Slashdot Mirror
The French Government Can Now Censor the Internet
Psychophrenes writes "A new episode in French internet legislation — French ministers have passed a bill (original in French) allowing the government to add any website to a black list, which access providers will have to enforce. This black list will be defined by the government only, without requiring the intervention of the legal system. Although originally intended against pedo-pornographic websites, this bill is already outdated, as was Hadopi in its time, and instead paves the way for a global censorship of the 'French internet.'"
I am french and at the moment everybody should leave this country for china.
...that Wikileaks is on that list? Or similar sites?
France being France.
Tired of my customary (Score:1)
...given that they have gained a sort of reputation for having a canonical answer to everything--they have an institute that defines their language (and quashes neologisms); they have extensive fights regarding the IP that defines their wines; I wouldn't be surprised if they insist on the One True Baguette Recipe.
While this is a rather stupid step to take, I'm going to be very interested in how it plays out. They'll fail, of course, but perhaps this will spur faster development of distributed DNS or alternative DNS systems.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
Just what the world needed. Another government deciding what it's citizens should and shouldn't see.
The business of government only expands in power and revenue throughout its lifetime, never willingly or permanently reducing power or revenue. History has proven this over and over again, to the point where one could argue that the entire objective of government is power and revenue.
I remain absolutely shocked that the common man doesn't consider this a giant red flag.
Before child pornography-blocking bills find their way to the US and ultimately give the government the power to censor the entire internet. o... wait...
Carl Sagan quotes get you an automatic +5 on all posts.
I wonder if they will add Google's list of French military victories to that blacklist...
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
Apparently the French have forgotten their history, and are thus repeating it. Say hey for the death of freedom of speech in the 1st world.
There goes that "Liberté" thing you fought for. Better luck next time.
Are they going to add all proxies to the list as well?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
And now we see the true reason that diplomatic info was leaked to the world. Well played sirs. Well played.
Tiger Blooded Bi-Winning Machine
site.
Yours In Novosibirsk,
Anonymous
First banning the use of "Le Hotdog", now this. ... again.
France surrenders its liberties
Where is that legendary fighting French spirit?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
...add any website to a black list, which access providers will have to enforce.
I don't know how feasible this really is. Are they going to block encrypted and VPN traffic as well? Deep packet inspection to disallow the use of proxies? Denying access to DNS servers outside France? The government has essentially passed legislation to hold service providers accountable for something that, frankly, is impossible to impliment. If you are an internet service provider in France right now, I'd be seriously thinking of selling my stocks, cashing in, and getting the hell out now, before you lose your whole investment on a piece of government legislation destined to cause many, many judges to facepalm.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Will they publish the blacklist publicly ? If not, there's no telling what they could block, especially since there don't appear to be any checks or oversight.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
They can run the streets and protest.
Oh wait, they are already doing that.
Well, protest *more* then.
Allright boys and girls, lets all say it together.
Blacklists don't work. :)
Buying a new domain costs very little - especially if we're talking about child porn websites - which aren't meant to get millions of hits per day.
Now, lets wait until someone discovers that torrents may contain child porn. Then the circle will be complete.
... they would put their resources into investigating the source of the pornography. Rather, this is just a power grab by the French government to get the ability to censor the Internet.
I can't believe for the time being Murica is one of the last free places on the internet I feel for my eurofriends as i know it will only be maybe a year before we're taking it up the ass from our friendly neighborhood NSA agent
Just go on QuatreChan and get Anonyme to threaten a DdSD (déni de service distribué) attack on all of France.
Locks are for honest people.
What this means here is that the dishonest will find a way to get around the wall, while honest websites that teh government decides to ban, right or wrong, remain hidden from French public view.
The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. - http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Gilmore
Better than a machine translation...
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number8.24/loppsi-2-french-law
Once again a western government uses the drummed-up fear of pedophiles as a stalking horse to eradicate human liberty. The damnedest thing is that pedophiles are about as peaceful a group of people as can be found - but I suppose that is why the government has chosen this target. It's harder to crack down on minorities who are inclined and strong enough to strike back.
It's easier to hire the angry people to put down the peaceful people than the other way around, and get the angry people to accept the loss of freedom as "necessary" to the struggle.
A few facts about the bête noire du jour. Remember, the loss of your freedom depends on the people never learning the truth ... at least, until it is too late.
Can you pronounce:
"The Maginot Firewall"?
I knew you could!
Only with Drugs. The FDA, HHS, and DEA have this exact power, completely unchecked by the legal system to basically make laws on the fly about individual substances by changing their classification.
