https://www.techdirt.com/2023/08/04/will-browsers-be-required-by-law-to-stop-you-from-visiting-infringing-sites/ [ ] Techdirt. [ ] * Sign In * Register * Preferences Techdirt [ ] * TechDirt * GreenHouse * Free Speech * Deals * Jobs * Support Techdirt [podcast-ti] Texas Sued Over Age Verification Law And Porn "Public Health Warnings" This Week In Techdirt History: July 30th - August 5th Will Browsers Be Required By Law To Stop You From Visiting Infringing Sites? [copy-right] Copyright from the i-can't-open-that-page,-dave dept Fri, Aug 4th 2023 07:39pm - Glyn Moody Mozilla's Open Policy & Advocacy blog has news about a worrying proposal from the French government: In a well-intentioned yet dangerous move to fight online fraud, France is on the verge of forcing browsers to create a dystopian technical capability. Article 6 (para II and III) of the SREN Bill would force browser providers to create the means to mandatorily block websites present on a government provided list. The post explains why this is an extremely dangerous approach: A world in which browsers can be forced to incorporate a list of banned websites at the software-level that simply do not open, either in a region or globally, is a worrying prospect that raises serious concerns around freedom of expression. If it successfully passes into law, the precedent this would set would make it much harder for browsers to reject such requests from other governments. If a capability to block any site on a government blacklist were required by law to be built in to all browsers, then repressive governments would be given an enormously powerful tool. There would be no way around that censorship, short of hacking the browser code. That might be an option for open source coders, but it certainly won't be for the vast majority of ordinary users. As the Mozilla post points out: Such a move will overturn decades of established content moderation norms and provide a playbook for authoritarian governments that will easily negate the existence of censorship circumvention tools. It is even worse than that. If such a capability to block any site were built in to browsers, it's not just authoritarian governments that would be rubbing their hands with glee: the copyright industry would doubtless push for allegedly infringing sites to be included on the block list too. We know this, because it has already done it in the past, as discussed in Walled Culture the book (free digital versions). Not many people now remember, but in 2004, BT (British Telecom) caused something of a storm when it created CleanFeed: British Telecom has taken the unprecedented step of blocking all illegal child pornography websites in a crackdown on abuse online. The decision by Britain's largest high-speed internet provider will lead to the first mass censorship of the web attempted in a Western democracy. Here's how it worked: Subscribers to British Telecom's internet services such as BTYahoo and BTInternet who attempt to access illegal sites will receive an error message as if the page was unavailable. BT will register the number of attempts but will not be able to record details of those accessing the sites. The key justification for what the Guardian called "the first mass censorship of the web attempted in a Western democracy" was that it only blocked illegal child sexual abuse material Web sites. It was therefore an extreme situation requiring an exceptional solution. But seven years later, the copyright industry were able to convince a High Court judge to ignore that justification, and to take advantage of CleanFeed to block a site, Newzbin 2, that had nothing to do with child sexual abuse material, and therefore did not require exceptional solutions: Justice Arnold ruled that BT must use its blocking technology CleanFeed - which is currently used to prevent access to websites featuring child sexual abuse - to block Newzbin 2. Exactly the logic used by copyright companies to subvert CleanFeed could be used to co-opt the censorship capabilities of browsers with built-in Web blocking lists. As with CleanFeed, the copyright industry would doubtless argue that since the technology already exists, why not to apply it to tackling copyright infringement too? That very real threat is another reason to fight this pernicious, misguided French proposal. Because if it is implemented, it will be very hard to stop it becoming yet another technology that the copyright world demands should be bent to its own selfish purposes. Follow me @glynmoody on Mastodon. Originally published to Walled Culture. Filed Under: blocklist, browsers, cleanfeed, copyright, france, sren, websites 24 CommentsLeave a Comment If you liked this post, you may also be interested in... * Academic Book About Emojis Can't Include The Emojis It Talks About Because Of Copyright * Preservation Fail: Hasbro Wants Old 'Transformers' Games Re-Released, Except Activision Might Have Lost Them * French News Agency Sues ex-Twitter For Not Paying Snippet Tax * Netflix Defeats Spurious 'Slumlord Millionaire' Lawsuit * That Which Copyright Destroys, 'Pirates' Can Save * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Rate this comment as insightful Rate this comment as funny You have rated this comment