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Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft

Verratenes Staatsgeheimnis?

("The Great Secret" by Claude Gubler)

CNN is reporting this afternoon that French author Claude Gubler, author of the controversial book "The Great Secret," is being assailed by the family of the late president Francois Mitterrand and the French government. Gubler's book, published just days after Mitterrand's death earlier this month, alleges that Mitterrand was diagnosed as seriously ill more than a decade ago, and that his physician filed false medical reports to hide his illness from the French people and from the world.

Mitterrand's family obtained a writ to ban the book from French bookstore shelves, which forced author Gubler to turn to the Internet's Worldwide Web to exercise his right to be published. His work appeared this week on the Web, in French.

However, according to CNN reports this afternoon, French officials were today considering several methods of further censoring Gubler's book by making it inaccessible via the Internet as well. Methods discussed included encrypting the entire French portion of the Web (a ludicrous and impractical suggestion) or simply cutting the phone lines to the server which hosts Gubler's book (a somewhat more practical and frighteningly more possible alternative).

A few weeks ago, the world protested when CompuServe censored some 200 Usenet newsgroups at the request of a German prosecutor who deemed them illegal under German law. Now, it's time for the Internet community to make it self heard on this issue.

NOTE: See my essay on on-line censorship at Time-Warner's Pathfinder site and be sure to read other articles on the subject one level up. 

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.                                     .                                   .
.          Gregg L. DesElms           .         Required reading:         .
.        deselms@primenet.com         .                                   .
.   ------------------------------    .          "Being Digital"          .
.    Computer/Telecom Consultant      .        Nicholas Negroponte        .
.     Multimedia/Video Producer       .         243 pages, Knopf          .
.    Free-lance Writer/Journalist     .                                   .
.        Omniscient Observer          .        "Silicon Snake Oil"        .
.   ------------------------------    .          Clifford Stoll           .
.    1-800-224-2046 (in USA only)     .       247 pages, Doubleday        .
.                                     .                                   .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft, Neko, 01.06.97
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