Sign our petition to stop France from forcing browsers like Mozilla's Firefox to censor websites
Sign our petition to stop France from forcing browsers like Mozilla's Firefox to censor websites
The French government is considering a law that would require web browsers – like Mozilla's Firefox – to block websites chosen by the government.
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?
Firefox is open source but it's controlled by the Mozilla Foundation.
The steps would be
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).
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.
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.
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.
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
Is a "No soliciting" sign on my house also terrorism then? Wtf
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Why do right wingers hate freedom so much?
Its nothing to do with the right wing and everythiny to do with authoratarianism. Left wing authoratarians hate freedom just as much. They just usually attafk different targets.
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?" 🤷♂️
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?)?
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.
And the thing is, there are open source internet browsers that can be written to avoid any browser checks that a law might require.
However, if Google's browser DRM gets widely implemented, a browser-side content blocker would be effective, because all those open source browsers would be unable to access the wider web.
I think if Big Brother Browser with Google DRM is our future, we're going to see people using 2 browsers as standard. They'll have one "corporate" internet browser, for Instagram, Amazon, whatever. And one "free" browser for all the grey area stuff.
Yes, but we need to fight them politically as it's our money being wasted and they do cause some harms. One is, it keeps the population uninformed about what is with and against the grain of technology. But we also want them to not be trying to do wrong things, even if they are probably unworkable.
I "think" I remember them trying something like this before with the ISPs and it got smacked down.
Because DNS will do little and browsers will do straight up nothing. Especially for the good open source browsers.
I do not like france
I like the french government even less
I am French and I state that in fact I do not like France
So things like curl or lynx would be illegal eh? Good luck enforcing those.
I guess you could argue that a simple http client is not a browser, so these would be excluded. But if you write code yourself to use an http client to make a browser, then you would have to implement Frances's bullshit to be legal in France.
But that depends on how you legally distinguish between a simple http client and a browser...
Can we sign it even it we don't live in France?
Yes
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"
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...
If worse comes to worst, someone can fork Firefox and remove the in-browser censorship. That is the beauty of FOSS.
Unfortunately the 99% that don't know about less popular options will still be affected
True, however it will require some grassroots movement/discussion to make it known.
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.
Somehow, I don't think ruthless authoritarians are going to care about what the little people think.
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.
Maybe this is a stupid question, but how does France have jurisdiction to force features into a web browser made by an American company?
They are free to try and compel them and Mozilla would be free to stop operating in France.
What does "stop operating in France" even mean? It's not like they are selling their browser to the French people...
And then when in France, I can simply use some other open source browser. This kind of shows how dumb politicians are. Next up? You shouldn't be able to access dangerous software like GitHub, let's block that!
Signed. Enough with this kind of bullshit in the EU.
Can someone explain how this is enforceable??
Might is right.
completely forgot to credit the one that made me aware of this: @LinuxCat
Signed and shared on Mastodon
Russian propagandists claim, there is no democracy and no freedom of press in the west. It seems like, they were right in that regard.
It's just like the Cold War, folks... the propaganda is flying both ways - and neither side has to resort to too much lying.
So, what kind of sites does France want to censor? Piracy?
It starts with the basics; piracy, cp, etc. Then it becomes whatever the highest-paying corporation wants to censor. Opposing political views? Check. Anything pro-free thinking? Check. There's no end to this, so we have to head it off at the pass. If corporations own the Web, we have lost (and we're shamefully close to that reality...)
Oh yeah, let the government decide on censorship. I see nothing wrong with that. Oh! I know, let's have a point system based on how much they support the governments policies too!
And this how the end of a civilization or at least of an era looks like.
The neoliberal system of deregulation of the economy and finance sector, of privatization, of weak states on these topics is crashing right in front of us. It requires now non-democratic, authoritarian, decisions to keep the head outside of the water and not shrinks undersea. The destruction of the environment is a symptom of this end.
A small minority wanted unlimited in a limited world. They wanted to touch the stars and burned their fingers. Like arrogant teenagers, they said it's nothing and let find solutions that are no more than placebos. But, even this now doesn't work anymore. They have to use the authoritarian card, another placebo.
It won't change today. It's a long process which can be accelerated if the population takes the lead. They know this fact. The authoritarian card is here to keep the population quite by restricting the access to the information "for the general good". They want to control this aspect of the life too.
But the monster they created is already out of control. It makes and always made more damage than good. They accelerated the neoliberal agenda to keep it calm but it doesn't work. They are running after it and after their inevitable lost.
slightly off point here but, god I hate the term 'neoliberal'. the definition is so far from what you would think based on the word alone, it almost seems intentionally misleading. I have the same gripe with "reactionary politics".
idk when people will realize that capitalism is not conducive to having businesses that are respectful to their consumers and environment, no matter the amount of ill-understood, retrospective regulations you slap on.
EDIT: honestly, I think most people have realized, but the people with the power to change it are the people gaining.
Signed Long live Freedom!!!
Posted to 'privacy' community: "Put your first and last name on this petition!"
I expect if there are too many fake names it would be used against them too. I think not signing at all is overall less detrimental my own privacy. However if there's evidence/reasoning otherwise please share!
Edit: I ended up signing with my real name, I don't see employers or anyone holding that petition against me if they find out I signed this by searching my name.
Privacy is not anonymity.
Privacy is not anonymity in the same way as animals are not dogs. To give away anonymity is to give away a form of privacy.
Unfortunately, this is gonna happen and worse. We lost the fight for the internet in 2006, and we're watching it die. No joke, I started using yandex browser and search since Google ruined theirs, and it is close to perfect. Waterfox is my backup.
I wouldn't recommend using Yandex, due to it's connections with the Russian government. You should check out privacyguides.org they have a lot of cool info about privacy respecting tools. However I also don't recommend anything Brave. The company was founded by a homophobe who was previously in charge of Mozilla, but left, because of community pressure.
First of all: Yandex? You're joking, right?
Secondly: Of course this is not happening. Firefox is an open source browser. If they update it to comply with France's bs people will just use an older version or people will fork it and cut out the censoring code.
Also, what about lynx or curl? They certainly will not be censoring shit.
France is going to have a very bad time enforcing this.
Have you tried Yandex? Other than being Russian, it is a great browser. And instead of having to use search operators, rephrase or click verbatim on Google to find something, Yandex actually gives you proper search results, especially in photos. It is like Google before 2016. I used Lynx years ago, totally forgot about it.
Why the focus on Firefox? Why not just say “browsers”?
I mean the title literally says "forcing browsers" and unsurprisingly Mozilla post uses Firefox as an example.
Sorry, my bad. I thought this was a petition OP had set up. And not Mozilla themselves to protect Firefox. Sleep deprivation :(
As always I am reminded that governments are run by the tech illiterate.
If they were run by techies, they'd do even more damage. Authoritarianism is the issue, not tech literacy.
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.
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.
It crowd 🤣
because the internet has the best reception up there?
I always thought the derision of that was overblown. You can tell what he meant. It's not a completely flawed analogy.
Put a sock in that tube there or I'll fine you.