as insightful You have rated this comment as funny Flag this comment as abusive/trolling/spam You have flagged this comment The first word has already been claimed The last word has already been claimed Lightbulb icon Laughing icon Flag icon Lightbulb icon Laughing icon Comments on "Will Browsers Be Required By Law To Stop You From Visiting Infringing Sites?" Subscribe: RSS Leave a comment * Filter comments in by Time * Filter comments as Threaded * Filter only comments rated Insightful * Filter only comments rated funny LOL * Filter only comments that are Unread 24 Comments Collapse all replies [user-default]Toom1275 (profile) says: August 4, 2023 at 7:43 pm Camels, tents. Reply View in chronology Make this comment the first word Make this comment the last word [user-default]That One Guy (profile) says: August 4, 2023 at 7:46 pm 'I'm not saying we WILL use it like that, merely that we CAN...' Does it count as abusing the law if it's being used as intended, even if that intent was never made explicitly clear at the time? Collapse replies (1) Reply View in chronology Make this comment the first word Make this comment the last word Threaded [2] [4b1e7300b1]Anonymous Coward says: August 5, 2023 at 9:50 am Re: It's abusing The Law, writ large, even if it isn't abusing the law in the eyes of those who intended exactly those sorts of uses when crafting or supporting a particular law. Reply View in chronology Make this comment the first word Make this comment the last word [9dd038778c]Anonymous Coward says: August 4, 2023 at 8:16 pm I'm legit surprised it's not on the ISP level. Reply View in chronology Make this comment the first word Make this comment the last word [775d61f408]Anonymous Coward says: August 4, 2023 at 9:02 pm Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action. Reply View in chronology Make this comment the first word Make this comment the last word [130710fae9]Anonymous Coward says: August 4, 2023 at 9:42 pm Revolver Ocelot was right. Reply View in chronology Make this comment the first word Make this comment the last word [4c06f8d90a]Pixelation says: August 4, 2023 at 9:56 pm If browsers don't stop us, who will? Yeah, that's what I thought. See we need browser censors. Even better, browsers should tell us what to think, so we think properly. Collapse replies (1) Reply View in chronology Make this comment the first word Make this comment the last word Threaded [2] [fb688fc3bf]Anonymous Coward says: August 5, 2023 at 8:00 am Re: Well remember if browsers (but only some of them) were telling French politicians what to think, they wouldn't be quite as stupid. Reply View in chronology Make this comment the first word Make this comment the last word [6c04301b3d]Bobvious says: August 4, 2023 at 10:48 pm Yowsers! Does this mean wowsers will control our browsers? Reply View in chronology Make this comment the first word Make this comment the last word [user-default]Nacimota (profile) says: August 5, 2023 at 12:34 am #JustDemocracyThings As with DNS blocks and other such nonsense, it would be trivially easy for any motivated person to sidestep this kind of control. As long as someone - anyone - is out there offering a browser without these restrictions, all the user needs to do is download and install it. It wouldn't require a great degree of technical skill, time, or effort. Whenever a scheme like this is proposed, we obviously have to balance the benefits against the drawbacks. This article (and Mozilla's statement) make the drawbacks very clear, and they seem significant enough to me on their own. But given the above fact of easy circumvention, I would question whether the supposed benefits really exist in the first place, or if it's just ignorance and wishful thinking (at best). I think what's so unfortunate about the problems that this bill is attempting to address (reducing scams, cyber-bullying, CSAM distribution, etc.) is that they are complex problems, and like most complex problems they require complex solutions. But politicians don't like complex solutions because they're harder to sell to voters, and easier for political opponents to pick apart. It's tempting to say that bills like this are based purely on ignorance, but while that almost certainly plays a part in how these bills keep getting proposed, I don't think it's the full story. We frequently have experts and other community stakeholders (Mozilla in this case) advising governments on the problems with their proposed bills, and frustratingly, that advice seems to be ignored more often than not. Despite being given the facts, they push forward with unhelpful or even dangerous legislation because, I suspect, they are more interested in scoring political points than they are at actually solving problems. Sadly, I think this problem of politics is itself a complex one and without any simple solutions, either. I think the best we can do is voice our opposition to bad ideas loudly enough that the voting public is convinced. Trying to convince the legislators themselves that their own proposed legislation is problematic often seems like a fool's errand to me. SOPA (just for example) wasn't scrapped because politicians suddenly started listening to experts, but rather because Google et. al. shone a