p2pnet.net News:- As in any modern country, the French government uses the Internet to communicate with its fellow citizens.

Now, they just need to be careful on HOW they actually communicate via their websites.

The department of culture homepage features various hot topics, such as museum expositions, but also of course, "counterfeit and piracy of cultural products".

Well, here’s how this last topic was illustrated (until May 25th – top pic):

Yes, in France, pirates and terrorists are the same masked men.

Perhaps this explains why the minister, Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, recently supported a bill that would enable the French music industry to collect IP addresses (currently, IP adresses are considered private information in France, which requires assent before collection).

Anyway, apparently the department figured out there was a slight difference between Kazaa users and Al Qaeda, since they changed the image yesterday, replacing it by this diplomatically better one :

There’s was a march in Paris, y eseterday, to support the right for privacy on the Internet.

PS (My girlfriend sees a monkey in the second image. Another hidden message? Personally, I don’t see it at all and I suspect she drank to much tea : )

================

Guillaume Champeau, who runs Ratiatum.com, p2pnet’s opposite number in France, and p2pnet editor Jon Newton, decided there’s so much neat stuff happening that they owe it to their respective readers to trade items every now and then.

Champeau’s first Email from France is here, and the second is here.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 30th, 2004 at 6:07 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

HOME

Viewed 1766 times