Anthropic vs. the Pentagon: An Imperial Marketing Stunt
In the latest issue of Le Monde diplomatique, I revisit the conflict that pitted Anthropic against the Pentagon, in an attempt to analyze this episode and go beyond the dominant media narrative. The dispute has all the hallmarks of a hit series: a CEO – Dario Amodei – a freedom-loving idealist standing up to the tyrants of the Trump administration. Except that Anthropic’s...
Averting the Digital Sovereignty Trap
The following text is based on my “keynote provocation” during a panel discussion on “What Digital Sovereignty Means for Civil Society”, organized by the Swiss chapter of the Internet Society (ISOC) in Zurich on March 27th, 2026. Today’s debate on digital sovereignty feels like an intense case of déjà vu: For the better part of the past thirty years, Europe’s...
Odyssey 2.0: Undoing the Machine-World
Three years ago Odyssée 2.0 came out. This book (in French) was born from a photographic and literary project freely inspired by Homer’s myth. Together with photographer Alexa Brunet, we traced Ulysses’ wanderings through Technopolis, a fictional and dystopian “Smart City.” Below is the translation of the introduction I wrote for that occasion —it had never been...
The Practical Limits of Algorithmic Transparency: Lessons from France
This paper draws on a talk given a few months ago at the International Conference “Algorithmic transparency and the digital rule of law”, at the Sciences Po Paris Law School. Thanks to Lucas Anjos and Rebecca Mignot-Mahdavi for the invitation. Abstract In the face of concerns raised by AI systems in recent years, transparency has emerged as a central governance principle, enshrined in...
“Thinking About AI” (edited volume)
The edited volume Penser l’intelligence artificielle – Enjeux philosophiques, politiques et culturels de l’automatisation numérique (Thinking About Artificial Intelligence: Philosophical, Political, and Cultural Issues in Digital Automation) is out in French. It is edited by Anne Alombert, Alban Leveau-Vallier, and Baptiste Loreaux, published by Presses du réel. I had the pleasure of...
Two Post-Marxist Takes on The Political Economy of AI
Yesterday, we held the first session of the “AI critique” seminar hosted by the CIS, which I co-organize with my colleagues Marie Garin and Olivier Alexandre. We had the distinct privilege of welcoming two scholars whose work has profoundly shaped critical debates on the political economy of artificial intelligence and its repercussions in international relations: Cecilia Rikap (Associate...
Seminar “Critiquing AI: Artificial Intelligence Through the Lens of its Controversies”
After a year-long hiatus, the “AI Critique” seminar returns to the CNRS Center for Internet and Society. For this edition, Marie Garin (postdoctoral researcher at CIS) and I are pleased to be joined by sociologist Olivier Alexandre as co-facilitators of these meetings organized as part of the “Critique of Artificial Intelligence” working group of the GDR Internet, AI and...
The Eternal Return of Facial Recognition
This Op-Ed is adapted from a text originally published on AOC. In May 2025, Gérald Darmanin was getting restless. Overtaken on the right by his successor at the Ministry of Interior, Bruno Retailleau, the new Minister of Justice apparently found it difficult to hang up his apron as “France’s top cop.” So he pulled out of his hat a seemingly novel proposal: the legalization of...
AI and the Lessons of Past Labor Struggles
In a new article for Le Monde diplomatique, with researchers Maud Barret Bertelloni and Pauline Gourlet, we look back at the relevance of 1970’s French trade union critiques of computerization to inform contemporary struggles against AI. The issues were more or less the same as today (loss of skills, worker isolation, amplification of managerial surveillance, etc.), but the analysis and...
Olympic Surveillance Between Paris and London
Thanks to Emma Mc Cluskey and Akos Kopper, a cross-interview with Myrtille Picaud and Pete Fussey has just been published in the journal PARISS (Political Anthropological Research on International Social Sciences). In it, we look back at surveillance during the Paris 2024 and London 2012 Olympic Games. Abstract Pete Fussey conducted extensive research on Olympic surveillance in London, and...
Predictive Policing in France: Calling for a Ban
As part of a European initiative coordinated by Statewatch, me and my colleague Eda Nano worked with La Quadrature du Net for a report on the state of predictive policing in France. In light of the information gathered, and given the dangers these systems carry when they incorporate socio-demographic data as a basis for their recommendations, we call for their ban. After documenting back in 2017...
Systemic Opacity and Black Holes in Surveillance Oversight
My contribution to the recent symposium of the Commission nationale de contrôle des techniques de renseignement took the form of an article (in both French and English) in the journal Études françaises de renseignement et de cyber (French Studies on Intelligence and Cyber). In it, I revisit the systemic opacity that characterizes the surveillance activities of French intelligence services and the...
AI Action Summit: Accelerating, Whatever The Cost
This Op-Ed was first published in the newspaper La Croix. The Paris summit on artificial intelligence (AI) organized by France was held on February 10 and 11, 2025. It will go down in history as a great moment of acceleration. While French civil society is organizing, particularly through the Hiatus coalition launched on the initiative of La Quadrature du Net, to resist the surge of artificial...
The Startup Privilege
I have just published an article (in French, Spanish and Portuguese) in Le Monde diplomatique analyzing how technological innovation is used to justify increasing exemptions from fundamental rights, particularly in the field of digital surveillance. Summary This article examines how the discourse of innovation and the rhetoric of disruption are used to justify regulatory exemptions (aka...