massive spotlight on it and turned voters against it. Collapse replies (5) Reply View in chronology Make this comment the first word Make this comment the last word Threaded [2] [6cb87504fd]Anonymous Coward says: August 5, 2023 at 1:03 am Re: As long as someone - anyone - is out there offering a browser without these restrictions, all the user needs to do is download and install it. What makes you believe that your browser would allow you to access providers of illegal browsers? You can pooh-pooh people who aren't looped into illegal software distribution channels as much as you want, but dismissing them all as too stupid to care about is rather pathetic for someone who uses democracy hashtags. Collapse replies (1) Reply View in chronology Make this comment the first word Make this comment the last word Threaded [3] [user-default]Nacimota (profile) says: August 5, 2023 at 1:55 am Re: Re: What makes you believe that your browser would allow you to access providers of illegal browsers? Well firstly, these blocks are never 100% effective to begin with. Preventing the distribution of browser forks (which would only be illegal in France) would be a constantly moving target (just like so many other things governments try to block). Secondly, there are numerous ways a person could get a different browser that didn't have these restrictions built in. People could share them via popular services like Discord for example, and I don't see a simple way you could prevent that. Hell, if your device is not up to date, the restrictions may not even be enabled yet in your current browser before you'd even need to go looking elsewhere. You can pooh-pooh people who aren't looped into illegal software distribution channels as much as you want, but dismissing them all as too stupid to care about is rather pathetic for someone who uses democracy hashtags. I made no such judgment, and I'm unsure how you've inferred otherwise from my comment, but let me try and make my position more clear: I think this bill is bad and will make the internet worse for everyone, but particularly French users and users living in authoritarian states, precisely because many users will not know or care that it is in place, and it will be open to abuse and false positives. My point about easy circumvention was that if the intention here is not just scam prevention but to prevent users from doing Bad Things(tm) (for example future copyright enforcement, as the above article speculates), it would not take a lot of effort on behalf of those users to sidestep these rules if they are sufficiently motivated to do so, and so that raises the question for me as to whether this proposed legislation would actually accomplish its goals (irrespective of the very obvious drawbacks). The answer I find myself arriving at is "no", and that seems like a strong reason to ditch the bill in addition to the drawbacks already raised. Reply View in chronology Make this comment the first word Make this comment the last word Threaded [2] [f713131cb8]Anonymous Coward says: August 5, 2023 at 6:48 am Re: As with DNS blocks and other such nonsense, it would be trivially easy for any motivated person to sidestep this kind of control. Except Apple and Increasingly Microsoft are controlling what software a user can, (/s) for the users protection of courses. Reply View in chronology Make this comment the first word Make this comment the last word Threaded [2] [user-default]nasch (profile) says: August 5, 2023 at 6:57 am Re: As long as someone - anyone - is out there offering a browser without these restrictions, all the user needs to do is download and install it. The next step might be a law requiring ISPs to block web sites hosting non-compliant browsers. Then they would have to ban VPNs... Collapse replies (1) Reply View in chronology Make this comment the first word Make this comment the last word Threaded [3] [8cbdd15506]Anonymous Coward says: August 5, 2023 at 8:02 am Re: Re: What, and sidestep more effective means of banning a site, ie, infrastructure-level bans, then outlawing VPNs that aren't registered with the government? (Please don't actually do this, because all you'll do is piss off the stock exchanges, and even CHINA, the country with the armed forces to force compliance to any MNC stupid enough to make the profit line go up work with an authcap hellstate, hasn't actually tried to enforce the VPN law onto the stock exchanges) Reply View in chronology Make this comment the first word Make this comment the last word [u2515_100x0-1]ECA (profile) says: August 5, 2023 at 1:11 am Does it count? That they let us KEEP our guns, but take all the ammo? Like over the past 20 years? (wow, has it been that long?) For the sake of understanding.. Is it NOW time to create our OWN home based LIST of Internet sites, insted of using Google and your ISP? Yes we can do that..ITS a big DNS list, and you can have MORE then 1. AND ITS A way to bypass Any sites your G or Local DNS does not have. Reply View in chronology Make this comment the first word Make this comment the last word [user-default]GHB (profile) says: August 5, 2023 at 1:45 am Literally this is conscripting tool makers so that their tools cannot be misused and this is govware. I would say, hands