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Looking at relevant French law it would appear there is a bureaucratic procedure to import cryptography into France. But how this gets interesting is if Telegr
by hnburner998877 2y ago
Looking at relevant French law it would appear there is a bureaucratic procedure to import cryptography into France.
But how this gets interesting is if Telegram has no explicit office presence in France and the app and webapp are merely distributed to French users resulting in these charges.
If I have a web server in the US that serves content that uses a cryptography JS library and a French user accesses it could I be arrested in France because I didn't declare the library to the French bureaucracy and get it approved?
Has France basically just nuked themselves for non-France based cryptography providers? Is npm going to block France in case a French citizen imports a JS cryptography library? Are a bunch of apps going to get their app removed from app stores for France?
Evidently this all seems incredibly selective and arbitrary but the lawyers are going to have to assess the risks of the French now in a way they didn't before, and once again another unclear rule haunts the EU software industry.
- semiquaver 2y agoDurov has French citizenship. Hard to argue there’s no presence in France.
- layer8 2y agoTelegram is selling Telegram Premium and other services in France, which means they are doing business in France and are thus subject to its laws.
- darkhorn 2y agoWhen a prosecutor writes accusation he writes extra accusations like when you go to a store and buy something you buy extra things. This way the prosecutor gets ekstra points, and prestige. I am talking for all countries. The system is f*d up.
- pdpi 2y agoA kinder perspective: you only have one opportunity to prosecute, so you add all the charges you think might be relevant, and let the courts decide on guilt. I’m sure that the intent is at least somewhat cynical in some (many? Most?) cases, but this serves a legitimate purpose.
- darkhorn 2y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5046845 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5046845
- octacat 2y agoSounds like selectively enforceable laws. And we thought Russia was bad with that. If we provide an XMPP server on github, should we not allow users from France to use it? Or at which point it gets enforceable?