The French government is considering a law that would require web browsers – like Mozilla’s Firefox – to block websites chosen by the government.
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On one hand, yeah
On the other hand, I’m scared about the day when someone who is tech literate gets into government and tries to push stuff like this
Can’t they just put a metal box with a guard around the entire internet?
It is just a black box with a blinking light anyway.
Although the guard might get tired from climbing the stairs of the Elizabeth tower every day.
Elizabeth tower every day.
because the internet has the best reception up there?
It crowd 🤣
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Put a sock in that tube there or I’ll fine you.
Firefox being free software, it wouldn’t make much sense for them to try and do something like this. So obviously we know that Mozilla would never go along with such an absurd law and start doing censorship on behalf of France. … right, Mozilla? Slightly strange that you didn’t say so?
True… How would governments enforce dumb laws like that on open source software anyway?
They could still charge the leadership, fine them, and cause life to be a bit more difficult. Even if I don’t live in a country, I wouldn’t want that hanging over my head.
It’s hard not living in a country
I guess it cannot be completely enforced. What they can do, however, is to say that Firefox is illegal in France unless it complies with their unjust laws.
Mozilla could either choose to comply and release a French version of Firefox with government mandated fixes, or decide not to comply and probably block firefox.com from being accessible from France. This would make it harder for French users to find an alternative browser, making even more people will stick to the pre-installed Chromium based one.
In general it’s just not a good thing when open source software becomes illegal, no matter how hard the laws might be to implement.
Why would it be mozzilas responsibility to make their website unaccesible in france rather then that being the responsibility of french isp?
If north Korea puts up an obscure law that says all sites are banned from using english does that give them grounds to sue any sites that didn’t think of blocking them specifically?
This would make it harder for French users to find an alternative browser, making even more people will stick to the pre-installed Chromium based one.
Sad as it is, I think this is the optimal solution when it goes through. A lot of EU countries are against monopolies (France is not an exception), this way they would realize they are enforcing a monopoly and singular dependency.
They dont consider chromium based browsere a monopoly because there are over 10 different ones from different companies. The fact they are all chromium behind the scenes and all comply with google’s bullshit standards doesnt matter to them.
I agree. If you give in to laws like these you have already lost; people will just accept their freedom being stripped away piece by piece, and government control of software will be the new normal. If on the other hand we reach a point where Firefox is illegal in France, it should be obvious to anyone and especially those involved in competition law that something is not right.
France is on a bad spree lately, and honestly they need all the bad publicity they can get. I hope this backfires for them.
The software can be open source, the product is branded and published.
I hope that it would only be the “Frensh Version” of Firefox that implements this and that at least everone outside of France would get a version without this crap. This would then of course, be available to Frensh people to. Hopefully crap laws like this get stoped… lets see
It would work for 95% of browser users, who will not know that they can use a fork of Firefox because they have no idea what that means.
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Why forcing the browsers? Couldn’t they just make a law for ISPs to block specific domains?
This is already possible (and is actively used, mainly for piracy related websites) with the current laws.
Aand it’s never enough
Too easy to bypass that with a VPN, proxy, or alternative DNS.
Either way it’s still a software restriction that can be bypassed with other software.
Librewolf is going to get very popular…
Never heard of that one, I was telling somebody the other day about IceWeasel. So there definitely are FF clones. Or I guess you could just compile Firefox yourself and remove the denylist portion of the code. Would be extra funny if they compiled a version specific for France (because why block sites for everybody else?) and put it next to the regular one on their website with text that said oh BTW if you’re in France definitely only download this version, wink wink.
Meanwhile Linux distros will just package the non-blocklist version and French citizens will end up bypassing the restriction by accident!
Librewolf is designed to be private and secure and is basicly hardened Firefox without telemetry
It’s not basically Firefox, it’s a fork with the settings already configured for privacy.
Eh there’s really only 2 players in the browser game right now
and the source code for both of them is available.
Could just compile yourself without the filtering
Did you know: Using adblockers is considered terrorist activity in france?
Is a “No soliciting” sign on my house also terrorism then? Wtf
Why do right wingers hate freedom so much?
Because they see the freedom of people who aren’t like them as an abridgement of their freedom to force everyone to be like them.
“Do you not know my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed?” 🤷♂️
Somehow, I don’t think ruthless authoritarians are going to care about what the little people think.
Maybe a decentralized encrypted takedownsafe and possibly anonymous internet protocol won’t care what they think?
I mean we have to try IMO.
Good luck with that. The only such protocol I know of that people actually use is Tor, and it’s a US government honey pot.
If tor was a hobeypot they’d have a much easyer tine catching criminals using it
Thanks for the support, Negative Nancy
Yeah I’m trying anyways :-) thx bdw
And if you bothered to invest a fifth of a third of a quarter of the energy you’re putting into being defensive into helping solve the problem, we wouldn’t be here.
I took your comment as against the argv_minus_one guys, so in favour of my comment he was bashing.
Anyways I do invest time in this stuff, I built the Tenfingers sharing protocol.
Cheers
And I took your comment as immature negativity only to find out it’s jealous whining at best and concern trolling and forum sliding at worst.
You’re not going to win the argument. All you’re going to do is make things worse. You’re not going to stop us from supporting Firefox in their time of need, or France’s, or the Internet. It’s just not gonna happen.
So go find something better to do with your free time and let the adults talk.
And now it allied with cryptocoins
I mean, illegal online transactions are like the one place where crypto really shines.
Can we sign it even it we don’t live in France?
Yes
I do not like france
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I like the french government even less
How the fuck could a law like that possibly be enforceable? Mozilla should just tell them to go fuck themselves, offer alternative IPs so people can get around country-wide DNS blocks, and then go about their day. Who cares what some spineless country wants?
That’s what’s happened in other countries that have tried to implement this. Unless you want to basically go the Chinese route and ban all exterior access it’s an utterly unenforceable law. Which I am sure they would have been told if they had bothered to consult anybody with domain knowledge.
because it sets a precedent. “oh france did it, its not too bad”
Whelp, I signed in the dumbest way possible. Signed under the name Lupine Arsène. Only thing I regret is not putting the country as France to complete the dumb joke.
Can someone explain how this is enforceable??
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It’s just like the Cold War, folks… the propaganda is flying both ways - and neither side has to resort to too much lying.
Signed. Although I wanted to ask if it has any value if it was signed by someone from outside of France/not French?
Even petitions from within France don’t have any value. Our current government doesn’t really care about this kind of action (or any type of action, actually).
That’s a bummer… Well my name is there, as useless as it may be.
completely forgot to credit the one that made me aware of this: @LinuxCat
