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Petition to stop France from forcing browsers like Firefox to censor websites

foundation.mozilla.org

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Re: Petition to stop France from forcing browsers like Firefox to censor websites

#41

Post by rvnx »

btilly wrote: post #32
fluidcruft wrote: post #6

I have less than zero idea what's going on here? I understand the broad topic but exactly what is France demanding? A list of blocked URLs browsers should refuse to render? A list of IPs that are forbidden (doesn't make sense since that can be handled at ISP or OS level). Blocked words/phrases (trivially bypassed by people who have the list and can iterate on text until allowed)? Blocked links? Input fields that prev…

They want a way for a government provided list to block URLs on your browser. I predict that hackers will find a way to replace the government list with their own in 3, 2, 1...

Google Safebrowsing is very rarely compromised (except indirectly when Gaia was hacked at Google), this can be the same mechanism.

Re: Petition to stop France from forcing browsers like Firefox to censor websites

#43

Post by bonzini »

btilly wrote: post #32
fluidcruft wrote: post #6

I have less than zero idea what's going on here? I understand the broad topic but exactly what is France demanding? A list of blocked URLs browsers should refuse to render? A list of IPs that are forbidden (doesn't make sense since that can be handled at ISP or OS level). Blocked words/phrases (trivially bypassed by people who have the list and can iterate on text until allowed)? Blocked links? Input fields that prev…

They want a way for a government provided list to block URLs on your browser. I predict that hackers will find a way to replace the government list with their own in 3, 2, 1...

Replace hackers with users.

Re: Petition to stop France from forcing browsers like Firefox to censor websites

#45

Post by TacticalCoder »

tasogare wrote: post #28
mkl95 wrote: post #13

The French government's approach to modern tech is similar to the UK and Germany in some ways. They seem to be advised by a bunch of decrepit dudes who stopped learning about computers before the OSI model was created.

There're a bunch of corrupted inviduals with no counter power to keep them in check. No decisions are made for the benefit of the French people since a long time, every law passed is either to augment their power, rise taxes (already world top 1 or 2 depending on the year) or to the benefit their friends owning private companies. Of course technology freedom will suffer from this as well.

> ... or to the benefit their friends owning private companies.

Yup this one in France is really a big problem. The public sector spendings officially represents something like 58.1% of the french GDP (official "Insee" numbers from 2023, for 2022)... France is not far from a planned economy and, unsurprisingly, it's a particularly harsh environment for real small private SMEs (i.e. those without friends at the state) and for entrepreneurs, for they're getting trounced by taxes.

And that gigantic state (percentage wise of the GDP, not on the world stage) still cannot prevent days of riots and drug-dealers from ruling the streets (like in the city of Marseille).

A deeply corrupt state where public servants are planted so that taxes can grow and, in return, the people don't even get safe streets.

But all is fine and well for these corrupt politicians because soon they'll be able to prevent comments such as yours or mine from being read by anyone.

Re: Petition to stop France from forcing browsers like Firefox to censor websites

#46

Post by Zetice »

antoinebalaine wrote: post #5
ltadeut wrote: post #3

It would be nice if Mozilla would add more context around it. That said, it’s freaking exhausting how these dumb actions keep being taken by governments all over the world. It seems like every month there’s some new crap going on

Here's the context: the fr gov's been acting against national interest for more than 20 years in a row. The people know it. The gov knows the people know. The gov wants to pretend it's not doing anything wrong. It could keep pretending credibly, if only people would keep their trap shut on the web. So now gov wants to control what people can see and say on the web.

Could you try to explain it again, without the editorializing? Just a straight, facts only version of events, please.

Don’t worry, we’ll be upset, we love getting upset, but we have to feel like we figured it out. Americans just prefer to bring our outrage from home, rather than have it supplied for us when we get there.

Re: Petition to stop France from forcing browsers like Firefox to censor websites

#47

Post by FirmwareBurner »

tasogare wrote: post #28
mkl95 wrote: post #13

The French government's approach to modern tech is similar to the UK and Germany in some ways. They seem to be advised by a bunch of decrepit dudes who stopped learning about computers before the OSI model was created.

There're a bunch of corrupted inviduals with no counter power to keep them in check. No decisions are made for the benefit of the French people since a long time, every law passed is either to augment their power, rise taxes (already world top 1 or 2 depending on the year) or to the benefit their friends owning private companies. Of course technology freedom will suffer from this as well.

>No decisions are made for the benefit of the French people since a long time, every law passed is either to augment their power, rise taxes or to the benefit their friends owning private companies.

Same in Germany as well. The country long stopped caring for its people and mainly operates as a vehicle for german industrial interests to make money.

>There're a bunch of corrupted inviduals with no counter power to keep them in check.

The guillotine has proven this to be incorect. Separating their heads from their bodies helps keep rulers unable to perform further acts of corruption.

Re: Petition to stop France from forcing browsers like Firefox to censor websites

#48

Post by polotics »

raverbashing wrote: post #38
dist-epoch wrote: post #15

[flagged]

Last I've heard the web browser was invented in Switzerland, as opposed to Gopher (US invented) which ended up unused

Let's pick elementary particle sized nits... Tim Berner Lee's office most likely had noise from planes landing at Geneva airport, but still most likely was on the territory of France :-)

Re: Petition to stop France from forcing browsers like Firefox to censor websites

#49

Post by Mordisquitos »

mkl95 wrote: post #13

The French government's approach to modern tech is similar to the UK and Germany in some ways. They seem to be advised by a bunch of decrepit dudes who stopped learning about computers before the OSI model was created.

> They seem to be advised by a bunch of decrepit dudes who stopped learning about computers before the OSI model was created.

I suspect its more like "dudes who know nothing about computers (let alone the OSI model)" coming up with dumb ideas. These ideas are all approved and encouraged by advisors under the influence of Big Tech interests, which are more than happy to achieve regulatory capture [0] to protect their proprietary and closed consumer products from consumer-orientated FOSS projects, by making it harder (or even impossible) for these to even operate on a fully free capacity.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

Re: Petition to stop France from forcing browsers like Firefox to censor websites

#50

Post by WeylandYutani »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #45
tasogare wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There're a bunch of corrupted inviduals with no counter power to keep them in check. No decisions are made for the benefit of the French people since a long time, every law passed is either to augment their power, rise taxes (already world top 1 or 2 depending on the year) or to the benefit their friends owning private companies. Of course technology freedom will suffer from this as well.

> ... or to the benefit their friends owning private companies. Yup this one in France is really a big problem. The public sector spendings officially represents something like 58.1% of the french GDP (official "Insee" numbers from 2023, for 2022)... France is not far from a planned economy and, unsurprisingly, it's a particularly harsh environment for real small private SMEs (i.e. those without friends at the state)…

France has always been pretty bad at running an economy.

Ofcourse for the rest of Europe this is a good thing- French military ambitions have been consistently sabotaged by this oversight. Good military, brilliant engineers and capable bureaucrats but terrible merchants. And wars are won on the stock market.

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