French ministers denied Tunisia was a dictatorship and offered Ben Ali’s regime police support to deal with the recent protests. Myriam Francois-Cerrah explains how France found itself on the backfoot
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In a recent visit to the Pope, President of France Nicolas Sarkozy remarked that greater regulation of the internet was needed. President Sarkozy stated that “regulating the internet to correct the excesses and abuses that arise from the total absence of rules is a moral imperative” while making a speech to the Embassy of France to the Holy See.
This pronouncement is not the first indication of the President’s aim of regulating the internet. He described internet piracy as “looting” in a speech made while visiting Jean-Baptiste Corot. Critics say President Sarkozy’s desire to regulate the internet is born out of fear and a desire for control.
A group of Russian artists have threatened to boycott an exhibition at the Louvre over the removal of works deemed offensive to Vladimir Putin. Seven painters have said they won’t partiicpate because of a ban on Avdei Ter-Oganyan’s “Radical Abstractionism” series, originally created in 2004. A culture ministry official told newspaper Ria Novosti that a boycott could not take place because the artwork had already been shipped to Paris. Ter-Ognayan wrote on his website that the boycott would draw attention to the “conflict between art and the authorities”.
Read more on Avdei Ter-Oganyan here.
A convicted sex offender has sued Google after he found that an instant search of his name on Google.fr was accompanied with the words “rapist”, “Satanist”, “convicted” and “prison”. A court in Paris has ordered the internet giant to pay 5,000 euros and remove the search suggestions, which are generated automatically. The plaintiff, who is appealing against a three-month sentence for corruption of a minor, believed the search results were harmful to his reputation. Google has said it will appeal the decision.