FC: French government says: Be anonymous online, go to jail

[Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>]

The slashdot thread:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/03/24/1240210&mode=thread

The French web site:
http://altern.org/defense/vote/

An English translation follows.

I would not treat this as confirmed.

-Declan

             The National Assembly passes law requiring Web site authors to 
identify themselves
             under penalty of imprisonment.

             Summary:
                Web site authors must identify themselves to their hoster 
before any public
             communication can be made, under penalty of imprisonment.
                In the absence of an identification, the hoster is 
responsible for the site's
             contents and is liable for up to six months in prison.

             Yesterday, March 22, the national assembly approved an 
amendment dealing with
             the responsibilities of Web site hosters.

             This law follows from the vote of
             the Senate on January 19 which required Web hosters to 
disclose the
             identity of any author to a third party under penalty of six 
months in prison.

             All Web sites whose authors are unknown are the legal 
responsibility
             of the hoster. In order to free myself from this 
responsibility I would
             have to obtain the identities of each of altern.org's 48,000 
users!

             Of course, the e-commerce industry will be happy. What could 
be better than
             requiring customers to reveal their identities, leaving you 
the possibility
             of commercial exploitation?

             The goal of this law seems to be to enact self-censorship on 
the level of the
             Web hoster, and on the level of the author who, after giving 
up his identity
             under penalty of imprisonment, has no insurance that his 
personal identity will
             not be used for unfair profit.

             This vote, however, is not definitive. A third and last 
reading must take
             place. But it will be a question of reconciling differences in 
the texts
             put forth by the assembly and by the Senate, so the law could 
conceivably
             get worse.

             As far as the future of altern.org is concerned, contrary to 
what I said
             yesterday before reading the law's exact text, I can continue 
to host
             sites as long as I accept my new role as watchdog.


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