In a well-intentioned yet dangerous move to fight online fraud, France is on the verge of forcing browsers to create a dystopian technical capability. Article 6 (para II and III) of the SREN Bill would force browser providers to create the means to mandatorily block websites present on a government provided list. Such a move will overturn decades of established content moderation norms and provide a playbook for authoritarian governments that will easily negate the existence of censorship circumvention tools.
While motivated by a legitimate concern, this move to block websites directly within the browser would be disastrous for the open internet and disproportionate to the goals of the legal proposal – fighting fraud. It will also set a worrying precedent and create technical capabilities that other regimes will leverage for far more nefarious purposes. Leveraging existing malware and phishing protection offerings rather than replacing them with government provided, device level block-lists is a far better route to achieve the goals of the legislation.
This is just plain stupid.
Forcing browser to block certain sites is like making car manufacturers make the car shutdown if you are trying to smuggle foreign cheese in to France.
Tech illiterates making the decision here.
As an Englishman I feel it’s my calling to smuggle cheddar and Wensleydale into Normandy.
Could companies just refuse, and place a “this product is not available in your country” on the download page
If people download the incompatible browser anyways then ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Theoretically yes, but I’d think that would just result in users switching to browsers which do comply with the law (Chrome, probably)
Do you genuinely believe an average computer user, when presented with a block page, would attempt to circumvent it?
Maybe a small minority would, but overall I find it extremely unlikely. It takes a lot less effort to just download an alternative.
What in the ever loving hell is up with France’s current government right now? It’s like Macron has said fuck it, lets give the fascists a way to sneak in
It’s not just right now : this president has been here since 2017 and most of the core ministers are the same since then.
They have been cracking down on civil liberties from the start, but they make it more and more obvious since 2022 (because there is no re-election possible after 2 terms). Using anti-terrorist special legislatilns against environmental and himan rights activists, making demonstrations repression ever more violent…
At the same time, to guarantee that pseudo-centrist (actually right wing) keep getting elected, they have worked to make the far right more powerful. This way, in every election, they can end up being the “rational” choice.
This Macron guy is really trying to make people hate him isn’t he. At this point it feels like he actually wants the French to burn shit.
Macron is a malodorous shit stain fascist mother fucker. I’m ashamed of my fellow citizens who voted twice for this human error.
Disclaimer, I’m not French. But it seemed like the alternative was Le Pen and from what I’ve read she would certainly be more of a shitstain fascist, just with a populist tinge.
I’ve said it already, and I’m saying it again :
France politics have 3 paths :
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Kinda extreme left ; anti vaxxers, anti nuclear, pro islam, pro immigration, anti NATO, anti Europe, pro-russia and pro-dictatorships overall (Mélenchon)
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Extreme right : anti ecology, deeply pro-rich (anti union), overall neo-fascists as you would except, very much anti Europe, anti NATO, pro-putin and pro-russia. (le Pen)
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Macron, who is pro-rich, but not pro-putin and kinda Nato-friendly and Europe friendly.
We need to build back guillotines.
C’est tellement n’importe quoi comme généralisation que c’en serait presque drôle si ce n’était pas grave. Dire que ia France Insoumise c’est l’extrême gauche antivax, sérieux, un peu de culture politique ça ferait pas de mal, non ? Vous êtes à deux doigts d’écrire que ce sont des islamo-gauchistes. Et c’est quoi cette description toute gentille du macronisme ? Le macronisme est une nouvelle émanation de l’extrême centre comme on peut le voir depuis des années. Anti-syndicat, anti-peuple, neo-libéral etc.
Au moins vous avez bien décrit l’extrême droite, félicitations, 1 sur 3 c’est pas mal.
Edit: English version
It’s such an absurd generalization that it would be almost funny if it wasn’t serious. To say that France Insoumise is the extreme left antivax, seriously, a little political culture would not hurt, right? You’re about to write that they are Islamo-leftists. And what is this nice description of Macronism? Macronism is the new emanation of the extreme center as we can see for years. Anti-syndicate, anti-people, neo-liberal etc.
At least you described the far right well, congratulations, 1 out of 3 is not bad.
Fi est très proche de eelv , et Jadot est un antivax, ça sert a rien de le cacher. Je crois que Mélenchon a déjà critiqué les vaccins par le passé, mais sur le coup je peux me tromper.
Par contre, globalement lfi est plutot pro-islam ( https://www.lefigaro.fr/politique/loi-separatisme-plutot-que-l-islamisme-les-deputes-insoumis-preferent-s-attarder-sur-le-christianisme-20210204 , anecdotique + lefigaro, mais bon)
Et oui pour Macron c’est 100% de la version simplifiée et gentille, j’ai pas mis qu’il transformait la France en état policier, que c’était un menteur et un destructeur de démocratie, c’est vrai.
Et merci pour le compliment pour notre extrême droite :p
Ça se voit que je déteste tout le monde sans exception ?
(Sorry for English viewers, I’m not translating that)
Since when is our leftwing anti vax ? What have you been smoking ? And what the hell does pro Islam even mean ?? I’m baffled. This is inaccurate as all hell.
I’m sorry but what the actual fuck is your political system? I’m been sitting here thinking France is one of the healthiest democracies because you actually protest. But now I see why all the protesting.
Didn’t he say that NATO is braindead.
Though in that instance it’s not really about politics, he’s simply pushing long-standing French security doctrine which insists on strategic autonomy but also wants the whole of Europe to be strategically autonomous so a) the French don’t have to foot the bill alone and b) the US has less opportunity to klutz their dick around.
While I could see maybe the larger companies operating in France agreeing to implement this, I don’t think they would be able to legally force a smaller foreign open source browser developer into the same practice? Take qutebrowser for instance, the developer is from Switzerland. Unless their website is hosted in France, I don’t see how French law applies to him, nor the site he is hosting the browser on? They would have to use ISPs to block the website, but even then, you could still get it through GitHub. Maybe GitHub could be forced into removing the browser as Microsoft probably have a French office, but it still seems like a legal and practical nightmare to actually enforce this through the browser. As someone else mentioned, pushing rules on ISPs seems like a more doable thing if you WANT to oppress people (which I am also against of course).
While they may not be able to force small developers, they can force the users by deeming all browsers that do not implement this feature illegal. This possibly will not work on the tech savvy, but standard users (the majority) will be affected.
That’s true, I was just so baffled by how inconvenient and inefficient this suggestion was. I’m reminded of one of these photos, which I think have been used for many internet proposals/legislations in the past:
