French internet users and ISPs are mounting a last-ditch
protest against a piece of legislation, entitled A Bill to Promote
Confidence in the Digital Economy, which entered its final reading
in the French national assembly yesterday.
Among other things, it will oblige service providers to filter
internet traffic for illegal content, with criminal sanctions for
companies that fail to block paedophile images, material excusing
crimes against humanity and incitement to racial hatred.
ISPs are unwilling to take on responsibility for policing French
internet users. Such a measure would be the first taken by a
democratic state, according to the Association of French Internet
Access and Service Providers (AFA), which wrote in an open letter
to French deputies.
Other countries that had considered internet censorship, such as
Canada and Australia, had rejected it, they said. The letter,
signed by the chairmen of 10 of France's largest ISPs, added that
filtering technology is just as likely to block legal content as
illegal content, and asked the deputies to reject this part of the
bill.
Internet users are also up in arms.
The bill's proposal to oblige access providers to filter
internet content entering the country is like a "digital Maginot
Line", according to Odebi, an association of broadband internet
users. The bill's proposals to block certain types of information
can sidestepped as easily as the Germans sidestepped the supposedly
impregneable Maginot Line by invading France through Belgium, and
will prove devastating, costly and ineffective.
The wide-ranging bill is the translation into French law of the
European Union directive on electronic commerce. Other parts of it
make access providers responsible for preventing their customers
from illegally downloading or sharing intellectual property, such
as music, to which they do not own the rights.
If record companies feel they are losing money to online music
trading, they have only themselves to blame, according to the AFA.
For its part, the association says its members support legal music
downloading, as the presence of legal online music stores on their
portals shows, and that it should not fall to them to police a law
that only the record industry wants.
Odebi, for its part, has threatened to call a complete boycott
of all music products, online and traditional, if the law is
passed.
Peter Sayer writes for IDG News Service