The French government is considering a law that would require web browsers – like Mozilla’s Firefox – to block websites chosen by the government.

    • Lafuma300@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

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

      • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        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.

    • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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      1 year ago

      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.

  • jsdz@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    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?

      • Khanzarate@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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).

      • roguetrick@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        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.

      • sab@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        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.

      • hansl@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        The software can be open source, the product is branded and published.

    • BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.deOP
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      1 year ago

      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

    • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
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      1 year ago

      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.

  • benpo@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

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

    • Vendetta9076@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      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.

    • Cam@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Why do right wingers hate freedom so much?

      What? Am I on crazy pills? This has nothing to do with polticial leaning. Its man VS big gov.

        • Cam@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          A globalist leaning. Macron if I recall comes from big money in the financial world. The do not have a leaning poltically, they are amoral, dark triad.

    • Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      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.

  • bahmanm@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

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

  • feecoomeeq@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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?)?

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • TechnoBabble@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        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.

      • jabjoe@feddit.uk
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        1 year ago

        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.

    • cooopsspace@infosec.pub
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      1 year ago

      Because DNS will do little and browsers will do straight up nothing. Especially for the good open source browsers.

    • Crashumbc@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I “think” I remember them trying something like this before with the ISPs and it got smacked down.

      • Trail@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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…

  • Dizzy Devil Ducky@lemm.ee
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    1 year 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.

  • AeonFelis@lemmy.world
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    1 year 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…

  • Cam@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

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

    • beeb@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Unfortunately the 99% that don’t know about less popular options will still be affected

      • Cam@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        True, however it will require some grassroots movement/discussion to make it known.