this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2023
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In a well-intentioned yet dangerous move to fight online fraud, France is on the verge of forcing browsers to create a dystopian technical capability. Article 6 (para II and III) of the SREN Bill would force browser providers to create the means to mandatorily block websites present on a government provided list.

I don't agree that it's "well-intentioned" at all but the article goes on to point out the potential for abuse by copyright holders.

cross-posted from: https://radiation.party/post/64123

[ comments | sourced from HackerNews ]

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[–] [email protected] 126 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm imagining Firefox creating a clientside file called government-blocklist.txt, with the understanding of "don't touch this file, you scamp 😉"

[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Or putting the option to disable the blocking in about:config... Or even just the settings page

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

dump the .txt file to the desktop for easy removal by user

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[–] [email protected] 121 points 1 year ago (19 children)

ainsi mieux protéger nos enfants

This is to protect our children of course.

As usual, so anyone who is against this law can be depicted as someone who is supporting pedopornography.

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[–] [email protected] 84 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Should cars be required by law not to let you drive to drug deals? Should glasses be required by law not to let you read banned books? Should testicles be required by law not to produce government-unsanctioned sperm?

[–] [email protected] 51 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I have an even simpler example: should cars be required not go over the speed limit?

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago

No because they'd lose the ticket revenue

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[–] [email protected] 75 points 1 year ago (3 children)

how to get all browsers to remove access for france

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (1 children)

the good ending? no more French?

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Browsers can have different releases per default language, so just have the fr-fr distribution have the blockers and others not

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[–] [email protected] 72 points 1 year ago (9 children)

This is dumb on so many levels. It'd be trivial for people to obtain a web browser that ignores this. The biggest browsers in the world all have open-source code bases, so anybody could build something with near feature parity but none of the restrictions, and then distribute it wherever. Enforcing this would be just create another game of wack-a-mole, with no advantages for the copyright holders, and potential abuse against even non-pirate users. Very slippery slope.

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[–] [email protected] 65 points 1 year ago (7 children)

The most stupid part of this idea is that is requires a list of banned sites to be served to every user.

Even if they would use hashing to obfuscate the banned domains, you can download a list of all registered domains and just test every one of them.

So the average internet user will lose freedom while a cheese pizza enjoyer with some computer knowledge will gain a list of every banned CP site.

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[–] [email protected] 53 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The laws already require you to not infringe copyright. This is a new front in the same old war.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes definitely, but currently the onus is on the user to not infringe. The French proposal is putting at least some of the onus on the developer of the browser which is a new front, I agree.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I feel like we would be less forgiving of this happening in other mediums.

Imagine this: car manufacturers are required by law to prevent their vehicles from driving to locations where crime might happen.

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If the reason for this is to prevent pedophilia content, then this will do nothing. People who access that sort of thing on the dark web aren't going to be affected by this whatsoever.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

When pedophilia prevention is used as an excuse, 100% of the time it is a move to restrict peoples' rights and/or freedoms. 100% of the time.

The US has the playbook down easy. Every single law that they want to pass that is solidly against the citizens best interests they say "oh.... pedophilia!"

You can't argue against it because they will say "oh, so you think pedophilia is good and shouldn't be stopped?" When in reality, the biggest rings of pedophilia aren't perpetrated by online websites but by rich businessmen, polititians, and churches. Their friends, corporate masters, and partners.

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago

Just comment out the "download list of sites to block" part and recompile

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (7 children)

There's literally no way to enforce this.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago (2 children)

why govts love to censor the public internet?

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Most governments are greatly influenced by lobbyists, who are often tied to media companies. It gets worse since a lot of old people vote for heavy conservative parties, which in turn are even stronger leaning into lobbyism.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

If you control information, you control the will of the people.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (3 children)

If google implements is drm technology they are actively implementing already now, the answer is an absolute yes.

Download firefox now.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (6 children)

France and dystopian copyright laws, name a more typical duo.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago

How would this even be enforced?

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Service providers in many countries are required by law to do this through DNS for years. The UK, Italy, Germany and Brazil are just a few that I've had personal experience with. Moving this to the browser really isn't necessary since there will always be easy ways around these types of blocks.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago

"The internet treats censorship as a fault and reroutes around it."

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

How would this stop anything, though? Most of the scam sites are one-off things and people call the numbers and are redirected to otherwise legit screen-sharing software to be scammed.

I can't think of a single specific site that any government could block to stop scams. This shit is just bound to be abused.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Hope the french revolt about this too. Maybe throw a bunch of pc's on the prime ministers bathroom.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Despite all the problems we have in the United States, this would be struck down in court SO fast due to the first amendment to our constitution. The government making a list of speech you are not allowed to hear is pretty much the most cut and dry violation of that.

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[–] omeara4pheonix 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Eh, it's unenforceable. Just theater from a bunch of politicians that don't understand the technology. I wouldn't worry about it.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Or older versions of browsers, or browsers that don't comply, or browsers compiled for literally any other country

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

me on my way to prison after i use an outdated browser (it didnt have the blocklist)

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