French National Assembly Approves Internet Censorship Law

from the lovely dept

We were just talking about how Thai government officials were admitting that internet blacklists simply don’t work, and along comes France’s National Assembly to approve a law to set up a blacklist allowing the government to censor any website it doesn’t like. The full law isn’t passed yet, apparently, as it still needs to be approved by a variety of others before it becomes a law. There’s also some hope that the French Constitutional Council would refuse to validate the law.

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Comments on “French National Assembly Approves Internet Censorship Law”

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32 Comments
Hephaestus (profile) says:

Re: Re:

“Soon after realizing that blacklists do not work, they will claim that whitelists will be used.”

At which point they will have access to what is left at the end of the obama administration.

sarc

Pretty cool thing. The only things I really want access to are government press releases. I now understand how they have my best interests in mind. How they watch out for me. How all things will be better if I just sit back and listen and allow them spoon feed me information.

YES!!! YESSS!!! YESSS! *with a side of pancakes* gotta change my shorts!!!

/sarc

teka (profile) says:

Re: Re:

Section 4 of the Bill Loppsi 2, text tote on Homeland Security, was finally adopted. It will allow the government to filter the Internet using a blacklist issued by the Ministry of Interior, without the intervention of the judiciary. A measure that the government justify the need to better fight against child pornography sites and cybercrime in general.

In other words, a bill allowing the Ministry of Interior to decide to decide to block things, without messy details like courts or charges. The bill is touted to be designed to fight kiddie porn, because that is a free pass for passing almost anything.

The government deciding what people are allowed to see or talk about.. that is certainly not censorship, right? And this blacklisting power would never be abused to further someones political ambitions, never.

teka (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re: Re:

lets see.. if only there was an example of a related project.. hmm..

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090319/0834254178.shtml

“The list of more than 2300 websites is about half child pornography and half “online poker sites, YouTube links, regular gay and straight porn sites, Wikipedia entries, euthanasia sites, websites of fringe religions such as satanic sites, fetish sites, Christian sites, the website of a tour operator and even a Queensland dentist.”

yeah, i think that was a pretty good example, Thanks wikileaks!

Nicolasp (profile) says:

That’s pretty typical of the current French government to push useless stuff just because of shock value. Like many governments today, it lives off of shock value, regardless of the content. It’s like glucose for the metabolism.
More generally, I think it’s healthy for the www to be challenged by stupidity, control and other forms of recuperations: it grows from it.

Riquin (profile) says:

The Internet needs to be censored.

It is a tool of the democratic forces and cannot be allowed.

When the ?Global Warming? scam came several months ago the Internet destroyed their science. Now is the TSA humiliation of citizens including the old and disable, women and children. Pictures of TSA taking advantage of these vulnerable citizens are displayed all over going viral. So it needs to disappear and fast.

The Internet is creating too many headaches to the NAZI elite. They want you to have your news from ABC, NBC, CNN, CBS, etc. Then you will see news like this: ?In a recent CBS News poll, 4 out of 5 Americans supported the use of full-body scans.? —– LIES, LIES and LIES.

The way we are going we are not going to have another election and if we have one it will be totally controlled.

Oh I forgot!! And ?. If you behave and follow their instructions they will give you a nice brown shirt.

Anonymous Coward says:

Why its the UNREVOLUTION

a backwards move going back in time when everyone was oblivious to, well anyhting. YUP wikileaks exposed the lying we cant have that we need our mozarati.

Acting stupid , retarded? WHY YES cause no french can read this we can say anything now about them and they cant hear it ….
FRENCH FRIES anyone?

Anonymous Coward says:

Don’t go to France. Don’t spend a dollar there. I call it the New Socialist Republic of France. The constitution that America helped to found has turned Communist with the rights of the people being stripped away. What a bunch of dumb shits. Seems like all you have to do is elect a leader with a pretty wife so everyone is dumbstruck by the pussy while the traitors take over.

Anonymous Coward says:

The funny part is that to some extent, blacklists do work, especially if they are properly aimed. Obviously if people want to find a way around them (such as VPN outside the country or similar) they can do it. But blacklists (especially of stuff like child porn) does go a long way to stop the casual viewer from getting to the stuff.

Like any tool, it depends on the use, what is blocked, etc. The Australian example was excessive because they not only attempting to block the obviously illegal, but tries to take it one step further and use it as a moral standards tool. Few people will tolerate that sort of stupidity.

Moves like this from governments may fail, but there is an underlying current that people need to understand: They are not going to tolerate a wide open, unlimited, and unregulated internet forever. Mark France down as another country who would want to do away with the anonymous nature of the internet.

abc gum says:

Re: Re:

The funny part is that blacklists do not stop the dissemination of information, it reappears elsewhere. Eliminating a host from the internet is not going to stop wikileaks and similar activities, which is btw the real reason for censorship – not child porn. I’m sure they do not like like their bad decisions out there for everyone to see, this is understandable – however those who want respect need to act in a respectable manner. If they were to stand up and admit to the error(s) rather than hiding them …. ahhh forget it, that will never happen.

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