French Net Censorship Plan Moves Forward

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."

Germany's net censorship law took the last hurdle

[Anonymous Coward]

Horst Köhler signed the "Zugangserschwerungsgesetz" yesterday. A veto from the Bundespräsident was the last thing that could have stopped the law in the normal legislative process. To stop the law now, the Bundestag would have to agree on annulling the law before it goes into effect in about three weeks when it is published in the Bundesanzeiger.

Re:Outmaneuvering censorship

[Ltap]

Especially in Europe. East Germany's censorship model failed in most places in the west because people could get signals from West German TV stations. In a place like France, people could easily get wifi signals from Italy, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, etc depending on where they lived.

Of course, Burlesconi will almost certainly jump on this bandwagon, and then France and Italy will try to leverage this on other EU countries.

Re:fascism will never succeed in reducing paedophi

[Ltap]

I think in discussions like these we need a new disclaimer: IANAP (I Am Not a Paedophile). However, I doubt anything more than a minority are violent people, just like everyone else. The reality is that the non-violent ones who used child porn will either be harrassed or might be driven to the paedophile stereotype of kidnapping/abusing kids. This does nothing but escalate it, and rather than try to talk to these people and work out their problems or give them a safe way to channel it (sort of like how BDSM was originally regarded as obscene before it developed an almost-universal code of conduct), it is suppressed.

Re:Why stop there?

[vegiVamp]

Common use where I live (.be, so also non-native english) makes a difference between "cash" and "in cash".

"cash" means "payed on the spot", while "in cash" means "with physical monies issues by the government". Thus, payment with a credit or debit card also counts as "cash".

Wikipedia doesn't mention any of that in the article about cash, though, so this may be a local thing.

Re:Why stop there?

[vegiVamp]

No, it is not "payment in cash", but it *is* considered "cash payment".