France Votes Tuesday On Net Censorship 134
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."
Re:Can't we all just get along? (Score:1, Insightful)
The lawmakers are voting this, it has nothing to do with mulsim vote by the population.
As a mater of fact, the vote will be mostly by the (watered down) equivalent to repulicans, so expect a lot of christian.
VOTING in france - isn't that banned these days? (Score:4, Insightful)
I thought Sarkoszy was essentially a dictator when it comes to all things MAFIAA.
he pushes in laws that have been voted against all the way up to the european parliament.
Ah, (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
Moving on to the next boogieman? (Score:5, Insightful)
Appearantly the terrrrrists don't cut it anymore, so we pulled another one out of the hat. Or maybe just that terrrrrists don't work in this context because, well, there's really little harm done by webpages that tell us how we infidels will all go to hell, so someone else had to fill the void.
So let's imagine how this works for a moment. Someone sets up a webpage with kiddy porn in a country where such a thing is legal and the only way to fight that would be that ISPs in France are required to block it.
Anyone here able to point out the three problems with this approach?
First, there is NO country on this planet where child porn is legal. Not a single one. Instead of blocking such a server, go there and raid it. It's illegal where it's hosted. Shut it down. Simple solution.
Second, blocking does jack in a world where international proxy servers exist. So unless such a law is installed worldwide, the blocking means jack.
Oh, one might argue that they're pushing for it, to get it internationally installed. That leads to the third problem:
It's not distributed through webpages. It's not on webpages you could filter. It's working along the same channels that most illegal content travels. Hacked FTP servers, P2P and usenet.
So there's now two possibilities. Either our politicians don't know what they're doing and they're trying to appear like they're "doing something". Or the whole thing is just a strawman for something you could not push through because of public resistance. Personally, I think it's a combination of the two.
Re:VOTING in france - isn't that banned these days (Score:5, Insightful)
It's no secret that he's pretty strongly pro MAFIAA, thinking how his wife is directly involved in the pressure for more IP protection.
And he has to. I mean, be honest, if you look like her, would you stay with a troll if he couldn't collect your bridge toll?
This will not be effective at all (Score:5, Insightful)
The pedophiles will just use Tor or come up with some stenographic technique to hide their stuff. Meanwhile everyone else will suffer from burdening the costs of implementing and maintaining such a system.
Child porn occasionally gets posted to fetish image boards by Russian spammers. So France, say good bye to 4chan.
Your children won't be any safer if some random pervert can't get his jollies from images anymore. Without an outlet, these pervertss will bottle it up until they can no longer hold back. Innocent children will most likely suffer due to such legislation.
Pedophiles aren't something new. They have existed in humanity for at least as long as recorded history. Putting our fingers in our ears and going lalalala will do nothing to protect our children or get pedophiles the treatment that will enable them to participate in our society.
I would like to see the creation of programs where pedophiles can go in and receive counseling without getting a life long stigma. Perhaps we could create child-less towns out in the middle of nowhere so they can live their lives without temptation. We could do more research on the brains of pedophiles and develop drugs to re-orientate pedophiles to a more healthy age range, preferably in a delivery mechanism like the Norplant birth control so the pedophile just needs to get it replaced every few years.
My cousin was molested as a child by her father's boss. He fled to France to avoid prosecution. It did significant trauma to my extended family. I want to prevent such things from happening to other families and to do that we have to work with the pedophiles so they get help and don't hide in the woodwork, being consumed by their desires yet secluded due to fears of being expelled from society.
Locking up people who have thumbnails of child porn in their browser's caches does nothing to solve the problem either and creates a new class of victims, those who went to an image board for a legal fetish that is far removed from child porn but got spammed by the Russian child porn spammers. It is a crime in some places to delete it from your cache, leaving many people in a no-win situation caused by ignorant and useless politicians.
Please think before wasting tax dollars and giving people a false sense of security. Every wasted dollar could be better spent feeding, clothing, and educating children, or perhaps fix up a nation's crumbling transportation infrastructure or installing optical fiber to every house.
Re:Ah, (Score:5, Insightful)
Child porn works over here too, you just have to use sudo.
Re:How about a different approach (Score:2, Insightful)
Child porn is bad, but it happens and it's gonna continue happen and you're not going to stop those scum from exploiting children. Why not spend your free time rallying for a political cause or raising money for charity?
Sure, it sucks that you had an unhappy childhood and probably watched too many cop shows to escape from that harsh reality, but your life was empty before you thought you could make a name for yourself and it will be empty long after.
Re:I don't support pedoes, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Two or more men engaging in consensual sex does not bother me or affect me at all. Well I guess it does bother me a little when the gay couple down the street hold loud parties but I'm pretty sure that it would still bother me if they were straight.
A man or woman molesting a child bothers me and affects me. I had to deal with my aunt during my teen years who saw every male regardless of age as a molester. I was falsely accused by her back before I hear even before I hit puberty. I was traumatized by that experience and make every effort to never be alone in a room with anyone under 18. Relations between my mother and aunt went down the drain. I dread family events because my aunt might be there. But the trauma I experienced is not even close to what my cousin went through.
So yes I think pedophiles should get treatment before they commit a crime against a family.
Homosexuals have a right to happiness.
Pedophiles don't have the right to molest children.
Politicians don't have the right to strip away our freedoms and waste our money with feel good measures that accomplish nothing.
Re:NOT and NEVER WAS about Child porn, of course (Score:3, Insightful)
Your argument makes no sense.
Right, because:
a) The only way for us to stop child porn is to economically prop up every country in need, at our great, great expense, and
b) Governments should reject the wealth of positives about these treaties in the vain, completely unfounded hope that it will inspires child pornographers to pack up and go home.
I mean, it's like saying if governments cared about child porn, then they would kill all the children.
Re:Ah, (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Moving on to the next boogieman? (Score:1, Insightful)
First, there is NO country on this planet where child porn is legal. Not a single one. Instead of blocking such a server, go there and raid it. It's illegal where it's hosted. Shut it down. Simple solution.
That's expensive, and when you're just fishing for votes rather than actually caring about abuse of children, "out of sight, out of mind" works just as well.