off my browser. It's like to use a computer (even if you own it) or a knife you must have a policeman watch over your shoulder, in your personal property. EU to regulate the use of people's own stuff isn't new: https://www.techdirt.com/2021/06/04/ google-facebook-chaos-computer-club-join-to-fight-new-german-law-allowing-government-spies-police-to-use-trojans-against / Something like this happened with the 996 controversy in china: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system# Browser_blacklist Not once have I seen the US attempt to regulate a tool or a product that is either owned by the device owner or open-source licensed to allow the user to use the software however he/she wishes provided that the agreement has been met. There are also reasons why law enforcement should not have control on people's devices either, because there are malware on the internet, and there are also scammers who can abuse it to confuse people. Here is an example: https://www.zdnet.com/article/ new-malware-poses-as-wga-validation-and-notification/ Reply View in chronology Make this comment the first word Make this comment the last word [cf12bb5b0a]Anonymous Coward says: August 5, 2023 at 7:45 am wget? curl? I could generate a qr code with a curl or wget command that would bypass any browser restriction, say to download an unrestricted browser. I could even use an ip address to bypass DNS issues. There, restriction implementation defeated. Reply View in chronology Make this comment the first word Make this comment the last word [dc080edae2]Anonymous Coward says: August 5, 2023 at 7:59 am So I will be illegal to learn about illegal toast. Sounds reasonable[1]. This also sounds like an attempt to deputize unrelated (and likely out of "jurisdiction") software developers. Also what happens when the French government is too stupid to make their "banned list" work (or too stupid keep their own sites off the list). Do the browser block everything? Or Nothing? And does the browser enforce the blocking when it fetches the list (meaning will it block itself if the site/url/etc that it would fetch from is on the list)? [1] But only where "reasonable" is defined as "bat shit crazy totalitarian drivel" Reply View in chronology Make this comment the first word Make this comment the last word [1decd55cd9]Stephan Kinsella says: August 5, 2023 at 10:05 am Abolish copyright The obvious response to horror stories like these is: we should abolish copyright. Such policies and outcomes are a natural consequence of copyright law itself. The problem is not this particular law which is just an extension of the copyright mentality-it's copyright law itself. The only way to stop such outrages is to understand their root cause and to oppose them. The root case us copyright law. The solution is to abolish all copyright law. Unless one favors copyright abolition, whining about the consequences of copyright law is pointless. Collapse replies (3) Reply View in chronology Make this comment the first word Make this comment the last word Threaded [2] [a0008fd465]Anonymous Coward says: August 5, 2023 at 12:47 pm Re: I strongly disagree with this. If anything, copyright needs to be extended. Collapse replies (2) Reply View in chronology Make this comment the first word Make this comment the last word Threaded [3] [user-default]Toom1275 (profile) says: August 5, 2023 at 1:08 pm Re: Re: ...said nobody mentally competent, ever. Reply View in chronology Make this comment the first word Make this comment the last word Threaded [3] [user-default]That One Guy (profile) says: August 5, 2023 at 3:21 pm Re: Re: Hear hear, infinity or bust, if copyright doesn't literally last forever and only effectively lasts forever then what use is it?! Reply View in chronology Make this comment the first word Make this comment the last word [249031b588]Anonymous Coward says: August 5, 2023 at 10:43 am if that were to happen, it would be so much for a free and open Internet. however, it could easily occur first of all in the USA. you have to consider how corrupt Congress is, how corrupt any USA government is and how quickly and easily the majority of those just mentioned will take 'campaign contributions' from the very organisations and people who want to make the Internet their own! it's the best media distribution platform invented to date and is as successful as it has been, is and will continue to be as long as it is NOT controlled by an industry or industries that want to use for it's own desires and devices while fucking it up totally for everyone else! just remember you two faced fuckers in government, you will be just as screwed as the rest of us! it may take a bit longer to get to that point than it will for the rest of us but you will be taken to the same screwed up point as everyone else! and dont forget, if you hand this over to anyone, whether a person, a company, and industry or a government, it will never be free again and the untold damage that will be inflicted on everyone will be absolute!! and all because an industry cannot bear to NOT be in control or desire to share anything without making an absolute fortune from it!! we will definitely be sorry beyond words!! 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