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Censorship Privacy The Internet

France's Citizens Expected to Help Build Internet Blacklist 213

Posted by timothy from the common-sense-being-already-anathema dept.
Corrupt links to a Sydney Morning Herald article which begins "The French state and internet service providers have struck a deal to block sites carrying child pornography or content linked to terrorism or racial hatred, Interior Minister Michel Alliot-Marie announced on Tuesday." The article is thin on details, but what it does say is bad enough: "Under the French plan, internet users, via a platform, will be able to signal inappropriate sites and the state, receiving the complaints in real time, will then decide whether the sites are to go on a so-called black list to be passed on to internet service providers to enforce site blocks." It sounds like the perfect way to organize an especially malicious DDoS attack. The French government has never been shy about wanting to "protect" French people by censoring Internet content, though.
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France's Citizens Expected to Help Build Internet Blacklist More

France's Citizens Expected to Help Build Internet Blacklist

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  • See guys! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Sinryc ( 834433 ) on Saturday June 14, 2008 @05:51PM (#23795197)
    Those guys in Europe really DO have better ideas than America! They are so open and free... oh... wait.

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Go Ireland!
      • They are just copying China. We'll see if the Great Firewall of France is sexier, or spits in your food.

        • Re:See guys! (Score:4, Insightful)

          by cayenne8 ( 626475 ) on Saturday June 14, 2008 @07:48PM (#23796001) Homepage Journal
          Seriously...how do the people in EU, like France...put up with this nonsense about censoring speech....like 'hate speech'.

          I just don't get it....that is such a large hole you can file things to censor anything. What is wrong with publishing I hate ? I mean, as long as you are not directly inciting violence against such...to where it might really happen?

          I mean...I hear in Germany...they can't publish things...even factual things or sell items that are Nazi related? It was, after all...a real part of their history. It just seems to try to stifle real history, and idea. If you can't learn from history, aren't you destined to repeat it?

          I know a lot of things suck in the US, but, you can for the most part...say or publish most any idea you wish....even if it is distasteful to many others. It won't land you in jail or anything, but, you may risk public discern and alienation. Although, I do see things like this happening here.....talk about banning the rebel flag, etc.

          Anyway...I think anyone should be able to say or display what they wish...after all they are just ideas, words and symbols....grow some thicker skin and get on with your life and feel free to promote your own ideals.

          • Maybe people put up with it because they don't care what the hate mongering morons of the world have to say. The only reason to object to this would be that it sets a precedent that is a dangerous and slippery slope. If we get everyone to block this, then it will be that much easier to get everyone to block that... then that... then that... you get the idea. It paves the road for all out censorship, which blows big time. I for one am not upset that they want to block hatred, horribly offensive, and ille

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by AHuxley ( 892839 )
          France would have a "Maginot Line".
          All the smart bears just move in via the Ardennes Forest.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      That sounds like hate speech to me!

      The Internet should be nothing but puppies and rainbows!

    • Thank Le American. (Score:1, Informative)

      by twitter ( 104583 ) *

      That's what they call their new president and this plan lives up to the name. Massive censorship to "fight child porn" is a very American stupidity that I doubted any other state besides the Vatican would follow.

      The SF Gate had another story about this four days ago. [sfgate.com] They point out that several other countries have done similar things. Everyone's censoring like it's 1998 again [slashdot.org].

    • Re:See guys! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 14, 2008 @06:13PM (#23795353)
      Why don't they just hire some experienced /. moderators to mod sites as -1, troll; -5, kiddie p0rn; +1, informative; +5, adult p0rn; etc.

      Use what already works.

    • Re:See guys! (Score:5, Funny)

      by STrinity ( 723872 ) on Saturday June 14, 2008 @07:26PM (#23795833) Homepage
      I for one blame Bush.

      • I for one blame Bush.

        Because we know we never had any censorship under Clinton. We know that every president other then Bush protected the constitution 100%. We know that every president other then bush didn't invade other countries for reasons that didn't involve us. Basically, sure bush is at fault but so are most of the other presidents that have preceded him and I'm willing to bet that if either McCain or Obama manages to get into the White House things aren't going to be much better. And plus, laws are created by c

    • I love France, but I can't trust them to determine what constitutes 'hate speech'. They will let the most violent jihad site continue and force Likud sites to be blocked.