If they wanted to make Asprin a felony tomorrow, they could... and stores would have to comply in a hurry. It is not subject to Judicial review
Although on the surface it would seem like the two have not much to do with each other, drug convictions are a great way to imprison people and deny them their right to vote, which is perhaps more powerful than merely limiting free speech online.
OVH is one of the largest hosting providers in the world. Censoring sites hosted in OVH could do some damage on France's economy because clients might want to move their sites to other countries..
--
Quoi ! des cohortes étrangères
Feraient la loi dans nos foyers !
Quoi ! ces phalanges mercenaires
Terrasseraient nos fiers guerriers ! (bis)
Grand Dieu ! par des mains enchaînées
Nos fronts sous le joug se ploieraient
De vils despotes deviendraient
Les maîtres de nos destinées !
Aux armes, citoyens,
Formez vos bataillons,
Marchons, marchons !
Qu'un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons !
Tremblez, tyrans et vous perfides
L'opprobre de tous les partis,
Tremblez ! vos projets parricides
Vont enfin recevoir leurs prix ! (bis)
Tout est soldat pour vous combattre,
S'ils tombent, nos jeunes héros,
La terre en produit de nouveaux,
Contre vous tout prêts à se battre !
Aux armes, citoyens,
Formez vos bataillons,
Marchons, marchons !
Qu'un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons !
PROPOSED NEW BATTLE HYMN OF ANONYMOUS
I say just one thing ... "For they know not what they do "
Lets see if the stereotypes of the French are true, that they are going to surrender immediately, or will they become leaders for the rest of the nations in defeating this blow to freedom.
why did we save those assholes from the Germans again?
...are you measuring time before the blacklist goes live or not?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
As terrible as the news is, there is still hope. The law isn't passed yet. The article was voted in the National Assembly (lower chamber). It still requires, before being a valid law :
1. A vote on the law as a whole in the lower chamber.
2. A vote on the article in the upper chamber (Senate).
3. A vote on the law as a whole in the upper chamber.
4. If the two versions are different, even a coma apart (which is almost always the case), a full new vote on each of the chambers.
5. A validation by the Constitutional Council.
Points 1. and 3. are very likely to succeed, saddly. But point 2., the vote on the article in the upper chamber can reasonably change the law, adding a validation by a judge for example. The UMP (Sarkozy's party) doesn't have absolute majority in the Senate, so they need to compromise with the center-right which may obtain that.
And then the validation by the Constitutional Council is unlikely, they censored the HADOPI (three-strike law for "illegal downloading"), stating clearly that Internet in the XXIest century is protected by the article 11 of the Declaration of Humans and Citizen Rights (which is part of our Constitution) : The free communication of thoughts and of opinions is one of the most precious rights of man: any citizen thus may speak, write, print freely, save [if it is necessary] to respond to the abuse of this liberty, in the cases determined by the law. , their interpretation being that abuse of this liberty, in the cases determined by the law can only be confirmed by a court after due legal process. It would surprise me for them to turn back on this stance, and allow Internet censorship without decision of a court.
But since the UMP has more friends than foes in the Constitutional Council, and that it is to protect the children will they will validate it :(
But anyway, it's still not a lost battle, and we are still fighting against the law.
How typical, France re-invents the Maginot firewall. Churchill: "Where are your anti-circumvention procedures?" French high command: "Aucune..."
-soup (GNUrd, Speaker to Machines) "Laugh at yourself- Why should everyone else have all the fun?" -Romanchek's 6th Ru
The US people would never let that happen. We prefer to give our government the power to monitor secretly, because they only watch "bad guys" not me.
My grandfather died helping defeat the Nazis in France.
If this is what France becomes, his life was wasted.
Here's a big "FUCK YOU" to the French government. Don't worry,
I won't ever cross the borders of your shitty little country again.
It's not just France, though. There's also the Great Firewall of China, the Great Australian Firewall, the US Department of Homeland Security shutting down domains (with COICA in the works to make take-downs even easier), and probably others I'm not aware of.
The Internet was a nice experiment in global freedom of expression, but now that governments are catching up those freedoms are beginning to disappear.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
First, I can't believe they beat us to this, or maybe the US government just hasn't told us they have this power.
Second, I await the fat finger typo that pulls the plug on everything for everyone in France.
I thought in WWII it was said it was worth dying for to keep the Nazis from running our countries. Somehow they still did?
You authoritarian frog-*******, ****-eating, ***-kissing morceaux de *****.
Oh damn. It works.
Let it not be said the Chinese only copy from the west and not vice versa.
Now, if only someone could "hack in", as the kids call it these days, and add all of the French government sites to this list, especially the no doubt web-facing browser-based administrative tool used to maintain this list...
