French Government Creates Internet Censorship
Mr. Francois Fillion, French minister for Post office and communication,
introduced on June 4 an amendment to the bill reforming the French postal
system.
It says that ISP (Internet service providers) will be immune from prosecution
if they obey the following orders : they must provide their customers
with a filter software and deny access to Net sources labeled undesirable
by a "Superior Committee for Telematics". This Committee will be enlarged
and placed under the CSA, which rule television and radio in France.
The members of the CSA are designated by official bodies, including
the President of the Republic.
The new Committee will have discretionary powers to ban whatever parts of
the Internet which will be pointed by associations. A number of those
associations, which pretend to struggle against racism, in fact promote
their own racist approach and have already obtained several laws, since
1972, severely crippling the freedom of expression in this country,
and in fact abolishing it.
France, which celebrated so feverishly the bicentennial of the
Human Rights Charter in 1992, is now in league with the last Stalinist
regimes in Asia willing to establish an Old Regime official Censorship
Office on Internet.
(More details in the French version, available soon on CODOH International)
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