      Now France in the mother of western civilization, but they don't have two wide oceans protecting them from monsters. This has led them over the centuries to develop the tendency to talk tough but roll-over whenever someone shows up on the border with the ability to disrupt their version of the soft life. When someone else
      • " Now France in the mother of western civilization, but they don't have two wide oceans protecting them from monsters."

        WAS the mother of some of it...

        The people who accomplished that which we admired France for are long ago dead, and their beliefs are not passed genetically.

        As for "monsters", now that our particular choice of ideological propaganda against German Fascism has permanently discredited the idea of asserting that ANY culture is better, or even different, than another it is our duty as "civilzed"

  • First on the list: (Score:5, Funny)

    by kunkie ( 859716 ) on Saturday June 14, 2008 @05:55PM (#23795227)
    http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/text/victories.html [albinoblacksheep.com]

  • Then it's very fortunate... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...that the current French government cares more about giving the impression they're doing something that actually improving anything. Just like 80% of what they say, that *wonderful* idea will never see the light of day. ...remember Cairo, the french-funded Google killer? Yeah. That's what I thought.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Mornedhel ( 961946 )

      That's *Quaero*, latin for "I seek".

      The thing actually has backing from several French universities and France Télécom (and Deutsche Telekom until the German started their own project). Now, while I agree it was largely spawned out of a misplaced patriotism, it was actually started by the Chirac government, not the current one (disclaimer : I am not a fan of either). Plus, it has, since march 2008, funding from the European Commission, so it's not going nowhere, either.

      At worse, we'll get

  • Peer pressure (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SirLurksAlot ( 1169039 ) on Saturday June 14, 2008 @05:58PM (#23795261)

    Other democracies have done it. France could wait no longer.

    Gotta love that "Everyone else is doing it, so why shouldn't we?" mentality.

    Seriously though, I want to know exactly how this will work. Who gets to decide what sites go on the black-list, and how deep are they going to dig into a claim before a site gets taken down? I can see a huge potential for abuse here.

    • I got a great idea.

      Don't the French train pigs to hunt for truffles [wikipedia.org]? Pigs are attracted to truffles and can sniff those out miles away...

      So, how about they recruit the imprisoned French pedophiles to search for the illegal content? Makes much sense than asking the public to report the sites they aren't likely to visit in a hundred years, anyways.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mo^ ( 150717 )
        OT Sidenote: Pigs eat the truffles, too expensive. They mostly use dogs now, as they "fetch" the truffles for treats in return.

    • Re:Peer pressure (Score:5, Insightful)

      by owlnation ( 858981 ) on Saturday June 14, 2008 @06:23PM (#23795431)

      Seriously though, I want to know exactly how this will work. Who gets to decide what sites go on the black-list, and how deep are they going to dig into a claim before a site gets taken down? I can see a huge potential for abuse here.
      It's the wikipedia model. Which, of course, we all know to be fair, free, trustworthy, high quality, and not at all run by cabals or excons.
    • This finally gives people an excuse to search for child porn in France! "Hey! I'm just looking for it to report it!"

    • Re:Peer pressure (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Reziac ( 43301 ) * on Saturday June 14, 2008 @09:14PM (#23796617) Homepage Journal
      The citizens of France should send their government's websites to the blacklist. That way they'll be sure not to be exploited by internet scammers and the like.

      • Somehow I presume they will have a whitelist that precedes their blacklist. Our company firewall has a whitelist, so the tech team can lookup URL's like www.processexplorer.com without it being blacked out (because of the word "sex", our firewall is stupid to the limit) and www.zallmanusa.com.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Reziac ( 43301 ) *
          Probably true, however the people could make such a nuisance of themselves by repeatedly submitting gov't sites, that they effectively DDoS the system.

          Well, one can hope, but France's history tends to indicate the contrary -- the people do nothing, nothing, nothing, then the whole place suddenly explodes and things get worse for a lot of people and no better for the rest.

