The lower house of the French parliament, the National Assembly, passed the first draft of the bill, known as "Loppsi 2," on Tuesday. It will now go on for a second reading in the Senate, where it seems likely to pass, thanks to the government's majority. If the Senate approves the bill, the new law could come into force as early as this summer. The legislation could have far-reaching consequences: Loppsi 2 contains rules that would make France the European country where the Internet is subject to the most censorship, regulation, control and surveillance.
The new legislation could in the future force Internet service providers (ISPs) to shut off access to criminal sites, should they be officially instructed to do so. According to the draft legislation, the law "makes it the responsibility of each Internet service provider to ensure that users don't have access to unsuitable content."
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The list of banned Web sites would be provided by the Interior Ministry. The approach is very similar to a proposed German Internet law aimed at fighting child pornography, which also foresaw limiting access to certain sites. That legislation was signed into law by German President Horst Köhler on Wednesday -- even though the German government had recently decided it no longer wanted to apply the law in its existing form, after massive protests by Internet users.
Under the new French legislation, police and security forces would be able to use clandestinely installed software, known in the jargon as a "Trojan horse," to spy on private computers. Remote access to private computers would be made possible under the supervision of a judge.
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"The filtering and blocking of the Web has become a standard weapon in the legislative arsenal of a government which has been shameless in its handling of personal freedoms," [Sandrine] Béllier said in an interview with the online edition of the magazine Marianne. She complained that policing responsibility was being handed to Web providers, despite the lack of a legal basis for doing so. Indeed, it is precisely for this reason that the similar draft law in Germany will likely never come into force.
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