The Government has tabled the SREN bill aimed at requiring web browsers to block certain blacklisted sites. A request that raises serious concerns about the liberticidal excesses that it could cause.

The Government has tabled the SREN bill aimed at requiring web browsers to block certain blacklisted sites. A request that raises serious concerns about the liberticidal excesses that it could cause.

The Government has long been at war against the piracy of works and content protected by copyright or broadcasting rights. He had started by attacking IPTV, this perfectly illegal practice which mainly concerns the broadcasting of sports matches – in particular football – with radical measures (see our article), before forcing access providers to French Internet (ISP) to block more than fifty illegal streaming sites – which allow films and series broadcast by legal platforms to be watched free of charge – following a decision by the Paris court in February 2023 (see our article). However, this blocking is rather easy to circumvent by the regulars, either by changing the DNS server, or by going through a VPN – two simple and perfectly legal techniques.

To counter these methods, the Government would like to create domain name blocking lists integrated into Web browsers. So, a new bill called SRENto Secure and Regulate the Digital Space, was filed by the Minister of Economy, Finance and Industrial and Digital Sovereignty, Bruno Le Maire. “With this bill, France is adopting a range of unprecedented and bold concrete measures aimed at strengthening public order in the digital space. “, he rejoices in the press release of the Council of Ministers published last May. One of the articles would require browsers, such as Chrome, Mozilla Firefox or Safari, to implement these blocks. The Senate has already adopted the text at first reading, adding a few amendments.

Bill blocking pirate sites: web browsers in the sights

Thanks to article 6 of the bill, the Government would have the right to send blocking lists to browsers, who should initially “display a message warning the user of the risk of harm incurred by accessing this address” for seven days. This message should be “clear, readable, unique and understandable and [permettre] users to access the official websites of the public interest group for the national assistance system for victims of cyber-malicious acts”. After this time, the measures would extend to a blockage.

This decision could apply “when one of its agents specially designated and authorized for this purpose finds that an online public communication service manifestly carries out operations constituting the offenses mentioned in Articles 226-4-1, 226-18 and 323-1 of the Criminal Code and Article L. 163-4 of the Monetary and Financial Code”. But the bill goes further, since paragraph 2 of article 6 provides that the Regulatory Authority for Audiovisual and Digital Communication (Arcom) can enjoin Web browsers “to take without delay any useful measure intended to prevent access to the address of this service for a maximum period of three months”. A blockage which can of course be extended for a maximum of six months, then for another six months if necessary.

Bill blocking pirate sites: a draconian measure?

This measure is far from unanimous and raises serious concerns about its draconian dimension. For Mozilla, “France is about to force us to develop a dystopian technical capability”as the foundation applies in a long blog post. She explains that the French government’s motives are legitimate, but that the idea of ​​blocking website addresses at the browser level “would be disastrous for the open Internet and disproportionate to the objectives of the legal proposal – to fight against fraud.” It even goes further, stating that if this measure is put in place and respected, the technical means put in place for this could subsequently be used by other governments. – including those who will succeed that of Emmanuel Macron – to impose censorship of the Net. “If successfully adopted, the precedent it would set would make it much more difficult for mariners to reject such requests from other governments”explains Mozilla.

AT Instead of the measure provided by the bill, the foundation suggests improving mechanisms against malicious sites that are already present on Web browsers. “Leveraging existing offers of malware and phishing protection rather than replacing them with government-provided ones, device-level blocklists, is a much better way to achieve the goals of the legislation.”, she assures. It should be noted in passing that the blocking of certain sites via browsers as the Government would like represents a violation of article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – just that ! –which states that “everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression, which includes the right to […] receive and impart, regardless of frontiers, information and ideas by any means of expression whatsoever”which implies the right to express oneself online and to consult information and ideas without restriction – which could be compromised in the event of an authoritarian drift. And it’s not going to get any better! The Senate has just proposed to censor social networks in two hours in the event of violent demonstrations, and to impose in the event of refusal of the accounts concerned a sentence of one year of imprisonment and a fine of 250,000 euros.