  • Not a problem (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Just keep submitting the blacklist submission site until it gets blacklisted. Problem solved.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Jarjarthejedi ( 996957 )
      But, will it then unblacklist everything, as a result of the blacklisting software being unable to reach the blacklisting site? Oh, that would make for an interesting paradox...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mikael ( 484 )
        It depends on the way they implement it. Presumably, the routing tables of the routers will be set in a way, such that the IP addresses of the blocked sites will be unreachable.

        But this can be defeated by proxy servers. So France could ban the IP addresses of every proxy server, which might also be a university server or political discussion site.

        But such sites could also copy botnet's and have rapidly rotating server IP addresses using DNS entries. So France would also have to ban every international DNS s

  • DDoS? (Score:1)

    by nfk ( 570056 )
    This certainly has the potential for abuse, and it may be dangerous to give this kind of power to a few individuals in the state, but how could it be used for DDoS of systems other than the government's servers that receive the complaints?

    • Re:DDoS? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gutnor ( 872759 ) on Saturday June 14, 2008 @06:09PM (#23795323)
      Post some kiddie porn on a forum and report.

      But well that all depends on the sophistication of the system. The real time part is probably a key element. Defacement followed by report could put a site off-line for a few hours/days or maybe months since getting removed from a blacklist is always much harder.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by nfk ( 570056 )
        That may be a valid point, depending, as you say, on the sophistication of the system, but it is still not a distributed attack. The only way I can imagine a distributed attack is if the system is automatic and there is a threshold above which a site is flagged, but that is not the impression I got from reading the article.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Kjella ( 173770 )

        But well that all depends on the sophistication of the system. The real time part is probably a key element. Defacement followed by report could put a site off-line for a few hours/days or maybe months since getting removed from a blacklist is always much harder.

        If you got someone doing possession and distribution of kiddie porn for the sake of bringing down a forum, it sounds like serious overkill. It should certinaly ensure that once you got that issue cleared up, they'll be all over nailing that sucker. And they're not going to block YouTube if you try to pull that kind of stunt, only significantly lesser sites which again asks why? Pay some botnetters to DDoS it or script kiddie to deface it and it'll be far more effective than this...

      • Why go through the trouble to post illegal porn and hate speech when Google will link you to those for free!
    • Depending on the manner in which they perform checks, all you need to do is convince them a site has some malevolent content and bam, blocked.
  • If the French people are on board with this, and they find a way to make it work, then who are we to say it's censorship and bad? Why is incest illegal? Why don't we introduce children to sexuality? In the strictest sense, these things are malum prohibitum, not malum in se. If sexuality is good, then why forbid it between family members or children? We do that because these are things that, as a society, we believe to be wrong. And because we feel that allowing them would open the door to abuse, making the dangers of those behaviours outweigh their potential good.

    If the people of France feel that the dangers inherent in certain pornography outweigh their good, then who are we to say out of hand this is a bad thing? I don't know how popular this law is in France, but it seems to me that if it's unpopular by the majority of people, it simply won't work. If the majority want it, they'll make it (for the most part) work. Sure you'll have people who will be able to circumvent it, but I don't see this as a system they are intending to be safe from circumvention. Just a national net-nanny system. If that's what they want, then I say we apply the live and let live to them as a group and say great - more power to you.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by mrbluze ( 1034940 )

      If sexuality is good, then why forbid it between family members or children?

      This would appear to apply to a society that had absolutely no religious basis. A truly atheist society, perhaps.

      But on the contrary, even an atheist society is likely to ban things which threaten the species. Incest / inbreeding causes serious genetic problems. Pregnancy in prematurity causes serious physical problems. Sexual experience in the emotionally inexperienced causes serious psychosocial problems.

      So, as such, they are just as likely to be banned in an atheist society than in any other.

      It's no

      • we as a civilization have proof that these behaviours cause problems that we, as a society, just don't want to have.

        First, deliver the proofs. Scientific, not anecdotal.

        Second, are "we as a civilization" also in favor of banning certain people with genetic diseases from procreation ?

        Frak, I am only this short of invoking Godwin's.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by mrbluze ( 1034940 )

          First, deliver the proofs. Scientific, not anecdotal.

