Attempts by the French government this week to use vague legislation to block five websites for "condoning terrorism" would be troubling anywhere, but it is especially tragic coming from the country that gave us the champion of free speech and tolerance, Voltaire.
The move appears to be part of a wider campaign by French authorities to impose on the rest of the world the country's particular brand of censorship which, as news coverage of several cases shows, often shifts unpredictably based on the circumstances of each case. This position is buoyed by similar trends the Committee to Protect Journalists has documented across the European Union--notably in the form of the so-called "right to be forgotten," which the European Court of Justice judicially created in 2014 over the objections of E.U. Advocate General Niilo Jääskinen.
As reported in VICE, the websites ordered to be blocked contained allegedly extremist content. The sites were Islamic News, Jihad Zone, the website of a sympathizer with the al-Hayat Media Center, which publishes reports and video for the militant group Islamic State, Jihadmin, and a website called the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, which VICE described as "an amateur-looking blog with only three posts dating back to October 2014."
According to news reports, four of the sites were still accessible in France on March 17. When the order is successful, anyone in France attempting to access a blocked site is redirected to the Interior Ministry site. A copy of the message explaining why the content is blocked was shared on social media sites.
Read Geoffrey's full blog at CPJ.org.