Loppsi Offsi

In what may be one of the early skirmishes in the battle by governments to master the internet, the French are currently debating Loppsi II, a draft law to filter Internet traffic (amongst other things).

The bill was approved last week by the National Assembly (where the government has a large majority) and will now go on for a second and final reading in the Senate (where the government also has a majority). If the Senate makes no amendments that will be the final reading, as the government has declared the bill "urgent," which reduces the usual cycle of four readings to two.

The bill contains a number of unrelated measures:

• boosting police spending on "security" increasing

• penalties for counterfeiting checks or credit cards,

• increasing CCTV

• extending access to the police national DNA database

• authorizing the seizure of vehicles driven without a license

• criminalising online identity theft

• allow police to tap Internet connections as well as phone lines

• ordering ISPs to filter Internet connections to target child pornography

Plenty for our freedom-loving French friends to worry about, no? Let's hope les amis don't allow the rugby to distract them from this issue...

Vis a vis filtering, ISPs will be required to block access to any Internet address the authorities consider "necessary to prevent distribution of child pornography."

Blocking sites suspected of hosting child pornography is likely to affect blameless sites at the same IP address. Opposition amendments - that a judge would review the list of blocked URLs each month to ensure that sites were not needlessly blocked, and to make the filters a temporary measure until their effectiveness was proven - were rejected.

Of course, filtering won't stop the spread of child pornography - distributors already use encrypted peer-to-peer systems. Indeed, the French Federation of Telecommunications has said that filtering would cost up to €140 million but would be largely ineffective against the main child pornography distribution channels.

Once installed, the filter system could be used to censor other materials or limit access to other Internet sites. Which appeals to President Sarkozy - in a speech in January, he said that authorities should experiment with filtering in order to automatically remove all forms of piracy from the Internet.

Zut alors!

By Alex Deane

Comments

[merv]

Suffocate dissent at source,divide and rule and sneak it all in under the guise of stopping peado's.Martial law by the summer anyone?.It covers all angles ,if you object then they beat you down with their big sticks and if you dont then your happy with their decisions.Buy baked beans and be prepared to stay at home cos the manure is going to collide with the windmill very soon!

[Purlieu]

"Blocking sites suspected of hosting child pornography is likely to affect blameless sites at the same IP address"
Correct - the govt would like us to believe they can cut off an individual computer. They can't. They can only cut off a whole block of them, therefore taking out, for example, the whole street.
The only way an individual can be 'penalised' is at account level with his ISP.

[Perry]

Martial law by the summer anyone?.It covers all angles ,if you object then they beat you down with their big sticks and if you dont then your happy with their decisions. http://www.hotfilemediafire.com