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

[ltadeut]

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

[sinuhe69]

https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/2023/06/26/france-browser...

[antoinebalaine]

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.

[polotics]

Yes indeed! is this enforced DRM everywhere or you can't browse? is this a forced french MITM certificate chain you can't remove, is this something else? how does using Tor with a non-french exit node get impacted? If I ssh over port 80 or any other to a french-located box does something change?

[petre]

France and the UK nowadays seem to beat Australia when it comes to dumb actions. Only the Turnbull and Morrison governments had more idiotic ideas.

[SkySkimmer]

>It would set a dangerous precedent

This seems to be false as the precedent already exists.

sources: Étude d'impact (PDF linked in https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/dossierlegislatif/JORFDOLE000...) says

>Par ses modalités, ce dispositif est à rapprocher du dispositif de filtrage prévu au 1° de l’article L. 521-3-1 du code de la consommation, permettant aux agents de la DGCCRF d’ordonner, selon des conditions et modalités particulières, aux opérateurs de plateformes en ligne, aux fournisseurs d’accès à internet ainsi qu’aux exploitants de navigateurs internet d’afficher un message avertissant les consommateurs du risque de préjudice encouru s’ils accèdent au contenu manifestement illicite, et au b du 2° du même article, qui leur permet d’ordonner à ces mêmes opérateurs et aux hébergeurs de prendre toute mesure utile destinée à limiter l’accès à ces contenus.

Article L. 521-3-1 du code de la consommation: https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/article_lc/LEGIARTI0000...

[_trackno5]

It’s absurd that an article exists to allow French govt agents to display messages in my browser.

How is that even enforced?

[jcarrano]

Someone please explain: if I fork Firefox or Chrome and delete the censorship code, then I publish it online (eg. in github with a download link), then next time I go to France I will get into trouble?

[osmsucks]

This is why computers should only be able to run government-approved software acquired from government-approved repositories. :)

[zb3]

Next step: mandating compiler vendors to modify compilers so that your code doesn't compile :)

[lm28469]

Nah it's fine, firefox has 4% market share, realistically even the french gov doesn't care about them

[Raed667]

Link to the proposed bill (French)

https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/dossierlegislatif/JORFDOLE000...

[tgv]

I plugged it in deepl.com:

The Minister for the Economy, Finance and Industrial and Digital Sovereignty and the Minister attached to the Minister for the Economy, Finance and Industrial and Digital Sovereignty, responsible for the Digital Transition and Telecommunications, have presented the bill to secure and regulate the digital space (SREN) in order to restore the confidence necessary for the success of the digital transition. With this bill, France is adopting a range of bold and unprecedented practical measures aimed at strengthening public order in the digital environment. The result of interministerial work led by Jean-Noël Barrot, the bill contains some twenty proposals aimed in particular at : - implement an anti-scam cybersecurity filter to protect the French against attempts to access their personal or bank details fraudulently for malicious purposes, which have increased in number in recent years; - strengthen penalties for people convicted of cyberbullying, a phenomenon that is spreading on social networks; - strengthen the system for enforcing online age limits for access to pornographic sites, to better protect our children; - penalise sites that fail to remove online child pornography content; - restore commercial fairness to the cloud market, which is currently concentrated in the hands of a handful of players.

[anordal]

France should have listened to GNU/Stallman: You can't have an antifeature in free software. If you try, someone is just going to comment it out.

[no_time]

>You can't have an antifeature in free software. If you try, someone is just going to comment it out.

Reminds how Okular by default obeys PDF DRM, but you can just simply untick it as an option in the settings if you want to.

In an ideal scenario, all software would have that tickbox.

[criddell]

It doesn't need to be impossible to remove, just illegal to do so.

It's like cars - you can driver faster than the speed limit, but if you get caught doing so, you may be punished.

[krono]

Liberté, égalité, fraternité but for real

[stainablesteel]

There's no basis for blocking a web browser that doesn't comply.

If Mozilla came out and said "nah", what exactly would the french government do? ban that web browser? demand every website accessed via france check if someone is running a banned web browser?

the absurdity would spiral out of control on its own, it seems best to ignore this so that the europeans can take an official L on regulating web content.

[advisedwang]

I don't know French law, but some options:

* Arrest Mozilla officials if they travel to France

* Seize or prevent donations made in France

* Seize or prevent the Google-search-is-the-default for French portion of queries

* Use international venues like WTO to get a judgment enforceable in the US

[extraduder_ire]

Until 1999 (had to look it up) france completely banned "unlicensed" use of encryption.

