If this becomes reality it will seriously set back the value of the internet, its freedom of speech and privacy. It doesnt matter that it is "just" one country. Its a western country and this mindset of censorship and control by such a government worries me. Alot.
(I'm French)<p>As explained in the source article on PCInpact, the proposed project has been assessed by the CNN, which is a (relatively new) consultative committee whose members include representatives from ISPs, high traffic French websites (dailymotion, meetic and deezer are on the list), a few software editors, representatives from ecommerce sellers, etc (and no music/film industry representative, for once).<p>Unsurprisingly, they argued against it (one of arguments is 'the EU has to be informed', which is an interesting trick to gain a few months, imo). (Can't find any non-French source for that, but it has been officially done).<p>What's more surprising is that they were officially asked what they thought about it in the first place. I don't think the government had any incentive to do so. What were they thinking ?<p>If they have any respect for the CNN (which the president created just two months ago), they will forget the law.
Otherwise, they will have explicitly ignored the opinion of the ISPs. Which isn't very wise when you want to enforce filtering and blocking of websites.<p>This doesn't makes sense to me.
Am I missing some point here? When Internet was censored in Tunisia, we would use proxies, https, sites like vtunnels... This became casual stuff even for the non-techie. So what's the point of censorship? Making access to the web a little bit harder? If you censor a video on Youtube, someone else can upload it to Facebook and watch it through HTTPS and diffuse it to many people.<p>Aren't (the French Gov. and other Govs.) aware of that? If so, what's the point of censorship?
It sets a bad precedent, and unfortunately it's not the only country to do so (or consider it). When I was younger, I had always dreamed of living briefly in France or maybe Australia at some point in my life, but both countries now see to either enforce strict censorship, or are on the verge of doing so.<p>I live in Canada, and it wouldn't shock me if our Conservative government did the same, but it still saddens me nonetheless.<p>I don't keep up on French politics/culture very much, but this move does surprise me, given their Revolutionary history.
This sounds similar to the recently proposed measures by the Turkish government. Perhaps French will develop and vulgarize some tools that would also be useful in Turkey and vice versa. I think the first is more likely since the Turkish population is less tech-savvy and more importantly a lot less sensitive to the erosion of democratic rights.<p>For the record, I am Turkish but has been living abroad for 12 of the last 13 years (planning to go back next month!). Ironically, even though I think this is a terrible law, I hope it passes and adequate countermeasures get developed.
Yes, many citizen groups stand up for the 1st Amendment and tell our representatives that Internet censorship is not feasible in a functioning democracy. The problem is that the Big Six (GE, News Corp., Disney, Time Warner, Viacom, & CBS) have a megaphone and bags of cash... so often the voices of the citizen groups get drowned out.<p>Couple that with the fact that the vast majority Americans form their world view from the television or the websites that the Big Six own. Sex scandals and Hollywood gossip is discussed, Internet censorship? Not so much.<p>And this is increasingly not just an American problem, as many people on this thread are pointing out. We live in a global society (thanks largely to the Internet), the challenges of the U.S. are increasingly the challenges of France.<p>The Internet has done a tremendous amount of good over the past 20+ years, but there is a flip side to this coin as well.<p>Check out this five minute documentary trailer (on KickStarter) that seeks to tackle some of these Internet censorship issues:<p><a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/akorn/killswitch-a-documentary-film?ref=live" rel="nofollow">http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/akorn/killswitch-a-docum...</a><p>This documentary project is looking to get crowd-funded by small individual donations from the same citizens with the most to lose if we moved to a censored and centralized Internet.
VPN will become the norm. Internet access will be 30€ for the ISP + 5 € for the VPN. Not that much of a big deal for the citizen, more worrying for Paris as a tech scene.
So this is what the West is tottering towards.<p>What can be done about it? Does an alternative internetwork need to be formed? What will it look like? How will we pay for an alternative network? Who will use it?<p>For those of us who really, honestly, no-kidding want free speech: what can be done from a technical angle? Thoughts?
Intel cut France out of their map of Europe (supposedly) when France restricted encryption tech. They want a repeat.<p>I love the double speak about undermining the public good.
This brings to mind A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, by John Perry Barlow, one of the founders of the EFF:<p><a href="https://projects.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html" rel="nofollow">https://projects.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html</a><p>It was written in 1996 but feels more relevant as every year goes by.
France has borders with Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Monaco, Spain and Andorra. Plus Britain just across a channel (and connected by a tunnel).<p>I can't see how they could possibly achieve this.