The French government is considering a law that would require web browsers – like Mozilla’s Firefox – to block websites chosen by the government.
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.
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.
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
- Pass the law
- Tell Mozilla they’re breaking the law
- 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).
What stops them from putting a blanket statement on their website stating “this software does not adhere to specific internet laws in france and therefor we do not support the use of firefox as a browser within french borders. French people can still download firefox to study the software and use it for local/offline purposes.
Firefox isn’t quite the same as facebook in that its a piece of downloadable software instead of a service website. You don’t need an account. A foreigner can travel while having firefox as the only browser on their laptop and people can still share the program between eachother.
France might create requirements for their isps to not service not adhering browsers but in any way mozzila can keep their hands clean.
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.
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?
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.
Sad as it is, I think this is the optimal solution when it goes through. A lot of EU countries are against monopolies (France is not an exception), this way they would realize they are enforcing a monopoly and singular dependency.
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.
Either way it’s still a software restriction that can be bypassed with other software.
But like, can’t they just download the non France version of Firefox? Isn’t it open source? People can just build their own, right?
Yes but 90% of the people using Firefox won’t bother or notice. I already struggle trying to make all my relatives switch to Firefox, I can’t imagine getting them to download a specific version or build it themselves…
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/1q1hjmwLqe4
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Why do right wingers hate freedom so much?
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.
