> There is a difference in practice: first France will become a digital police state by law, judges will be out of the loop, it may help to dodge the current prosecutions by the human rights league and international federation of human rights and lastly it will introduce a global and permanent surveillance with dpi of the like that France has sold to Myanman, Libya, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Kazakhstan and other places. Additionally part of the IT industry will relocate itself outside of France to continue to exist.

I am under the impression that the law is about legalizing what the state is already doing. Did I miss something? As France is in the middle of a multi year process of replacing the copper network with optical fiber, it means that France is on the path for a 50 years additional delay before the digital world changes its society right when France was catching up.

I am not sure what you mean by this.

> Lastly the practical difference is that this law may push the country to the far right extremist nationalist and racist party Front National at the next elections, which would inherit of those tools and have everything to turn France in a totalitarian state.

Don't they already have that?

> On a side note, this law has spawned a reboot France movement which aims at leveraging the Internet and crowndfunding to get change the whole political system to an actual democracy based on the internet: http://rebootlafrance.fr

They certainly have good intentions, but they sound like a small band of young geeks with little knowledge of politics and no funding. I am not convinced the issue will be solved by yet one more tiny political party. >