Preparations for The 2008 Canadian Telecom Summit kept me from attending to all of my emails and news clippings. I notice that last month, a French court ordered ISPs to block hate material hosted in foreign jurisdictions.
An article in Express indicates that the court has ordered ISPs to take all appropriate steps to block access in France to the offending content.
toutes mesures propres à interrompre l’accès à partir du territoire français
France appears to be establishing a process to have users flag sites that offend which will launch a judicial review of internet content that contravenes its hate laws.
Many countries, including Canada, prohibit offending content from being hosted or controlled within their national borders, but such limitations tend to simply chase the content to foreign hosting companies, such as those located in the US.
While other countries have implemented various technology schemes to restrict access to some content, France is among the first western democracies to remove the ‘digital exemption’ from its hate speech laws, regardless of where the content is hosted.
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France, hate speech