My new book "Technopolice" is out!
The book Technopolice (in French only) is out! Get it from Éditions Divergences. Here is the summary: “Drones, predictive software, algorithmic video-surveillance, facial recognition: the use of the latest technologies of control is becoming commonplace within the police. Far from curbing crime, all these innovations are actually amplifying state violence. They place the city under siege and...
How State Surveillance Was Fought
In this month’s edition of Le Monde diplomatique, I have an article in French tracing the history of struggles against state surveillance in the United States in the sixties and seventies. Abstract Based on a longer study published earlier this month as a chapter, this article offers a historical perspective on resistance to state surveillance in the United States. It highlights strategies...
Promises & Pitfalls of Activist-Researcher Collaborations
In late January, I took a train up North to attend a conference on predictive policing organized at the IT University of Copenhagen. This international gathering brought together researchers working on the transformation of police surveillance in the digital age, with a particular focus on predictive policing. Predictive policing in France Together with Edlira Nano (who sadly could not make the...
New Book: Intelligence Oversight in Times of Transnational Impunity
We are pleased to announce the publication of our collective volume Intelligence Oversight in Times of Transnational Impunity: Who Will Watch the Watchers?, co-edited with Didier Bigo and Emma Mc Cluskey, published by Routledge. Abstract This volume, derived from the GUARDINT project, examines contemporary challenges in intelligence oversight within a context of growing transnationalization of...
From Free Internet to Techno-Authoritarian Drift
My interview (in French) with judge Judith Allenbach of the journal Délibérée has just been published. It provides an analysis of the the Internet’s trajectory, from initial emancipation promises to contemporary techno-authoritarian drift. Abstract This interview traces my own journey from the Internet’s early utopias to contemporary forms of control and surveillance characterizing...
New Edition: Counter-History of the Internet
I’m really glad to announced a revised and updated French edition of Counter-History of the Internet: From the 15th Century to Today, published by Agone, an independent publisher based in Marseille.1 The book is adapted from my PhD in Political Studies at EHESS and offers a foucaldian reinterpretation of Jürgen Habermas’ history of the public sphere. Publisher’s presentation...
Towards Democratic Intelligence Oversight
With my GUARDINT colleagues, we just published in the Review of International Studies of a collective article on the limits, practices and struggles around democratic control of intelligence services. Abstract “Despite its common usage, the meaning of ‘democratic’ in democratic intelligence oversight has rarely been spelled out. In this article, we situate questions regarding intelligence...
A visit at the gala of AN2V, the French video-surveillance lobby
In French only. Il a fallu débourser 180€ et s’arracher à la torpeur de ce début d’été pour gagner le droit de s’attabler incognito au beau milieu du « milieu » français de la vidéosurveillance policière. L’AN2V, ou association nationale de la vidéoprotection, tenait l’une de ses « nuits de l’AN2V » à Paris le 27 juin dernier. Événement biennal, les « nuits » sont le moment le plus people de cette...
Timeline of Intelligence Surveillance Scandals
Together with my colleagues from the GUARDINT project, we are publishing a report on surveillance scandals involving the US, British, German, and French intelligence services. Summary This timeline lists and documents the main surveillance scandals that have come to light in recent decades, from the first revelations about the NSA in the 1960s to Edward Snowden’s disclosures and more recent...
AI and Government Reform: Towards Humanless Bureaucracies?
Text originally published in French in November 2021 on AOC media. In recent years, with extensive use of vocabulary borrowed from the “start-up” world, we have witnessed the consolidation of a new iteration of neoliberal state reform. Through concepts such as “platform state” or “state start-up”1, new reformers have been counting on “corporate...
Surveillance State of Play in France
I wrote a short chapter on digital surveillance for a collective work entitled Le Nouveau Monde, which has just been published by Amsterdam Editions. Over 1,000 pages and nearly 100 authors paint a “picture of neoliberal France”. For my part, I have attempted in a few pages to describe the expansion of digital surveillance in recent years, its promoters, its methods, and its effects, while trying...
Action-Research on Algorithmic Policing
In June, during the European Workshops in International Studies, I presented of a draft paper regarding ongoing action-research concerning algorithmic urban policing, analyzing methodological and political challenges of fieldwork on AI-powered surveillance systems. Abstract This paper examines methodological and epistemological issues of action-research on algorithmic policing, based on empirical...
Hacktivists as Heirs of the New Left
The issue of Quaderni journal dedicated to hacking has just been published. In it, I published an article on hacker action repertoires and their connection to the New Left of the 1960s and 1970s. Here is the abstract: After recalling the connection between the pioneers of hacker activism and the anti-technocratic tactics employed by the New Left, this article proposes to interpret the wave of...
Health Crisis, Amplified Digital Surveillance
At a time when the extension of the health pass is being debated in France, my article on the health crisis and its effects on digital surveillance has just been published in the journal Political Anthropological Research on International Social Sciences (PARISS). It is the continuation of work begun in spring 2020 with an article published in French in Le Monde diplomatique and a...
In France, Intelligence Agencies Remain Without Sufficient Checks & Balances
Article first published in French on [The Conversation FR]((https://theconversation.com/en-france-des-services-de-renseignement-sans-vrais-contre-pouvoirs-163040). Eight years after the revelations by whistleblower Edward Snowden, the National Assembly has just adopted, amid a certain degree of indifference, the bill on the prevention of terrorist acts and intelligence. The text is now being...
