Minister of Culture and child tourism aficionado Frederic Mitterrand is happy to see the world’s most draconian Internet law come into effect in France. Mitterrand, son of the late x-president of France was appointed by his crony, Nicolas Sarkozy, to minister of culture after showing his love of young child tourism to Thailand in a recent memoirs.

The law by-passes judicial oversight and instead allows for the appointment of special “judges” who will pass out fines as well as jail terms for Internet use. Mitterrand’s love of child tourism in the Far East did not hold for those of his own country who want to watch movies or gather information that is otherwise illegal to French citizens. Mitterrand is quoted as saying the decisions “allows the legislature to complete an innovative and educational piece of piracy prevention.”

The law not only allows the French government to jail those it thinks may have downloaded unauthorized films and music but will make them pay for Internet access that they cannot use or have. In this way the French government protects its commercial interest, increases the coffers of its own telecommunication arm, and frees up more bandwidth to sell at higher prices.

French officials expect at least 50,000 connections cut in the first year for a profit to the telecoms of over 1,000,000 euros a month for services it does not have to provide.

The draconian law also allows unelected judges to make those who do not download anything pay if they know or had someone in their house that looked at something unauthorized. French law demands that you must prove your innocence and there are no ground rules to do that – you are guilty when they say you are and pay no matter what.

While we applaud Nicolas Sarkozy for bringing a royal thoroughbred like Mitterrand to head the nation on culture we also think that those who love child tourism, the use of underage children for the sexual gratification outside ones borders, does not really play in the moral high-road of trying to stop citizens from watching or verifying the veracity of something they find on the Internet.