let's also filter the mail, cellphone conversations and text messages, walkie-talkie and other short-range radio transmission devices and fax. We should also outlaw the lending and borrowing of pendrives, memory cards and home-recorded CDs and DVDs.Those child pornographers are sneaky bastards.

Re:Why stop there?

[Anonymous Coward]

The above post is completely irrelevant with the article and misinforming, at least. The plan in Greece is to prohibit people from doing any transactions over 1500 euros done in *cash*, in order to reduce tax evasion. Such measures already apply in most European countries. In fact Greece is the only country in the EU where one can go to a car yard with a suitcase full of money (ie 30.000 euros) and buy a car, without a receipt.

Re:Why stop there?

[vegiVamp]

Common use where I live (.be, so also non-native english) makes a difference between "cash" and "in cash".

"cash" means "payed on the spot", while "in cash" means "with physical monies issues by the government". Thus, payment with a credit or debit card also counts as "cash".

Wikipedia doesn't mention any of that in the article about cash, though, so this may be a local thing.

Re:Why stop there?

[vegiVamp]

No, it is not "payment in cash", but it *is* considered "cash payment".

Outmaneuvering censorship

[Arancaytar]

If IMMI goes ahead in Iceland, then all that censorship may turn out to be nothing more than a colossal waste of bureaucracy.

You can only attack content in the place where it is hosted - filtering the reception end just doesn't work reliably. Even China doesn't have a perfect rate, and Iran had to throttle its whole network in order to cut off communication...

Re:Outmaneuvering censorship

[MindlessAutomata]

It's about instilling the acceptance of top-down control, about obeying, and perhaps even coming to view as necessary, government-determined access to information\. The French have already given themselves over to a Democratic (state) socialist government, so it's not a huge surprise that this is happening there and not here in the USA, at least not yet.

Re:Outmaneuvering censorship

[Ltap]

Especially in Europe. East Germany's censorship model failed in most places in the west because people could get signals from West German TV stations. In a place like France, people could easily get wifi signals from Italy, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, etc depending on where they lived.

Of course, Burlesconi will almost certainly jump on this bandwagon, and then France and Italy will try to leverage this on other EU countries.

Re:Outmaneuvering censorship

[MindlessAutomata]

Their right wing is to the left of our left wing. Europeans, including the French, are ALWAYS bragging here about democratic socialism.

Re:Outmaneuvering censorship

[daem0n1x]

Funny, I always heard Americans call us "Socialist". Europe is not socialist. Most of the ruling parties here are social-democrats, even those who call themselves "Socialist Party". And they're increasingly less Social or Democratic, since they don't give a fuck about the people they rule and only think about kissing the ass of the big money corporations.

I also don't agree that our right wing is on the left of your left. Your Democrats equate to our moderate right-wing parties in most issues, I'll call it "the liberal right". Further to the right of this we begin to enter the mental illness territory. Which summarises what most Europeans think of your Republican party.

Re:Outmaneuvering censorship

[Fred_A]

In a place like France, people could easily get wifi signals from Italy, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, etc depending on where they lived.

Either you've got the range of WiFi quite a bit wrong, or you believe France is the size of a large apartment where over sixty million people somehow manage to fit.

I don't know which option is weirder.

Re:Outmaneuvering censorship

[Mornedhel]

Except that France's Parti Socialiste is *against* this legislation, which is being pushed by the current UMP government (which is on the right side of our political spectrum).

Re:Outmaneuvering censorship

[OrangeTide]

it has the word social in it, so you might as well just put up a big red flag as far as Americans are concerned.

fascism will never succeed in reducing paedophilia

[e70838]

The main consequence of these "laws" will be the development of cryptography and anonymous browsing. As a result, real criminals will have better tools to hide their activity. Normal people will just lose a part of their liberties.

Urgent?

[Ltap]

I don't think anyone could call this bill urgent. This is stating the obvious a bit, but I'm going to call it right now - the French government is trying to force this through as quickly as possible before anti-censorship, net neutrality, and freedom of speech groups get to mount a decent defense and inform the French people about what is happening. Although, the populace could be complicit, sort of like Italy, where Burlesconi has managed to brainwash almost everyone.

Radio Free _____

[FuckingNickName]

I, for one, will be using my "end of Cold War" era Yaesu FRG-7700 shortwave radio to search for broadcasts from the Free World. Could any of you guys tell me which direction I should be pointing my antenna, in order to get the best reception from signals bouncing over the Wall? My map isn't even clear where the border lies any more; all I know is that I'm on the wrong side.

Re:Radio Free _____

[discord5]

I, for one, will be using my "end of Cold War" era Yaesu FRG-7700 shortwave radio to search for broadcasts from the Free World

Purely from a technical point of view, one could use such a shortwave radio together with a modem to create a network that could broadcast kitty porn, so, I'm afraid we're also going to have to confiscate that.

We're also going to have confiscate any flashlights you have, so you can't broadcast aforementioned kitty porn in binary signals to your neighbours. You don't happen to own two tin cans and a piece of string? We've had disturbing reports of people luring kitties by mewing loudly into one can.

I hate to say it, but soon the only network free of filters will be something like freenet, but oh snap... The very people this filter is trying to catch already are using this and similar technologies.

Re:Radio Free _____

[baKanale]

I'm beginning to doubt there's a single place on this entire planet that's on the right side of the border.

Re:Radio Free _____

[FuckingNickName]

I'm afraid we're also going to have to confiscate that.

In the UK, the government is already allowing pollution to the 3-30MHz spectrum, which will lead to a reduction in short wave listeners and HF amateur radio users, which will in turn eventually lead to closing down of services due to "lack of demand".