France’s police bill: surveillance for the long haul
First published on about:intel. The French government seems not to be interested in tackling systemic police violence. Instead, one of the most defining features of Macron’s presidency lies in the fast-paced expansion of state surveillance powers. A case in point is Parliament’s impending adoption of the “Bill on Global Security”, which shows the current administration is a leading representative...
The State and Digital Surveillance in Times of the Covid-19 Pandemic
First published for the CERI’s series on the COVID-19 pandemic. Last February, as the COVID-19 epidemic was in full swing in China, the world watched in amazement Chinese public authorities enforce drastic measures to curb the spread of the epidemic. In parallel with the generalised containment measures implemented in Hubei province, the Chinese government set up an impressive techno-police...
Release of netCommons' Hands-On Guide on Community Networks
The netCommons project is proud to announce the release of “Telecommunications Reclaimed: A Hands-On Guide to Networking Communities”! Download it from HAL-SHS This book is a guide on how to build a community network, a shared local telecommunications infrastructure, managed as a commons, to access the internet and other digital communications services. It was written collectively by a...
Government & Industry Working Hand in Hand to Impose Facial Recognition
Op-Ed in French written with Martin Drago, lawyer at La Quadrature du Net, and published in Le Monde on October 25, 2019. L’inévitable débat sur la reconnaissance faciale arrive enfin en France, et le gouvernement esquisse sa réponse. Dans un entretien paru dans Le Monde du 15 octobre, le secrétaire d’Etat au numérique Cédric O, ancien cadre du groupe Safran, a notamment estimé qu’« expérimenter »...
‘Direct Action Against Computerization (1960-1990)’
In the political genealogy of computers, and even more so in the dominant historiography of the Internet, [neo-Luddite] opposition has been largely overlooked. Among the actors who contributed in one way or another to shaping these technologies and the discourse surrounding them before the 1990s, postwar humanist scientists and technophile hippies of the 1960s are often mentioned (see, for...
Data Politics is out
A new book on « Data Politics » is fresh out. Edited by professor Didier Bigo, Engin Isin and Evelyn Ruppert, it is part of Routledge Serie in International Political Sociology. I contributed a chapter titled « Seeing Like Big Tech: Security assemblages, technology, and the future of state bureaucracy ». Here is the abstract: This chapter looks at post-Snowden contention between US technology...
Towards the Automation of Political Censorship
We are at a turning point in the long history of censorship. This turning point is that of private and automated censorship. It marks a radical break with the guarantees associated with freedom of expression that the democratic struggles of the 19th century left us as a legacy. The democratic-liberal heritage trampled underfoot The 1881 law on freedom of the press—now interpreted in the light of...
The Origins of Digital Activism in France
My colleague Patrick Pétin and I have just published an article in the journal Internet Histories that traces the origins of digital activism in France. The idea is to provide some new insights based on interviews conducted with pioneers of the movement over the past two years, but also to raise international awareness of the specificities of the French trajectory, at a time when historiography...
Copyright Directive: the fake confrontation between the two heads of information capitalism
Opinion piece originally published in French in Le Monde Idées on September 9, 2018. For a quarter of a century, we have been watching the same bad movie, in which the cultural industries use the law to wage war on their audience. At issue this time is Article 13 of the Copyright Directive currently under review in Brussels, on which the European Parliament will vote on September 12. In its...
"A new figure of power is emerging before our eyes"
In French only. Je reproduis ici un entretien avec le journaliste Clément Pouré de Motherboard. Motherboard – Début janvier, Emmanuel Macron annonçait un projet de loi sur les fake news. Faut-il s’inquiéter d’une éventuelle censure ? Félix Tréguer – Le projet d’Emmanuel Macron reste assez flou à ce stade, mais les mesures envisagées semblent cibler l’utilisation des systèmes de contenus...
PhD completed!
Finally! My thesis is finished. After seven years of hard work, I defended it on November 2, 2017 at the EHESS in Paris, surrounded by my loved ones (family, friends, colleagues) and facing a perceptive jury with whom I was able to have a particularly rich discussion. I submitted the PDF to the HAL-SHS archive. Here is the abstract: Taking contemporary debates on freedom of expression and privacy...
Gaps and bumps in the political history of the internet
I have a new paper out at the Internet Policy Review. It is based on a personal experience but it is also meant as an introduction to the political historiography of the Internet (the full list of references is here, and an extended version of the bibliography is available in this bibtex file).
Le coût écologique d’internet est trop lourd, il faut penser un internet low-tech
Le combat pour une informatique émancipatrice échoue le plus souvent à expliquer les effroyables coûts écologiques et humains du numérique. Un internet low-tech est nécessaire afin de nous émanciper des sphères technocratiques et industrielles. avec Gaël Trouvé. Tribune publiée sur Reporterre L’an dernier, un contributeur de la revue anglo-saxonne <i>Phrack,</i> publication phare de la...
De la dépêche secrète aux Crypto Wars (brève histoire politique du chiffrement)
Ce texte a été publié dans le numéro 365 de La Chronique, le magazine d’Amnesty International (avril 2017). L’acuité des débats contemporains autour du droit au chiffrement de nos communications et données numériques pourrait faire oublier qu’il renvoie en réalité d’un droit ancien. Il est en effet indéfectiblement lié au secret des correspondances, lui-même protégé depuis le milieu du XVIIIème...
