Just got this article on the NY Times. First they try to censor Yahoo,
now this.
Net Registration Bill Could Trigger Exodus From
French Web Sites
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
PARIS -- It's called the Liberty of
Communication Act, but critics say the
French government-sponsored
legislation would instead encourage the
Internet's first mass emigration.
By requiring that the names of all who publish
on the Internet be registered with authorities, the bill could
prompt an exodus
of French users to Net companies in other nations, opponents
say.
The legislation, passed by the House and being debated in the
Senate this
week, would apply to any company that hosts World Wide Web
pages
viewable by the public.
It is apparently without precedent in Europe and the United
States.
The bill arose in response to a case last year of a nude photo
of model Estelle
Halliday being posted on a free Web site without her
permission. It seeks to
place legal liability for what is published on a Web site on
the individual that
creates it rather than on Internet Web hosting companies.
Web hosting companies provide users on the Net with space on
networked
computer servers. Some charge for the space; others offer it
for free.
U.S.-based GeoCities, a division of Yahoo!, is a leading
example. It's popular
for everything from personal pages showcasing a family's
photographs to
pages created by political advocacy groups.
While the French legislation would make it easy to track down
cybercriminals, its principle aim is to eradicate anonymity in
Web page
publishing, said Philippe Chantepie, a technical advisor for
the French Culture
Ministry.
"In a newspaper you can see the who the publisher is, the
editor is,"
Chantepie said. "When you publish something, you're
participating in the
public space and the public order imposes a certain amount of
responsibilities,
and that is to identify yourself."
Libertysurf.com, France's largest free Web hosting company,
says the
measure would cripple its business with additional maintenance
costs and
send users elsewhere where registering contact information is
not a legal
requirement. After all, the Internet has no boundaries.
"It's clear that requiring us to validate users would make it
very difficult,
quasi-impossible," said Nenad Cetkovic, Libertysurf's marketing
director.
The European Internet Service
Providers Association is unaware of
any similar legislation on the
continent.
Spokesman Joe McNamee says the
industry group hasn't taken a position
on the bill but also hasn't been
consulted and considers the measure
flawed.
He said the bill, which would require Web users only to
complete an
electronic form, has many loopholes.
"We don't know where it begins and where it ends, we don't know
how it will
be enforced and we don't know who will be liable for
information that isn't
correct," said McNamee.
Technically, experts note, it's very simply for users to lie
about themselves
while registering.
Only through log files that register the unique Internet
addresses of
computers on the Net can users be traced. Technically
sophisticated users,
or hackers, can even mask their origin.
Internet service providers also say the bill's wording is vague
by not
specifying whether "publishing" on the Internet includes
postings to
newsgroups or chat areas, which are separate from the World
Wide Web.
Chantepie said the law would apply only to Web pages.
...Miles
kieran.colfer at ireland.sun.com
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