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
In honor of this new achievement -- something never before attempted, yet absolutely guaranteed to succeed -- I hereby propose to our French brethren that this internet policy be called Ligne Maginot Redux! Vive la France!
"A government is a body of people usually -- notably -- ungoverned." -Shepherd Book
Get a warrant, go to the pedophiles house, and arrest them. France should not be ruled by Fatwah. This is the home of the statue of Liberty.
I assume you can support the assertion that populist-based govs are superior to others over 100 year intervals, right? Stable societies, economies, govs ...?
I can't think of examples.
In doing their 'failure analysis of govs', Jefferson et al. ruled out pure-democracy govs because they were too unstable, based on the experience of Athens.
Pure democracy merely adds a level of indirection in the control of the gov by political elites.
In all times and places, money buys power.
This is why we have things like Tor. If you want help people fight back, run a Tor Relay.
There is (moderate) risk in running an Exit Node, but none in running a simple middle node (which is the default Relay mode)
Go to http://torproject.org
So if a country doesn't understand the concept of the internet, does it get internet privileges revoked, or what?
Oh, wait. That's what they are trying for.
Finaly a western country that isn't afraid to copy from china. I'm just hoping that china doesn't have a copyright on their great wall. ;-)
The damnedest thing is that pedophiles are about as peaceful a group of people as can be found...
Hmm... the child rape apologist is modded "5: Informative", whereas most people pointing out how fucked up that is are modded "-1: Troll" or "-1: Flamebait".
Either there's an organized group with mod points... or else Slashdot culture has finally drifted to the point where I'm no longer part of the community.
If it's the latter, then I blame the Apple fanboys for starting this process.
Are the french gone out of their minds? You are a bloody western democracy. It takes guts to be a democracy but you reap the glory. Are you a courageous country or are you trying to mimic the whimps that run dictatorships. You have the balls. Act like it!
Henk
Holland
It is becoming clear that the censorship cat is out of the bag. Western countries are now joining their totalitarian counterparts and other tinpot regimes in openly trying to restrict free speech, contrary to Article 19 of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers ."
More than ever, if you have the bandwidth, no matter where you are, please consider running a Tor relay, bridge or exit node.
http://torproject.org/
We are legion we are every where
We are watching
If you don't like it, support the conservative/republican/libertarian gov't. And efforts to overthrow dictatorships, through peace or war.
Can my karma get any worse than bad? Let's find out!
Maybe one needs to suggest http://www.gouvernement.fr/ is disseminating State Secrets and needs to be shut down? Nothing like cutting off noses to spite faces, ouay? Bon soir.../T
Last chance to see Spatula Madness, all you French people.
The remark: "This black list will be defined by the government only, without requiring the intervention of the legal system", makes me very scared, effectively removing some of the foundations of the separation of power. (Trias politicas).
They just ignore their own filosofer: Montesquieu.
In the last weeks we have seen banks used as the longer arm of politics, and now the censorship will be in the hands of people who should be defining the law and not executing the law at their leisure and inconsistent anger.
Oops! My bad. When running a bridge, the Tor client has already encrypted the request and decrypts the response. It's ONLY the exit node that can see what's going on (assuming an unsecure protocol).
"If you live in North America, you're Canadian, American or Mexican. That's just how it is."
I suspect there are more than a few Hondurans, Guatemalans, Nicaraguans, El Salvadorians, Belizians, Costa Ricans, and Panamanians who would take exception to that statement.
.. that can be equated with gays, blacks, whoever. They're a sick bunch of perverts who ruin lives. So spare us your amateur insights about stigmatisation. The more they're stigmatised the better IMO.
Beijing sends its regards.
I suspect there are more than a few Hondurans, Guatemalans, Nicaraguans, El Salvadorians, Belizians, Costa Ricans, and Panamanians who would take exception to that statement
Have you been to any of those countries? When you travel down there, you'll see that they all proudly proclaim that they're part of "Central America." They puposely distance themselves from North or South America. For example, here's a Belizean license plate:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_1AAaANrTdAM/SgHAxpUOqcI/AAAAAAAABKg/MVvHKJR7EWI/s400/belize.jpg
The C.A. on the plate stands for "Central America."
"...that Wikileaks is on that list? - by fluch (126140) on Thursday December 16, @02:03PM (#34577480)
Per my subject-line above:
---
PERTINENT QUOTE/EXCERPT (from -> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/16/wikileaks_mirror_malware_warning_row/ )
"we are in favour of 'Blacklists', be it for mail servers or websites " - wikileaks spokesperson
---
Why? Well, because they work - Especially for layered security online
APK
P.S.=> Blacklists (like HOSTS files can be for example (but, hosts can also be a "whitelist" too))? They aren't all "bad" guys, far from it... apk