Alt. vs. Ctrl.: Thinking About Alternative Internets
Editorial notes for the Journal of Peer Production #9 on Alternative Internets By Félix Tréguer, Panayotis Antoniadis, Johan Söderberg The hopes of past generations of hackers weigh like a delirium on the brains of the newbies. Back in the days when Bulletin Board Systems metamorphosed into the Internet, the world’s digital communications networks – hitherto confined to military, corporate and...
Supporting Community Networks Through Law and Policy
This post was first published on netCommons. For the most part, the following is based on research conducted for an article I co-authored with Primavera De Filippi after interviewing several leading community networks in Europe that use wireless networks to provide Internet connectivity to their members, such as Guifi.net, Freifunk, Ninux or Tetaneutral.net. As we at netCommons start looking into...
Rollback or Legalisation? Mass Surveillance in France and the Snowden Paradox
This piece was first published on ExplosivePolitics and MappingSecurity. On June the 5**th****, it will be exactly three years since Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald wrote the first article based on the trove of secret documents disclosed by the now famous NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Three years that saw the unfolding of an unprecedented controversy on the surveillance...
Post-Snowden Contention: The Case of France
Last week, I attended the 7th Biennial Surveillance & Society Confrence in Barcelona, where I presented a paper entitled: « From Deep State Illegality to Law of the Land: The Case of Internet Surveillance in France. » Download the paper This paper (update: now published by Media and Communication in a special issue on « Post-Snowden Internet Policy » – pdf) aims to contribute to cross-country...
Sauver Internet (et nous-mêmes) de la technocratie
Alors que la Deuxième Guerre mondiale poussait à son paroxysme l’instrumentalisation de la science par un ordre bureaucratique mortifère, les philosophes et les artistes n’étaient soudain plus les seuls à s’inquiéter de l’aliénation technicienne. De nombreux scientifiques au cœur de l’appareil militaro-industriel traversaient à leur tour une véritable crise de conscience. Dans ce contexte,...
Le gouvernement refuse de faire la transparence sur le nombre de documents classifiés
Mise-à-jour du 9 février 2018 : La deuxième édition du rapport. Mise-à-jour du 20 décembre 2015 : Le rapport du SGDSN « sur le secret de la défense nationale en France » a été publié.** ** Mise-à-jour du 21 octobre 2015 : On apprend aujourd’hui que le SGDSN « prépare un rapport sur le secret-défense » qui « devrait notamment comprendre des statistiques sur la classification ». Dans le cadre d’une...
Internet : un nouvel art de la révolte ?
Le philosophe Geoffroy de Lagasnerie vient de faire paraître un essai intitulé L’Art de la révolte qui constitue une contribution importante à l’étude des rapports entre Internet, la citoyenneté et l’espace public. J’en propose ici un petit résumé avant de faire quelques remarques critiques. Résumé L’auteur prend appui sur trois « figures exemplaires » du militantisme sur Internet : Julian...
Le Conseil d’État fait peu de cas de la liberté d’expression sur Internet
L’hiver dernier, la jurisprudence Dieudonné du Conseil d’État avait déjà suscité des inquiétudes quant à la protection de la liberté d’expression en droit français. Bien qu’il comporte des propositions positives sur les nombreux autres sujets abordés, le rapport sur le « numérique et les droits fondamentaux » publié aujourd’hui par la section du rapport et des études du Palais-Royal tend à les...
Ithiel de Sola Pool, le Tocqueville du droit de l’Internet
Dès les premiers débats autour de la régulation d’Internet, dans les années 1990, les législateurs et les juges se sont heurtés à une question fondamentale : de quel régime juridique Internet doit-il relever ? De celui de la presse, du téléphone, de l’audiovisuel ? Ou faut-il lui appliquer un autre droit ? Une question encore d’actualité, notamment en France avec les projets d’extension des...
Insurgent Citizenship Online & the Struggle Over Free Speech in “Established” Democracies
Below is an input statement presented at the 20th New Faces Conference, held on February 27– March 2, 2014 in Istanbul on “Citizenship and Political Participation in the Mediterranean Region”. It is a shorter version of another paper summing ongoing doctoral research. It was also published and translated in Greek on the Artivist e-Magazine. The Internet is bringing about a new era for freedom of...
Des dangers de l’état d’exception…
Dans un livre passionnant sur l’« État de droit et états d’exception », Marie-Laure Basilien-Gainche, membre de l’Institut universitaire de France, rappelle le caractère ambigu des états d’exception. Elle souligne ainsi que « les méthodes exceptionnelles peuvent s’avérer tout à la fois salutaires et délétères ». Salutaire, lorsque l’entité (souvent le pouvoir exécutif) habilitée à prendre des...
La Liberté d’expression sur Internet, envers et contre la haine
Depuis le début de « l’affaire des tweets antisémites », il y a plus d’un an, la question est de nouveau posée de savoir s’il faut adapter la législation française pour renforcer la répression sur Internet, en particulier contre les discours racistes, sexistes, homophobes. À l’heure où des initiatives gouvernementales convergent en ce sens et après plusieurs mois de dialogue avec les associations...
Insurgent Citizenship on the Internet: Pushing Back the Limits of the Public Sphere
I presented a few weeks ago at the International Congress of the Research Committee on Sociology of Law of the International Sociological Association. The congress was held in Toulouse on 3-6 September 2013 and its theme was “Sociology of Law and Political Action”. My paper was presented during a workshop on « Non-Compliance to the Rules and Disobedience Towards the Law« . Abstract: This paper...
