Cyber Rights Non! -- French Net-Censorship

[declan@well.com (Declan McCullagh)]

Date: Thu, 25 Jul 1996 20:38:22 -0500
To: fight-censorship-announce@vorlon.mit.edu
From: declan@well.com (Declan McCullagh)
Subject: FC: Cyber Rights Non! -- French Net-Censorship
Sender: owner-fight-censorship-announce@vorlon.mit.edu

Attached is a portion of the lead article from today's HotWired on the
French government's net-censorship.

I'm pleased to say I just received word from a French correspondent that
the French "Conseil Constitutionnel" has blocked the part of the law
creating "Le Conseil Sup�rieur de la T�l�matique" to decide what should be
blocked online.

(From what I've been able to gather, that court reviews laws to ensure
they're constitutional. On June 27, the Conseil heard arguments from
senators that the law violated articles of the French constitution.)

I have more on other international net-censorship attempts at:
  http://www.eff.org/pub/Global/Dispatches/
  http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~declan/international/

-Declan

-----------------------------------

Read the full article at:
  http://www.netizen.com/netizen/

HotWired
The Netizen

Cyber Rights Non!
by Jerome Thorel
Paris, 24 July

   Early last month, at a time of day when typical netsurfers are just
   hitting their mouse-clicking stride - around 3:30 in the morning - the
   French Senate voted on the final version of the new Telecommunications
   Regulation Act. A little-remarked section of the act, introduced as an
   amendment a few days before, represents the French legislature's first
   plunge into the digital ocean. It creates a kind of administrative
   oversight of Internet speech, Web sites, and online services. The
   law's effect is to create a council - le Conseil Sup�rieur de la
   T�l�matique (CST) - to dictate or arbitrate guidelines regarding
   Internet content.

   It turned out, however, that the move by Telecommunications Minister
   Fran�ois Fillon, sponsor of the French Telecom Act, was a little
   hasty. France had been shaken this spring by two investigations into
   pedophilia and Holocaust revisionism (both considered crimes in
   France) on the Internet.

   For months, Fillon had promised French Internet service providers that
   they would no longer bear responsibility for the content they
   transmit. The law does settle that question. But no one imagined that
   this guarantee would include as its condition the creation of the CST.
   To be safe from indictment, ISPs will be obliged to follow CST's
   guidelines - a policy typical of France's strong tradition of
   centralized administration.

[...]

   The French Net-regulation bill became law on 7 June - the same week
   that US federal judges declared the Communications Decency Act
   unconstitutional....

[...]

   Jerome Thorel, a Paris-based freelance reporter, writes frequently
   about technology and society. Andy Oram, in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
   contributed to this article.



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