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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[+] 178 points 3 years ago (6 children)
  • [–] 89 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    If they were run by techies, they'd do even more damage. Authoritarianism is the issue, not tech literacy.

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  • For real - look at the damage “tech literate” corporate leaders are doing to the internet in particular, and society in general. The issue is less about knowledge and aptitude, and more about morals and ethics, and how those principles interact with the desire for profitability driven by investors and owners.

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    [–] 62 points 3 years ago (4 children)

    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?

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  • [–] 37 points 3 years ago (4 children)

    True... How would governments enforce dumb laws like that on open source software anyway?

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  • [–] 18 points 3 years ago (6 children)

    Firefox is open source but it's controlled by the Mozilla Foundation.

    The steps would be

    1. Pass the law
    2. Tell Mozilla they're breaking the law
    3. Do things to them as they're breaking the law

    It could be fines, it could be banning firefox in France. The good/bad roles are flipped, but anything anyone has tried to do to meta can be done to Mozilla, too. The only alternative Mozilla would have would be purposefully pulling Firefox from France.

    Ultimately, Mozilla would have a vote of some kind, deciding to capitulate or pull firefox (or just keep paying fees, potentially, but they're not made of money).

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  • [–] 13 points 3 years ago (5 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 16 points 3 years ago

    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?

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    [–] 55 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    Why forcing the browsers? Couldn't they just make a law for ISPs to block specific domains?

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  • [–] 12 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    Too easy to bypass that with a VPN, proxy, or alternative DNS.

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  • [+] 52 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (2 children)
  • [–] 40 points 3 years ago (5 children)

    Why do right wingers hate freedom so much?

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    [–] 27 points 3 years ago

    "Do you not know my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed?" 🤷‍♂️

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  • [–] 24 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    Ok, it's a freedom and free speech nightmare, but are they stupid or something? They are aiming for the browsers instead of ISPs (and DNSes?)?

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  • [–] 19 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    They tried this in the UK and the ISPs is just ignored them. So the government declared its success anyway, despite the fact that essentially nothing had happened, and then stopped talking about it.

    These laws always come up by people whose grasp of technology is basically, make magic box do thing x. They don't understand that people smarter than them (school kids) will find workarounds in about 10 seconds.

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    [–] 22 points 3 years ago (3 children)
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    [–] 22 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    So things like curl or lynx would be illegal eh? Good luck enforcing those.

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    [–] 21 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Can we sign it even it we don't live in France?

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    [–] 20 points 3 years ago* (2 children)

    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?

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  • [–] 11 points 3 years ago

    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.

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    [–] 19 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    If worse comes to worst, someone can fork Firefox and remove the in-browser censorship. That is the beauty of FOSS.

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    [–] 19 points 3 years ago

    Now imagine if something like this would happen after Google manages to DRM the internet? You won't even be able to fork the browser...

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  • [–] 17 points 3 years ago

    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.

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  • [–] 16 points 3 years ago (11 children)

    Somehow, I don't think ruthless authoritarians are going to care about what the little people think.

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    [–] 15 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Signed. Although I wanted to ask if it has any value if it was signed by someone from outside of France/not French?

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  • [–] 11 points 3 years ago

    Signed. Enough with this kind of bullshit in the EU.

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  • [–] 11 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Maybe this is a stupid question, but how does France have jurisdiction to force features into a web browser made by an American company?

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  • [–] 18 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    They are free to try and compel them and Mozilla would be free to stop operating in France.

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  • [–] 10 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Can someone explain how this is enforceable??

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    [–] [S] 9 points 3 years ago

    completely forgot to credit the one that made me aware of this: @LinuxCat

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