          Not all the proof can be equally 'scientific' because the ideal scientific process itself would have to be 'unethical' in many of these circumstances (unless you could do a computer simulation of reality). But, for example, underaged sex does have a correlation with increased sexually transmitted infection with increased incidence of infertility, etc. etc. Eg: this recent abstract [stdjournal.com] and MANY others. It's unlikely to change, either, because compliance with medication and condoms is poor already, and poorer s

      • I spoke of sexuality, not pregnancy. There are many many forms of sexuality that involve no risk of pregnancy. Really, though, that was just an example. One I chose because it was in the same genre as the pornography laws they set up. There are many other examples of things that are malum prohibitum, but let me back up and be more generic. This particular implementation seems to me to be one that would only work if it is has the support of the public. I don't see much difference between this and taxes

      • Incest / inbreeding causes serious genetic problems.

        Inbreeding certainly causes problems, but not incest by itself. Yet it's the latter that is usually illegal, regardless of age, consent, etc.

        On a side note, following the same lines, people with known hereditary diseases (genetic ones in particular) should also be forbidden from breeding (or even having sex at all). But we don't do that; we did for some time - it was called "eugenics" - but then it was labelled a crime against the humanity and abandone

    • Re:If the French people are on board... good (Score:4, Insightful)

      by erlehmann ( 1045500 ) on Saturday June 14, 2008 @06:55PM (#23795621)

      Why is incest illegal?
      Most certainly because many people fear that the risk of disabled children is higher in incest pairings. Few, of course, want to continue this thought and forbid haemophiliacs [wikipedia.org] to procreate. It's an irrational, inconsequent thing, you know.

      If the people of France feel that the dangers inherent in certain pornography outweigh their good, then who are we to say out of hand this is a bad thing?
      Libertarians. Making victimless actions crimes is an authoritarian thing, where you pass on your morals on others without any connection. Your rhetoric is flawed, btw: You seem to be advocating absolute moral relativism on libertarian grounds - but that leads into a inherent chaotic system without any moral directives at all. Finally, let me be the first to ask: If the people of Yemen feel that the dangers inherent in homosexuality justify the death penalty, then who are we to say out of hand, this is a bad thing ?

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by mrbluze ( 1034940 )

        Few, of course, want to continue this thought and forbid haemophiliacs [wikipedia.org] to procreate. It's an irrational, inconsequent thing, you know.

        It's why society will continue to oscillate between eugenics/interventionism/social conservatism and hurt-no-one/social liberalism.

        So often I hear staff in my department say "these imbeciles shouldn't have a license to have babies", out of sheer frustration at.. well.. imbeciles. But it could just as well be any group. It's just one logical (and not irrational) 'solution' to disease and perceived inferiority. Compassion is its antithesis, whose logic is a little more subtle I would say.

        Finally, let me be the first to ask: If the people of Yemen feel that the dangers inherent in homosexuality justify the death penalty, then who are we to say out of hand, this is a bad thing ?

        Not wanting to

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Excelcia ( 906188 )

        Most certainly because many people fear that the risk of disabled children is higher in incest pairings. Few, of course, want to continue this thought and forbid haemophiliacs to procreate. It's an irrational, inconsequent thing, you know.

        As I pointed out in another post, there are many many forms of sexuality that don't involve any risk of pregnancy. The word incest implies intercourse, so let's drop that and go with sexual contact. I am prohibited from engaging in any sort of sexual behaviour with my c

    • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      +1 Pretentious use of italics in Latin?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Child pornography is illegal in most countries, so I don't think blocking access to those sites is particularly controversial. What might be controversial is the idea of giving a government agency a broad charter to block access to any site that might be considered dangerous to the public welfare. This is exactly what the Chinese government has been doing, and they use their authority to censor sites that are even mildly critical of the government, as well as those that might be promoting "dangerous ideas

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by weorthe ( 666189 )
      Freedom isn't the right of the majority to suppress minority opinion, that's why.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by epee1221 ( 873140 )

      Just a national net-nanny system. If that's what they want, then I say we apply the live and let live to them as a group and say great - more power to you.
      You mean, "if that's what they _all_ want," yes? Otherwise, a policy like this runs counter to the "live and let live" idea.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by MSZ ( 26307 )

      I don't know how popular this law is in France, but it seems to me that if it's unpopular by the majority of people, it simply won't work. If the majority want it, they'll make it (for the most part) work.

