Critics of government-mandated filtering schemes contend that such programs first focus on “child pornography” because it’s such an unobjectionable target for censorship — but once the program is in place, it’s much easier to extend it to more controversial areas, such as copyright protection. At least the French have the decency to admit that this is what’s happening.The French lower house, the National Assembly, has just passed a security bill known as LOPPSI2, and it’s expected that the Senate will follow suit in the next few weeks. As we’ve previously reported, LOPPSI2 is a grab bag of security items that includes state-sanctioned computer Trojans, a massive new database of citizen data (dubbed “Pericles”), and a requirement that ISPs start censoring sites on a government blacklist.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/02/move-over-australia-france-taking-net-censorship-lead.ars