[pp.int.general] LOPPSI: The Internet is now filtered in France

[Brian McNeil]

On Thu, 2010-02-11 at 18:49 +0100, Valentin Villenave wrote:
> Greetings everyone,
> 
> against all odds, the French Parliament has just voted the 4th article
> of the "LOPPSI" law (that also happens to include such things as
> mandatory video-surveillance, no-children-in-the-streets-after-22pm
> measures, full-body scanners and other delights).
> 
> This specific article gives the government (with a judge's signature,
> fortunately) the ability to force ISPs to block several blacklisted
> websites for all their users. Just like in Australia, in a nutshell.
> And just like in Australia, child pornography is the alleged motive
> but we already know this won't last long don't we?
> 
> OK, who's next now? UK? Germany (again)? Italy?

The UK already has the Internet Watch Foundation. This is, and you'll
like this bit, *not* a government body. However, over 90% of all UK ISPs
subscribe to the IWF-administered blacklist - which they are forbidden
to see the contents of.

The biggest publicity the IWF have had was when they screwed up and
added a Wikipedia page on the Scorpions album Virgin Killer to the
blacklist. The blacklist implementation mechanism resulted in all
UK->Wikipedia traffic going through a very small number of hidden
proxies which were quickly blocked due to being shared with UK-based
vandals.

Oh, and the list was - originally - just "suspected" child porn. Now? It
has been expanded to 'extremist' and 'hate-speech' websites.

It is still run by an organisation not covered by UK legislation, but
given a quiet nod by the government who lean heavily on all ISPs to sign
up.

These knuckle-dragging Neanderthals shouldn't be allowed anywhere near
the Internet.



-- 
Brian McNeil <brian.mcneil at wikinewsie.org>
Wikinewsie.org
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