The French government is considering a law that would require web browsers – like Mozilla’s Firefox – to block websites chosen by the government.
The French government is considering a law that would require web browsers – like Mozilla’s Firefox – to block websites chosen by the government.
Why forcing the browsers? Couldn’t they just make a law for ISPs to block specific domains?
This is already possible (and is actively used, mainly for piracy related websites) with the current laws.
Removed by mod
Too easy to bypass that with a VPN, proxy, or alternative DNS.
Either way it’s still a software restriction that can be bypassed with other software.
Librewolf is going to get very popular…
Never heard of that one, I was telling somebody the other day about IceWeasel. So there definitely are FF clones. Or I guess you could just compile Firefox yourself and remove the denylist portion of the code. Would be extra funny if they compiled a version specific for France (because why block sites for everybody else?) and put it next to the regular one on their website with text that said oh BTW if you’re in France definitely only download this version, wink wink.
Meanwhile Linux distros will just package the non-blocklist version and French citizens will end up bypassing the restriction by accident!
Librewolf is designed to be private and secure and is basicly hardened Firefox without telemetry
It’s not basically Firefox, it’s a fork with the settings already configured for privacy.
Eh there’s really only 2 players in the browser game right now
and the source code for both of them is available.
Could just compile yourself without the filtering
But like, can’t they just download the non France version of Firefox? Isn’t it open source? People can just build their own, right?
Yeah.
Yes but 90% of the people using Firefox won’t bother or notice. I already struggle trying to make all my relatives switch to Firefox, I can’t imagine getting them to download a specific version or build it themselves…
But the same applies for the other workarounds mentioned doesn’t it?