Doit-on opposer la protection des sources à celle des lanceurs d’alerte ?
La protection des lanceurs d’alerte est-elle contradictoire avec la protection du secret des sources ? Dans un article sur les whistleblowers, le professeur de droit Pascal Mbongo, spécialiste de la liberté d’expression, s’interroge sur les rapports entre protection des lanceurs d’alerte et confidentialité des sources : Le secret des sources des journalistes est un principe par défaut dans la...
La LCEN, le juge et l’urgence d’une réforme
L’arrêt de la Cour d’appel de Paris « Rose B. / JFG Networks » du 4 avril 2013 (lien) vient une nouvelle fois illustrer les graves lacunes de la Loi pour la confiance dans l’économie numérique du 21 juin 2004 (dite LCEN) pour la protection de la liberté d’expression sur Internet. Dans une brève publiée hier, le site d’actualité juridique Legalis résume ainsi l’affaire : « Une personne considérait...
La CEDH, The Pirate Bay, et l’ambivalence des usages protestataires du droit
Je lis sur le site PC INpact : « La semaine dernière, la Cour européenne des droits de l’homme a rejeté la procédure intentée par deux des cofondateurs de The Pirate Bay. Fredrik Neij et Peter Sunde avaient été condamnés par la justice suédoise à 5 millions d’euros pour complicité d’atteinte au droit d’auteur. La MPAA vient de féliciter la Cour de Strasbourg, estimant que le débat sur la liberté...
#freebassel
Tribune publiée dans Libération. Le 15 mars 2013 marque le deuxième anniversaire de la guerre en Syrie et le premier anniversaire de la détention illégale de Bassel Khartabil, un informaticien syrien né en 1981, dans les Territoires palestiniens. Son arrestation serait liée à son activité professionnelle de développement de logiciels libres, estime le Gulf Center for Human Rights. Bassel...
Comments on the EU Commission’s Flawed Cybersecurity Strategy
On Thursday February 7th 2013, during a press conference, the European Commission announced a milestone initiative in the field of “cybersecurity”, publishing two documents: – A proposal for a directive “concerning measures to ensure a high common level of network and information, security across the Union” (apparently nicknamed the “NIS directive”). – A communication on a “CyberSecurity Strategy...
Internet dans la jurisprudence de la CEDH
Une version retravaillée de cet article a été publiée dans la Revue des droits et libertés fondamentaux, hébergée par le Centre de Recherches Juridiques de la Faculté de droit de Grenoble. Il est également disponible dans une version PDF éditée avec le logiciel LaTeX. Le mois dernier, la Cour européenne des droits de l’Homme (CEDH) rendait son premier jugement relatif au blocage de sites Internet...
Vers un contrat social du cyberespace ?
Ancienne journaliste pour CNN en Chine, Rebecca McKinnon est aussi depuis des années une fervente défenseur des libertés sur Internet. En 2004, elle met de côté le journalisme et devient chargée de recherche au « Berkman Center for Internet & Society » à Harvard, où elle co-fonde le réseau mondial de blogueurs Global Voices Online. Elle est également instigatrice du Global Network Initiative, une...
Internet, espace d’une citoyenneté insurrectionnelle
Un des aspects les plus intéressants des débats liés à la liberté de communication sur Internet, c’est la manière dont ils mettent en scène un « conflit de légitimité démocratique ». Deux camps s’affrontent : d’un côté ceux qui défendent l’application du droit positif à Internet au nom du primat de la démocratie représentative (et de ses institutions, législatives ou judiciaires par exemple) ; de...
Castoriadis sur la démocratie
Mediapart vient de publier un entretien datant de 1989 entre le réalisateur engagé Chris Marker et le philosophe Cornelius Castoriadis, au cours duquel ce dernier donne un véritable cours sur la démocratie. En faisant l’histoire de la « démocratie des Anciens » (la Grèce antique) pour mieux critiquer la « démocratie représentative » actuelle, Castoriadis passe en revue les contradictions et les...
French Supreme Court: Important rulings for intermediary liability
Publié initialement dans la newsletter EDRi-gram. On 12 July 2012 the French Supreme Court (Cour de Cassation) issued four important and somewhat contradictory rulings regarding the role of online service providers in policing online copyright infringements. In the first case, SNEP vs. Google France, the Court’s decision could lead the search engine to censor its autocomplete feature which...
Les États face à Internet : contrôle et résistances
En 2006, Jack Goldsmith – grand juriste professeur de droit à Harvard et ancien haut fonctionnaire du ministère de la Justice américain sous l’administration Bush – et Tim Wu – professeur de droit à la Columbia Law School de New York – publient « Who Control the Internet ». À l’époque, le discours dominant sur Internet est celui des théoriciens de la mondialisation comme Thomas Friedman, qui...
Le copwatching, nouveau terrain de lutte pour la liberté d’expression ?
Le copwatching prend racine en France, au grand dam du gouvernement. Venu des États-Unis où cette pratique s’est développée à la suite du passage à tabac de Rodney King en 1991, il est porté par l’essor des technologies numériques et d’Internet. Le principe est simple : des groupes informels de citoyens militants mettent en place un site web pour documenter les dérives et violences policières, à...
