US President Barrack Obama (Photo : Reuters/Kevin Lamarque )
French President Francois Hollande's government was preparing a law that would make the hosting of terrorist propaganda by internet companies a criminal offence for which the latter could be prosecuted by its courts, Bloomberg reported.
United States president Barack Obama is proposing an engagement with the internet companies on this issue, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
This proposal comes against the backdrop of a series of terrorist attacks that France has suffered starting with the Charlie Hebdo attack, in which a number of people have been killed.
It has recently become increasingly apparent that organizations such as the ISIS were using social media platforms and tools to market themselves to prospective fighters around the world, and especially also in Europe and the U.S.
With the terrorist attacks now occurring at the heart of Europe (in places such as Paris) the French government has been under a lot of pressure to take the issue to the internet companies, such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft.
These internet companies though have generally been very reluctant to open themselves up too much on this issue. Most of them still insist that all they do is to provide a "neutral" platform on which the eventual user creates and shares his or her own content. The internet companies claim that every time an instance of the presence of any abusive content on their platforms is brought to their notice, they take it off of their websites.
However, in recent days states (such as France) have been coming under increasing pressure to initiate some kind of substantive engagement with the internet companies on this issue.
They now have support from other world leaders.
In an address to Silicon Valley on Feb. 20, Friday, at Stanford University, Obama said, "There's only one way to defend America from these cyber threats, and that is through government and industry working together, sharing appropriate information as true partners."