      That would be fine, anyone not wanting to see something should be free to not look at it. Or free to get some pussified internet feed instead of the real thing.

      However, if I understand this correctly, the system will not work this way. No majority opinion, no vote - just some little bureaucrat reviewing an

    • I don't know how popular this law is in France, but it seems to me that if it's unpopular by the majority of people, it simply won't work. If the majority want it, they'll make it (for the most part) work.


      We're talking about France here. It's quite possible for it to work even if most of the people hate it. After all, almost nobody actually liked the Third Republic and it lasted for seventy years.

    • If the people of France feel that [...]. If the majority want it [...].

      How about making it opt-in or opt-out? I don't care where it's enforced (at your ISP or in your /etc/hosts), as long as the user has the choice of looking what they want. Then the majority who wants it can get it, without imposing censorship on those who perceive it as that.

      In that way, everybody can get what they want, not just the majority.

      I agree with "live and let live". We shouldn't boss around the citizens of France. Imagine now that you are a French citizen who doesn't want the blacklist. Would

  • Wait.. What? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Cathoderoytube ( 1088737 ) on Saturday June 14, 2008 @06:15PM (#23795363)
    Does this mean the French government is encouraging people to search for child pornography? Because really, you have to go looking for that stuff specifically if you want to find it to report it.

    • Does this mean the French government is encouraging people to search for child pornography? Because really, you have to go looking for that stuff specifically if you want to find it to report it.

      That's actually a good point - the public are required to flag sites that are inappropriate, right? How many people that (view kiddy porn) do you think will actually flag the sites that they visit?

      This is similar to the failed ideas about stopping spam - infact, I'm sure that the spam form could come out and be modded to suit this situation

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by linzeal ( 197905 )
      Have you been to alt.sex newsgroups lately? Every group seems to have links to pedophile and "preteen model" sites if not actual pics. I used to download entire newsgroups at a time to peruse at my leisure but that is impossible today with at least a smattering of inappropriate images in each group. At age 30 I finally just bought a few subscriptions to porn sites because I am sick of seeing anyone sexualized under 21, thats my cutoff point. Get off my lawn!!
      • My own kids are 28 and 23, consequently anyone under 30 looks like a kid to me (and yes this includes most of the police force). However I have to ask, is there such a thing as a 20yo French virgin? I say this because there is a huge difference between images of a prepubecent child being physically and phycologically abused and a 20yo bonking on the internet for money. One is evidence of a vile crime, the other is a modern day implementation of the oldest proffesion.

        Of course there is a huge grey area be

  • translation (Score:3, Funny)

    by owlnation ( 858981 ) on Saturday June 14, 2008 @06:19PM (#23795391)
    What's French for "whatcouldpossiblygowrong?"

  • Michèle (Score:4, Informative)

    by Mornedhel ( 961946 ) on Saturday June 14, 2008 @06:21PM (#23795405)
    It's Michèle, not Michel. Wrong gender. (And damn you /. ! I shouldn't have to know HTML entities to type simple accents !)
    • TFA states that french ISPs have "struck a deal" with the government, but the truth is that there's only the government claiming that.

      Right after the statement hit the press, the ISPs issued their own statements [nouvelobs.com] through the President of the national FAI association representing them, telling how they had not been consulted and had not agreed to anything, how they had not changed position on the inefficiency of any filtering scheme, and how the statement by Mme Alliot-Marie was unilateral goobledegook lackin

  • French internet will become high school! YAY! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by plasmacutter ( 901737 ) on Saturday June 14, 2008 @06:23PM (#23795429)
    So now anyone who doesn't like what another person says on the internet can spread ugly rumors about them to the "gub'mint" and destroy them.