Pour une politique des fréquences au service de l’innovation et de la démocratie
Initialement publié sur La Quadrature du Net. En dehors des accès WiFi, l’Internet sans-fil que nous vendent les opérateurs télécoms est un Internet truffé de restrictions d’accès, de bridages et de blocages en tous genres, qui portent atteinte au principe fondamental de neutralité du réseau et restreignent notre liberté de communication. Cet Internet sans-fil auquel nous accédons n’est qu’un...
Assange inculpé : le regrettable silence des journalistes
Le « Grand Jury » mis en place l’an dernier par le ministère de la Justice américain, suite à la révélation des câbles diplomatiques par WikiLeaks, aurait bel et bien inculpé Julian Assange, sur le terrain de l’espionnage[1. Fred Burton, le vice président de Stratfor en charge du renseignement, a reçu un e-mail d’un ancien responsable du contre-espionnage au département d’État : “Not for Pub—We...
La défense des libertés sur Internet : l’Epic #Fail de l’Europe
** __**Cet article a été initialement publié sur LeMonde.fr et dans la revue de relations internationales Le Jeu de l’Oie. « Une bataille est engagée entre d’un côté, les tenants d’un Internet universel, ouvert, respectueux des droits de l’Homme (…) et, de l’autre, ceux qui voudraient transformer l’Internet en un espace fermé et surveillé, au service d’un régime.« En juillet 2010, à l’occasion...
French Copwatch Ruling Continues Trend of Censorship
Cet article en anglais a été publié dans la revue juridique en ligne JURIST. JURIST Guest Columnist Félix Tréguer, Policy and Legal Analyst at La Quadrature du Net, says that the recent ruling blocking the Copwatch website in France is just another instance of censorship under the Sarkozy government which prevents French citizens from learning of police abuse and engaging in democratic governance…...
L’obsolescence du droit des médias appliqué à Internet
« Autrefois, ce genre de discussions se tenait dans les salons ou les cafés ; aujourd’hui, elles ont lieu sur le Net. » Alexis Delcambre, rédacteur en chef du journal en ligne LeMonde.fr Suite au post de la semaine dernière, je voudrais ici tâcher de montrer les limites et les dangers liés à l’application à Internet des logiques de régulation héritées du droit des médias. Ce dernier s’est...
Droit de l’Internet : Mettre fin au bricolage juridique pour engager une véritable réforme
Le droit de l’Internet est un droit récent, en partie fondé sur de vieux principes applicables aux médias traditionnels. Mais en réalité, c’est encore un droit mouvant, constamment modifié par le législateur et les juges, contraints d’ajuster des règles mal définies à un environnement numérique en perpétuelle évolution[1. Voir à ce sujet l’article d’Emmanuel Cauvin, paru dans Le Débat :...
Les lois du numérique
Le texte d’Emmanuel Cauvin paru cet hiver dans la revue Débat[1. Cauvin Emmanuel, 2011, « Quelles lois pour le numérique ? »,. Le Débat, vol. 163, n° 1, p. 16.] est un texte important, qui se penche sur les rapports entre Internet et le droit. L’article traite en particulier de la difficulté d’appliquer les logiques de régulation traditionnelles à Internet. Emmanuel Cauvin, qui est juriste de...
Le spectre de nos libertés
Et si les internautes devenaient un peu plus que de simples utilisateurs ? En se voyant offrir la possibilité d’investir les fréquences hertziennes, ils pourraient être des fournisseurs, non seulement de contenus, mais également d’accès. Nous serions alors bien plus que des consommateurs, et Internet verrait son caractère acentré et multipolaire préservé. Plaidoyer de Félix Tréguer et Jean Cattan...
La dérégulation des médias en Europe : les limites du libéralisme économique
En Europe, la fin des monopoles publics en matière de communication radiophonique et télévisuelle a abouti à la mise en place d’un schéma par bien des aspects similaires au modèle qui s’est développé aux États-Unis. Les promesses de la libéralisation des médias en Europe Si la réglementation fait une plus grande place au pluralisme[1. Au travers, par exemple, des mesures anti-concentration, des...
Le développement d’un modèle de médias de masse aux États Unis
Après une série de posts sur l’influence de l’État sur les médias traditionnels, intéressons-nous maintenant aux conditions économiques présidant à la production de l’information, qui excluent de fait un grand nombre de personnes. Autant pour éclairer certains défauts structurels inhérents à l’univers médiatique pré-Internet que pour être conscient de l’importance des débats actuels sur le rôle...
Histoire des médias sous contrôle : La « voix de la France » et de son gouvernement
Après un premier post sur la censure de la presse au XIXè siècle, intéressons nous maintenant au contrôle politique des moyens de communication de masse qui ont marqué le XXème sicèle: la radio et la télévision… En juin 1899, trois ans après avoir déposé un premier brevet de radio-électricité, Guglielmo Marconi établit une première liaison radio entre l’Angleterre et la France. Un message en...
Histoire des médias sous contrôle : Des salons révolutionnaires à la censure de la presse au XIXè siècle
En introduction à cette série de posts sur les médias traditionnels Si l’on souhaite mesurer la contribution d’Internet aux systèmes politiques, il importe de comprendre dans quel environnement informationnel celui-ci surgit. Internet n’est en aucun cas un réseau de communication idéal permettant l’avènement d’une utopie politique. Il ne s’agit pas non plus de nier l’importance des médias...
