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

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

#91

Post by Yoric »

WeylandYutani wrote: post #50
TacticalCoder wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... 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.

I'm not so sure about that.

For one thing, France is and remains one of the richest countries in the world. For a second thing, I seem to remember that France is currently outperforming both Germany and the UK (I read this in both German and British newspapers, but I don't remember the details).

Is it perfect? Far from it. But French bashing feels pretty counter-productive.

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

#92

Post by stackedinserter »

bradley13 wrote: post #59

How do they expect to enforce this? Especially against open-source browsers, or companies without a presence in France? One disadvantage of globalization is that you get to see the dumb ideas of all politicians. Somehow, the good ideas don't cumulate the same way...

They can ban it from appstore/googleplay, with the provision that it should be banned for ALL countries, or else.

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

#93

Post by i_am_jl »

Mordisquitos wrote: post #83
globular-toast wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually the current anti-encryption laws going through in the UK are pretty anti-Big Tech. One of the main motivations is they don't think Big Tech is "thinking of the children" and it should be their responsibility to do that.

Good point. Much as I despise Meta, I have to admit I have been pleasantly surprised by their hardline stance in defending WhatsApp's e2e encryption.

>I have to admit I have been pleasantly surprised by their hardline stance in defending WhatsApp's e2e encryption.

I appreciate their stance as well, but I don't think it should be surprising. There's a real cost to updating WhatsApp to meet those requirements, and I think Meta's belief is that MPs will cave instead of taking the heat for banning WhatsApp.

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

#95

Post by riedel »

grishka wrote: post #79
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.

This feels much better than the Russian government's approach to censorship and modern tech. The problem is that there are people in Russian government who actually have a clue about how this stuff works. If the blocking is done client-side, there's plenty of ways to bypass it, like just not updating your browser, duh . Or patching it, or installing extensions that neutralize the blocking mechanism, or fooling it int…

I also do not quite get the GP comment. I see it also logical to block content on application layer from the OSI perspective. If you cannot do on the source do it at the sink if do not want to break e2e encryption. The DNS blocks have been taking down half of cloudflare in the past, so would IP blocks in many casesm

How to make this technically effective so that you really need a bit of criminal energy to bypass it is however questionable. At least in Germany I can actually as a user disregard any copyright for books etc if someone in the world offers content without any effective protection or obviously illegal (also resharing like in the BitTorrent case get you into trouble). So what are the alternatives? Pushing DRM ?

I would like to see a bit more constructive approach from mozilla. If you are the French and you see a problem. How would you solve it?

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

#96

Post by utybo »

As far as I understand it, this is only about implementing a blocklist for scam and phishing sites, like what Edge's SmartScreen already does. The agency in charge of this, Arcom, will have to comply to that requirement. While the principle in itself isn't great, this isn't as bad as Mozilla or comments on HN make it look like.

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

#98

Post by indymike »

SCLeo wrote: post #82
indymike wrote: post #74

The best solution would be to simply take Firefox off the market in France should this happen. If France wants browsers to work through the government, they can fund it, build it, and make laws to force people to use it.

I am actually not sure if this is satire, but in case it is not, I don't think Firefox is in the position to boycott France, when Google Chrome exists, and is very likely to comply with the new law.

The rest of the world is enough.

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

#99

Post by globular-toast »

Mordisquitos wrote: post #83
globular-toast wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually the current anti-encryption laws going through in the UK are pretty anti-Big Tech. One of the main motivations is they don't think Big Tech is "thinking of the children" and it should be their responsibility to do that.

Good point. Much as I despise Meta, I have to admit I have been pleasantly surprised by their hardline stance in defending WhatsApp's e2e encryption.

Me too but after talking to my MP about it I do wonder how much of it is because they (Meta) fundamentally support privacy and everything that comes with that or if it's just a convenient way to deny having any responsibility towards safety on their platforms. It's possible to be right, but for the wrong reasons. I'd like to think it's for the right reasons, but I'm not sure.

If users really cared about privacy they'd use open source software instead of WhatsApp anyway. I doubt the removal or compromised e2e encryption would make much of a dent in user numbers. One thing I've come to realise is most people want privacy for themselves, but not for others.

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

#100

Post by darreninthenet »

utybo wrote: post #96

As far as I understand it, this is only about implementing a blocklist for scam and phishing sites, like what Edge's SmartScreen already does. The agency in charge of this, Arcom, will have to comply to that requirement. While the principle in itself isn't great, this isn't as bad as Mozilla or comments on HN make it look like.

Isn't the issue though that such laws are usually abused so a website spreading "misinformation/fake news" about the government is labelled a "scam"...?
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