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.

6/4/1996