Médias et alternatives: «Médiactivistes»
Dominique Cardon et Fabien Granjon, 2010, Médiactivistes, Les Presses de Sciences Po. Dans ce petit ouvrage de synthèse, Cardon et Granjon tentent de montrer comment, depuis les années 60, la production de l’information est un enjeu de lutte. Trois enjeux sont au cœur de l’ouvrage : le premier est historique, puisque les auteurs entendent retracer l’histoire récente des formes de la critique de...
La Démocratie Internet
Pour inaugurer la publication de fiches de lecture sur ce blog: Dominique Cardon, 2010, La Démocratie Internet: Promesses et limites, Seuil Il s’agit d’un ouvrage de synthèse qui a déjà pas mal fait parler de lui… En voici un résumé. Histoire politique d’Internet Dominique Cardon montre que, « plus qu’un média de communication et d’information, Internet est une forme politique à part entière »....
Les caractéristiques techniques d’Internet et ses potentialités politiques
… ou Internet pour les nuls (moi compris).
La philosophie politique des concepteurs d’Internet
Beaucoup de travaux ont été écrits sur l’esprit d’Internet, ou l’imaginaire d’Internet. En France, Patrice Flichy et Dominique Cardon ont eu l’occasion de se pencher sur cette question. Cardon, (qui s’appuie sur les travaux de Fred Turner), rappelle notamment qu’Internet est né de la contre-culture américaine, et en son sein d’une mouvance autonomiste cherchant à élaborer des modes de vie...
Us Now: Vers la démocratie coopérative ?
Il faut voir ce documentaire de 2008. Us Now from Banyak Films. Remarques en vrac : Coopération, confiance et risque Des organisations coopératives se fondent sur la confiance entre participants, l’échange, et une place donnée à l’économie du don, plutôt qu’aux mécanismes de marché. La confiance aboutit également à la moralisation des rapports sociaux, même dans le cas de d’entreprises purement...
La Hadopi ou la négation des droits du public
Mardi 7 décembre, je représentais La Quadrature du Net au diner du club parlementaire du numérique, où la présidente de la Hadopi, Marie-Françoise Marais, son secrétaire général, Éric Walter, étaient venus expliquer à quelques députés et sénateurs l’avancée de leurs travaux. Une opération séduction face à des parlementaires inquiets Le député Jean Dionis du Séjour, en introduction de la soirée, a...
Ouverture de We The Net !
We The Net est un espace de réflexion sur les enjeux démocratiques de la liberté de communication sur Internet. Il s’inscrit dans le cadre d’un travail de thèse réalisé à l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, sous la direction de Marcela Iacub. Detail of Preamble to Constitution of the United States Projet de recherche. Dans l’après-midi du 10 juin 2009, le Conseil constitutionnel...
Net Neutrality Is Digital Free Speech
Just as the U.S Congress is about to debate the Internet Freedom Preservation Act, and before the Telecom Package discussion resumes later this fall, one could regret that the concept of openness of our communications infrastructure is not more salient in the public debate. What is about anyway? And why does it matter? An open communications infrastructure is developed and used according to the...
Internet Is a Fundamental Right, French Constitutional Court Says
Yesterday at 5P.M, the French Constitutional Council – in charge of checking the conformity of legislation with the Constitution – rendered a groundbreaking decision regarding the highly controversial “three strikes law” (or graduated response), passed last month by Parliament to fight illegal downloading. The law established a penalty amounting to the suspension of downloaders’ internet...
The Political Economy of the Web 2.0
This article by John Naughton, professor at the Open University, is one of the most comprehensive ten-page articles you can get on new media. Naughton very well describes some of the characteristics of what he calls the “emerging media ecosystem”: user-generated content, cooperation and sharing. Referring to Neil Postman, he draws a relevant analogy between the media and ecology. The media...
Could the Internet End Up Killing the Public Sphere?
A few weeks ago, the French Journal Le Débat published a compelling piece by Benjamin Loveluck entitled « Internet: Toward a Radical Democracy?« . The author, who is writing a Ph.D thesis on « the hypermodern individual and the genealogy of contemporary media regime__s” (sic), successfully locates the recent developments of the internet within the history of liberal-democracies. He demonstrates...
Facing the Crisis, the European Union Should Imitate Obama’s Reliance on New Technologies to Bring About Change
Determined to act swiftly to pass an $825 billion stimulus package, US President Barack Obama used his weekly address (on a revamped whitehouse.gov website) to give more details about this recovery plan. As it stands now, the proposal includes public spending programs in three high-tech areas : computerization of medical records; creation of smarter, high-tech enhanced electrical grids; expansion...
Regulation : The Internet is not TV
As some telecommunication companies slowly turn themselves into producers and distributors of media content, new issues arise for competition regulators. Public officials have hinted at several ways of dealing with this issue. On the one hand, market regulators are keen on maintaining a clear differentiation between these two sectors. On the other hand, some government officials seem willing to...
Copyright Gone Wrong
At the beginning of this year, the head of the European Commission’s Internal Market and Services Directorate General Charlie McCreevy announced his plan to extend copyright terms for performers and phonogram producers from 50 years today to 95 years (1). The Commission advances the argument that many works from ageing musicians dating back to the 1950’s are about to fall into the public domain....
The Freedom to Digitalize Revolutionary Powers
In On Liberty (1859), philosopher John Stuart Mill reflects on the potential coercion that could result from democracy and more especially from what Alexi De Tocqueville called the “tyranny of the majority”. In this work, Mill formulates a very convincing plea in favor of free speech. According to him, only by discussion can we test the validity of people’s beliefs and only by dialectic can we...
