{"id":7683,"date":"2012-10-30T01:41:08","date_gmt":"2012-10-30T01:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jurnsearch.wordpress.com\/?p=7683"},"modified":"2012-10-30T01:41:08","modified_gmt":"2012-10-30T01:41:08","slug":"keep-the-web-flag-flying-comrades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/jurnsearch\/index.php\/2012\/10\/30\/keep-the-web-flag-flying-comrades\/","title":{"rendered":"Keep the Web flag flying, comrades"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The new socialist government in France <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chicagotribune.com\/business\/sns-rt-us-france-googlebre89s145-20121029,0,6445475.story\">is making ridiculous noises<\/a> over taxing Web links. It threatens to pass a new law: if a Web link leads to an online press article, then an unspecified &#8216;fee&#8217; will need to be paid.  Paid even if that article is freely and openly published online, it seems. Paid even if the link comes from overseas, potentially.<\/p>\n<p>The proposed law is targeted first at Google News, but a fundamental threat to the existing Web links ecosystem seems obvious. The new law reportedly has the highest backing &mdash; the French Culture minister appears to love the notion.  Which would seem to suggest that their new government just doesn&#8217;t understand the Web.<\/p>\n<p>Leaving aside issues of &#8216;fair use&#8217;, and the seeming inability of French publishers to monetize around four billion Google visits a month, one wonders if France has really considered the consequences of its planned law.  Is France prepared to risk a worldwide online protest over its threat to the fundamental &#8216;freedom to link&#8217; and to the open Web?  The highly successful &#8216;SOPA blackout&#8217; protest of January 2012 showed what could be done.  Will the French Culture minister be so breezy if a big chunk of inbound French links are simply wiped off the Web for a period, perhaps coinciding with France&#8217;s peak online holiday-bookings week for overseas tourists?  All it would take is one techie to whip up a simple script for webmasters that diverts outbound traffic headed for France.  To a picture of a French poodle, perhaps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The new socialist government in France is making ridiculous noises over taxing Web links. It threatens to pass a new &hellip;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/jurn.link\/jurnsearch\/index.php\/2012\/10\/30\/keep-the-web-flag-flying-comrades\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spotted-in-the-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/jurnsearch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/jurnsearch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/jurnsearch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/jurnsearch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/jurnsearch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/jurnsearch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7683\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/jurnsearch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/jurnsearch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/jurnsearch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}