    I'm sure everyone will applaud france's introduction of the ever so just "high school system" of internet enforcement.
  • ... the idea is to blacklist kiddie porn, by expecting people to tell the government "HEY LOOK AT ME, I'M LOOKING AT KIDDIE PORN AND THIS IS THE SITE I'M AT!!!"? I mean, really, do they actually expect people to admit they have knowledge of these sites?
    • Because you've never stumbled upon sites with questionable content ? I know I have, and I wasn't even looking for porn (as far as I can remember :) ) It was a Russian site offering pictures of very young naked girls. But I'll admit it was years ago when there wasn't such thing as google's safe search and the like.

      And to make the discussion progress, I'll first say that the key benefit I see to this system is that it makes a clear destination when one encounter such a site by mistake/chance. When I found tha

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by R2.0 ( 532027 )
      "I mean, really, do they actually expect people to admit they have knowledge of these sites?"

      My guess is that they will have the same problem that the FBI had with some Mafia informants - the informants used the FBI as cover while they continued to do crimes, and the FBI continued to give them a free pass because they were going after "bigger fish".

      I can see a pedophile downloading a whole site, reporting it (and not being investigated himself because he is being a good citizen), uploading that haul to a di
    • I'm sure there's no end of religious meddlers who've got nothing better to do all day than hunt down evil websites.

      This law will keep them busy (and that's A Good Thing).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Reziac ( 43301 ) *
      And couldn't this open up the folks reporting it to charges of possession of [insert contraband here] ??

  • Racial hatred:europe::gun control:us (Score:4, Insightful)

    by R2.0 ( 532027 ) on Saturday June 14, 2008 @06:55PM (#23795625)
    I keep on seeing regulations on "hate speech" and "racial hatred" referenced in Europe, an dwas just struck by the similarity to gun control efforts in the US. Specifically, there is a problem (violent crime/racial tension) with a root cause (poverty and historical discrimination/current discrimination and a history of sectarianism and ethnic pogroms), and the leaders are chasing after the tools (guns/speech) instead of the actors or the causes.

    AND NEITHER ARE WORKING! The locations with the highest levels of gun control in the US also have the highest level of violent crime(NYC, DC, Chicago), and the places in Europe with the strictest speech laws have the most trouble with their minorities (Turks in Germany, N. Africans in France). Does anyone who is intellectually honest believe that the problem is that the laws are not strict enough?

    And for those who will say that the situations are totally different, because guns kill and words don't, remember that the next time France lets its southern region burn, and this time there are French citizens in the cars. For that matter, talk to the Jews - there are six million fewer of them and I don't think Hitler ever lifted a finger against one. He just spoke and wrote.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by no1home ( 1271260 )
      Somebody mod the parent up! R2.0 really nailed the issue on the head. As I commented here on /. for the story about the ISPs agreeing to filter based on the blacklist provided by the non-governmental group with no community oversight, it isn't going to work! If you want to protect the kids (like most of us do), then quit wasting time, money, and energy on garbage like this and go after the pervs and the server hosts.

      What makes this interesting is the difference in implementation and how it's wrong. The

  • 4chan (Score:3, Funny)

    by matchbookandfire ( 1151527 ) on Saturday June 14, 2008 @06:57PM (#23795647)
    This just in - 4chan unavailable in France.
  • Frenchfag here. What I think is that pedophilia is just a pretext to this governement. It have beens years a lot of laws have been tried to be applied against illegal downloads, all of them worse than the others. They give up on Oliviennes idea of law (head of a music seller in france), and like magic Odapi appears, for the good of all the people, against child pornography. Of course it sounds good, everyone is ok with a law like this, and no one will go further to understand the real goal. I mean when pol

  • Oblig Slipper Slope (Score:5, Interesting)

    by iamhigh ( 1252742 ) * on Saturday June 14, 2008 @07:02PM (#23795673)
    Anytime you start to filter and suppress speech, you are well on your way to a troubling situation. Even if you allow majority rule, you can potential be blocking very important minority opinions/info.
  • There should be a contest to see who can game this system the quickest. First place goes to getting a French government website blacklisted. Second place goes to getting any government website blacklisted. Third place for any Google property Forth place for Facebook or MySpace (though MySpace might have an added perk since it's annoying). Fifth place for any major university This could be fun.
  • I'd write a script that would continually submit whitehouse.gov, loc.gov, foxnews.com, msnbc.com and encourage everybody to run it constantly. It'd be so bitchin'.