European Parliament Rejects France’s Graduated Response
The French legislative bill aimed at granting a public agency the right to suspend people’s internet connection if they are suspected of copyright infringement has been turned down by the European Parliament, which resumed session earlier this week. Voting on the telecom package – a piece of legislation that regulates the EU electronic communication sector – the Parliament adopted by an...
If We Could Free Our Culture
I just finished Lawrence Lessig’s book Free Culture (2004) and it has made me angry. A law professor specialized in intellectual property, Lessig demonstrates that we are caught in a dangerous, reactionary discourse about intellectual property in the Net era. His sincere advocacy for a freer society deconstructs the key elements of the debate on copyright and gives a desirable sense of perspective...
Taylorism vs. Googlism
I talked about Nicholas Carr’s article a few days ago. According to his piece (Is Google Making Us Stupid?) the web is affecting our cognitive abilities. We are now fed with tons information but seldom sit and reflect about them; we google things but rarely research or memorize them anymore. Carr argues that this constant flipping through is dispossessing us from complex reasoning. He then draws a...
How the Web Is Changing Us
A few weeks ago, American writer Nicholas Carr wrote a controversial article in the Atlantic Monthly. In his piece “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” he elaborated on an interesting hypothesis regarding the cognitive consequences of the web. Carr, a well-known critic of technological utopianism asked whether it could be that using the web slowly rewired people’s neuronal circuitry. He explains: For...
Regulating Privacy in the Online World
Things are moving forward on the privacy front. In April, the so-called “Group 29”, an advisory body to the European Commission on privacy and public liberties matters, issued a memo in which it analyzed the activity of data-mining internet companies. More specifically, it sought to establish whether they respected the European regulatory framework which is composed of two directives: – the data...
The Political Economy of Internet Search Engines
This article by Elizabeth Van Couvering, from the London School of Economics, is now four years old and thus allows to put in perspective the evolution of web search engines, which have become key players of the information society. She makes a few interesting points: The author classifies search engines a****s media, saying that their business model is very similar to that traditional media of...
MySpace: A Revolutionary Link Between the People and the Cultural Industries (2/2)
What makes MySpace unique, along with other sites based on the same concept, such as Last.fm, is their unique and revolutionary service of popular culture broadcaster (so far, mainly music) relying on the technology of the Web 2.0. They link social networking and self-representation, and the prominent place of popular culture in identity formation and social interaction. However, these new...
MySpace: A Revolutionary Link Between the People and the Cultural Industries (1/2)
The following article is an excerpt from a research paper I wrote in June 07 at Middlebury College. Most online-social networks were developed with technical means in mind. In that respect, MySpace is first and foremost a commercial company that seeks to maximize its benefits through advertising. This commercial aspect has been proven even more central since the media multinational News...
Why the French 3-Strikes Law Might Be Unconstitutional
The French Government just finished writing a bill that would aim at controlling internet traffic in order to punish web users guilty of copyright infringement. The law, highly anticipated by right holders, would create a new public body in charge of sanctioning people guilty of illegal downloading. It would first warn them by sending emails and letters, and could eventually order internet service...
The European Parliament to Advocate Media Pluralism and Blogging Transparency
This in-depth article by EUobserver journalist Leigh Phillips comments on a draft report of the European Parliament’s Culture Committee about concentration and media pluralism in the EU. It was adopted by the Committee on June 3rd and the report will now be submitted to the plenary assembly within the next few weeks. As stated by Phillips, its main recommendation is for the European Commission and...
Sweden and the Information Society: A Step Backward
Sweden is considered as a leader of the information society. The country boasts one of the best broadband networks in the world, 80% of households have an internet connection and it is heading towards progressive policies on file-sharing (thanks to rightholders in particular). In addition, Sweden has taken the transparency lead in the European Union as it has successfully convinced its partners to...
The Media Under Control ?
Here is a short review of a conference entitled “The Media Under Control” that took place at Sciences Po last thursday. The first speaker was Hervé Bourges, former director of the public TV network (France Television) among many other things. He gave an interesting account of the way French politicians, ever since De Gaulle’s presidency in the 1950’s, have exerted a strong control over the media...
Policing the Net: Copyright vs. Civil Liberties
The battle that right-holders have been waging against P2P users has proved largely unsuccessful so far. In the US, the methods used by the recording industry’s lobby (RIAA) to track down “pirates” are put into question; in France, the penal sanctions provided by a 2006 Act on author’s rights have had no effect in stopping illegal downloading, and the digital music market is still developing...
Will New Media Dissolve the Political Community?
I just read this interesting article by Henry Jenkins, the well-known media scholar. Even though this piece dates back to three years ago, it is still very relevant to the debate on the democratic impact that new media might have on the functioning of our democracies. Jenkins responds to some authors who bemoan the fragmentation of audiences across a wide variety of sources, arguing that the...
Why this blog?
I wanted to have a sort of diary where I could write down observations and reflections about the way our society is being transformed by ICT, how they bring about social change. I used to want to work in the music industry and grew more and more fascinated by the way the internet transforms the way people access cultural goods thus challenging traditional business models. Then I realized I liked...
About Me
I’m a French student currently enrolled in the Master of Public Affairs at Sciences Po, Paris. I studied there at the undergraduate level as well, and went abroad during my senior year at Middlebury College, VT, USA. Contact me at: felix.treguer@sciences-po.org