Even to the extent that if you had a windows NT server and changed the region to france, it would replace your hashed password with a plaintext version when you next logged in. So, there is a history of boneheaded tech laws.

[anthk]

Even xor with rot13?

[Am4TIfIsER0ppos]

I thought they wanted "more than deplatforming" https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/we-need-more-than-deplat... https://archive.today/ia2z4

[travisgriggs]

I’m opposed to censorship. But what is even dumber is misapplied censorship.

“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root” — Henry David Thoreau

Rather than building guardrails on the dangerous corners, we seem to revel in building hospitals at the bottoms of ravines. We treat symptoms and side effects, rather than origins.

If they insist on suppressing content, do so at the servers serving the content, not arbitrary viewers.

[bradley13]

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...

[popcorncowboy]

So easily. Step 1: pass law. Step 2: for infinging projects with > $x stars on $whatever issue C&D under threat of $consequence.

If you believe tangling with state-sponsored legal machinery is no big deal, I feel sorry for you.

[bachmeier]

> How do they expect to enforce this? Especially against open-source browsers, or companies without a presence in France?

I don't have an answer to your question, but China seems to be successful with the internet censorship thing.

[shaoonb]

Presumably they could ban the sites that host these non-compliant browsers (whack-a-mole for sure), and/or make it illegal to have one installed on your computer.

[stackedinserter]

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

[maxwell]

Petition? Mozilla should just ban usage in France if they pass this merd.

[fdgjgbdfhgb]

_merde_!

[stefncb]

And what would that do, exactly? The government wouldn't care. In fact, they would probably be better off for it because everyone would simply switch to Chrome and there's one less browser to deal with. The only thing you'll do is make the problem worse and take away choice from the French people who want nothing to do with this bs.

[taylodl]

Serious question - can governments put mandates on open source software? How would that work? How could it work?

[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.

[ucarion]

Article from Le Monde:

https://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2023/07/06/le-senat-vo...

https://archive.li/krUfW

> To prevent multiple attempts at scams by e-mail or SMS, the bill must also allow the establishment of a free "anti-scam filter" sending a warning message to anyone who is about to to go to a site identified as malicious.

[everybodyknows]

So, they're going to generously allow users to continue to install uBlock Origin?

[pengaru]

The more people accept walled-gardens as their normal computing experience, the more we'll see the powers viewing end-user software as something they can control.

Stop computing this way people. Use and support FOSS software first, not last.

[fluidcruft]

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 prevent certain words from being posted? French Academy policing use of loanwords and requiring use of the blessed words? What exactly is this about?

[sinuhe69]

https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/2023/06/26/france-browser...

[btilly]

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...

[kgwxd]

How can France force them? Just don’t do it.

[justin66]

This petition, and the Mozilla blog post someone linked to upthread, are designed to make it look like Mozilla did everything they could prior to capitulating.

Of course it's dumb. They should just say they won't do it. Presumably their desire to continue operating in France is a lot stronger than their dedication to the principles involved and that is why they are taking this approach.

[alexisns]

well otherwise France can ask its ISP's to just block Mozilla in France if it doesn't comply

[benbristow]

I don't get how this would ever work, apart from preinstalled/precompiled or proprietary browsers? Just grab a copy from another country, or someone can create a script to download the source code, patch out the offending censor code and then compile the browser from source - it's not like it's hard to install dev tools anymore. Or even just distribute the uncensored binaries. Chromium and Firefox are both open-source.

[zamadatix]

I'm not sure any method of censorship is considered on the basis it's 100% effective or not. The kinds of things you listed are additional hurdles most people either won't know or won't bother to deal with for all but the most extreme types of censorship (e.g. blocking something like Facebook or YouTube wholesale).

[ChadNauseam]

It doesn't need to be 100% effective, it just needs to be inconvenient enough that most users don't bother

[KingOfCoders]

I'd wish people would not through the word "censor" around that casually.

Take a deeper look into e.G. cold war Eastern European countries to see what censorship is.

[RugnirViking]

is not a government provided blacklist of certain newspapers /books/websites you are not allowed to read that they can update at any time at least a little concerning?

[debacle]

Firefox is open source. Bonne chance.

[some_random]

So what? So it Chromium but that doesn't stop Google from pushing whatever anti-consumer nonsense they want.