    Seriously though, I'd like to know what this plan actually entails -- is it something simple you could get around by using a foreign DNS, or would you need full on TOR.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Ox0065 ( 1085977 )
      Actually if you trialed the script with the french system, I could see some of those sites justifiably making the cut.
      The scope of their definition of wrong extends beyond kiddie porn. It also covers hate mongering.

  • Will the list be public? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by thesaurus ( 1220706 ) on Saturday June 14, 2008 @07:52PM (#23796033)
    And if so, isn't France just creating a "Get Yer Child Porn Here!" list?
  • Well, putting aside the problems with having a small group of people censor the internet, tasking this to a large group of people brings in other problems that didn't even exist with small groups. Here's a cute example:
    Take a group of religions with websites. Each one considers all the others 'offensive', so they try to make an effort to have all of the other religions' websites censored.(the rationale may be "so what if its not child porn, it's still offensive") As a result, every single site has a la
  • If a user finds a site that has child porn on it, it's most likely the user is there on purpose. So I doubt that user is going to click the "inappropriate" button. It's not like Stumble took them there. Also how will someone DDos attack a site using this method?

  • Read the Article Anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by qazwart ( 261667 ) on Saturday June 14, 2008 @10:10PM (#23797011) Homepage
    The article begins talking about how the State of New York (Hey! That's not France!) made a deal with the three big ISPs to block child porn. The article also stated:

    Among other countries that have already implemented similar measures include Britain, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Canada and New Zealand.


    What is different is that the French have created an actual mechanism to report such sites:

    Under the French plan, internet users, via a platform, will be able to signal inappropriate sites and the state, receiving the complaints in real time, will then decide whether the sites are to go on a so-called black list to be passed on to internet service providers to enforce site blocks.


    This strikes me as maybe a slightly better way sites are blacklisted in the United States: Individual ISPs just block the site at random, or someone sues someone else in court. By having an official list, ISPs can't ban a site for possible political or competition reasons and claim they're trying to stop something else. There have been several cases where birth control or pro-choice sites have become unavailable and the ISP claims it was merely attempting to shield the eyes of poor innocent children from non-friendly material.

    I am not sure of the best way to handle this situation, but since the French government is attempting to do what other Western democracies are attempting to do, I can't quite call this exactly the rise of fascism.
  • OK, most of us can agree that kiddie porn is a bad thing. Terrorism, well I have no idea of how you judge that, but racial hatred? Honestly, if we banned racial hatred we would have to burn 95% of the history books out there.

    Hows this? Take an account of the conflict in Bosnia Herzegovina. A Muslim account will be called racist/hate-driven content by many Serb; same goes for vice versa (well, only if you are a Serb, for everyone else it would be called honesty).
  • Don't pick on France too much for this. This is indicative of a wider attitude among all EU governments, especially the EU beuracracy itself. Witness their threats against Ireland for daring to vote against the Lisbon Treaty. The previous EU constitution was shot down by French and Dutch voters, so this time, the EU simply decided it would bypass voters completely (hey, nice tactic) and rush it through European legislatures instead. The only problem is that Ireland's constitution forbids such a thing there.
  • ... if I ever come across a webpage with kiddie porn, you can rest assured I'm sending the link to the cops. I have no issues with having an easy reporting system.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by o'reor ( 581921 )

      I think most people in France agree on that, and there are laws that already enable cops to crack down on kiddie porn networks.

      So why these new measures ? Well, four words : control of the media.

      President Sarkozy already has a record of trying to influence mainstream medias, either by having his closest friends acquire newspapers or TV networks, or harassing news directors on the phone. Most blogs are still out of reach for him though, and this is where the most vocal opponents thrive [alarabiya.net].

      The whole proposed

  • ...who fink back on them and your rapidly get the entire sex online industry gets blacklisted. Since people can't watch porn anymore, they start going to food and gardening and news sites - which get blacklisted eventually by angry ex-porn-site-owners who have no business anymore.
    Internet grinds to a halt in a few months.
    Interesting idea.

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