[HN] Will Browsers Be Required by Law to Stop You from Visiting Infringing Sites?
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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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.
Websites containing instructions and links to such an illegal browser would also be banned
As I said, wack-a-mole. You ban a site, different one pops up, people share links in DMs and other platforms. Sharing that stuff isn't banned in other countries, so they can't actually take down anything. Good luck stopping that when you can't even properly get sites blocked at the DNS/ISP level.
And this doesn't even get into VPNs and proxies.
Yeah. It's not gonna stop people from this community, French or not.
But the French government if crazy about copyright, I wouldn't be surprised if they actually tried it. Just the insanity alone that you can't take pictures of Paris at night because the Eiffel Tower lights are copyrighted... xD
websites like github?
That could very easily be all websites. It would never be feasible to stop.
Unlikely, given that this would violate the 1st amendment pretty blatantly.
What is the French first amendment?
Welp, this is embarrassing. I totally glossed right over that...
Looks like it was to give independence to the French African states.