French Net Censorship Plan Moves Forward 108
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."
Why stop there? (Score:5, Insightful)
fascism will never succeed in reducing paedophilia (Score:5, Insightful)
Urgent? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Outmaneuvering censorship (Score:2, Insightful)
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:Bon chance! (Score:4, Insightful)
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:Outmaneuvering censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
Their right wing is to the left of our left wing. Europeans, including the French, are ALWAYS bragging here about democratic socialism.
Radio Free _____ (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Misplaced effort (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Radio Free _____ (Score:3, Insightful)
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 [freenetproject.org], but oh snap... The very people this filter is trying to catch already are using this and similar technologies.
Re:Bon chance! (Score:3, Insightful)
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:Outmaneuvering censorship (Score:2, Insightful)
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:Radio Free _____ (Score:5, Insightful)
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 _____ (Score:3, Insightful)
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 [mikeandsniffy.co.uk] for more information.
Re:Bon chance! (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Why stop there? (Score:1, Insightful)
Since alcoholism causes many deaths each year and is a far larger problem than pornography, I think we should prohibit the sale of French wines in America.