This is done through generous EU self-certification requirements for electronic devices, so in particular HPA and other BT-provided home powerline networking products radiate broadband noise up to a few hundred metres away. With hundreds of thousands of units installed and in use, this often makes reception difficult in urban areas.

The regulator, Ofcom, clearly underreports the number of complaints, stating that it will only investigate individual cases (i.e. every single time there is a shortwave listener or other HF radio user within close proximity of such a device) rather than enacting a ban/confiscation of products which effectively act as unlicensed transmitters, using the house wiring as an antenna.

The short wave radio band is the only infrastructure-free method for worldwide communication, i.e. it is the only truly free worldwide communication method. It would be cost-prohibitive to censor it with broadband jammers (as opposed to the specific frequency jammers used especially throughout the Cold War); getting the citizens to purchase equipment to do the job instead is very effective, and takes the cynical approach that one might now have to sour relationships with his own neighbours to fix the problem.

UKQRM for more information.

Re:fascism will never succeed in reducing paedophi

[Ltap]

I think in discussions like these we need a new disclaimer: IANAP (I Am Not a Paedophile). However, I doubt anything more than a minority are violent people, just like everyone else. The reality is that the non-violent ones who used child porn will either be harrassed or might be driven to the paedophile stereotype of kidnapping/abusing kids. This does nothing but escalate it, and rather than try to talk to these people and work out their problems or give them a safe way to channel it (sort of like how BDSM was originally regarded as obscene before it developed an almost-universal code of conduct), it is suppressed.

Re:Germany's net censorship law took the last hurd

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but with all five political parties in the bundestag against the law, it is pretty likely that it will 1) never be enforced 2) get cancelled eventually

Re:Won't somebody...

[Dragonslicer]

Pensez aux enfants!?

Apologies if the French is totally wrong, just ran it through babelfish. :)

If I remember my high school French correctly, that would translate to "Think in the children", which is hilarious by itself. I would think the correct French would be "Pensez des enfants", though penser may be one of those weird verbs that takes an article that doesn't match the literal translation. I'm just gonna ignore the fact that "pensez" is second-person plural (i.e. a command), since I'm not sure which form is supposed to follow "somebody".

Misplaced effort

[Angst Badger]

If the French legislature -- or, for that matter, ours, the British, or the Australians -- were genuinely concerned about child pornography, there are any number of productive, real-world efforts they could pursue. On the technical side, they could fund research into automated image analysis, so computers could look for the stuff specifically instead of having uniformed thugs, er, gendarmes pawing through everyone's data manually. That, obviously, is not going to produce overnight results, so maybe the kiddie porn-obsessed countries of the world could take concrete action against the human trafficking that fuels so much of the child porn business. Of course, that would end up hurting business interests, whereas violating everyone's rights in a largely fruitless pursuit for evidence of crimes after the fact -- cast in the appropriate light, of course -- generates some free publicity prior to elections, without the unintended side effect of actually doing something to reduce a very valuable hot button issue.

We have the same kind of politics here with respect to abortion. Both sides fear a final resolution to the issue because it's such a huge source of votes. Consequently, the pro-life faction always stops just a little bit short of overturning Roe v. Wade, and the pro-choice faction never actually gets around to even discussing a constitutional amendment. The politicians (and professional pressure groups) involved want an unresolved controversy, lest the issue be reduced to driving as many people to the polls as the Runaway Slave Act does nowadays. The voters on both sides are quite sincere and feel strongly about their respective positions, but their elected representatives? Not so much.

Because of the elections

[kemenaran]

The "urgent" status is actually because this censorship bill is part of a larger law, named LOPPSI 2, that addresses several "security" matters : more jail for everyone, Internet filtering, trojans for cops in "organized crime" investigation, and so on.

There are regional elections in France in about one month. The government tries to scare people on security matters — the good old "I want *everyone* to *remember* _why_they_need_us_ !". They want to pass the law before the elections, and gave it an "urgent" status that of course isn't justified in any other way.

Re:Won't somebody...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, "Pensez aux enfants" is correct.

Re:Germany's net censorship law took the last hurd

[Anonymous Coward]

Horst Köhler signed the "Zugangserschwerungsgesetz" yesterday. A veto from the Bundespräsident was the last thing that could have stopped the law in the normal legislative process.

Yes, but he only signed after the government answered to his request for more information. In this answer, the government assured that they will order the "Bundeskriminalamt" (something like the FBI) to not produce any lists of addresses to be blocked.

The situation is rather absurd now: the (previous) government passed the law last autumn, then the coalition government changed (conservatives with liberals instead of conservatives with social democrats), and by now no party is in support of the law anymore. By signing the law, the President put the politicians under pressure to find a way out of this mess they got themselves in, so I'm actually not unhappy that he did it. :) The left parties in the parliament want to start a motion to abolish the law completely. Normally, the conservatives and liberals would not support something coming from that corner of the political spectrum, but it's something that eg the liberals were demanding before the election. So it's going to be interesting how they handle the situation. I kind of enjoy the mess they got themselves in with their short-sighted actions... ;)

Re:Germany's net censorship law took the last hurd

[Hurricane78]

Yes, but he only signed after the government answered to his request for more information.

Not relevant to the problem. Fact is still: He signed something, whose only known effect is the protection (trough concealment) of child abuse, and which is unconstitutional. Making him de-facto punishable for treason (usually at least 10 years jail) and aiding of child abuse (also not a small thing). And he is fully aware of this.

In this answer, the government assured that they will order the "Bundeskriminalamt" (something like the FBI) to not produce any lists of addresses to be blocked.

Yeah because the BKA is oh such a trustworthy source when it comes to “assuring” something. This is more a guarantee that they will produce those lists, but want to keep the fact secret.
Oh wait... They already have a list, and it leaked already too.

So what does Köhler want? Go to PMITA prison over some stupid politic circus? Not such a wise move.