Fleur Pellerin, the minister for the digital economy, said she had persuaded the service provider, Free, to restore full access after meetings with French online publishing and advertising groups, which had complained about a loss of revenue.
Free had moved last week to block online ads for some of its users when it introduced a new version of its Internet access software. While some Internet users already use ad-blocking programs to rid their screens of annoying pop-ups and other online ads, the software upgrade from Free did this automatically.
“An Internet service provider cannot unilaterally implement such blocking,” Ms. Pellerin said at a news conference Monday. Advertising should not be treated differently from other kinds of Internet content, she said, adding: “This kind of blocking is inconsistent with a free and open Internet, to which I am very attached.”
While Ms. Pellerin said Free, which has 5.2 million broadband customers, had agreed to stop blocking ads by the end of the day, she said the company’s initiative had highlighted an important question: Who should pay for the infrastructure that telecommunications providers need to carry ever-growing volumes of Internet traffic?
Network operators like Free complain that much of the benefit of their investments has gone to Internet companies like Google, which generate billions of dollars worth of revenue from online advertising. The move by Free was widely seen here as a tactic to try to get Google to share some of its ad revenue with service providers.
Google was not represented at the meetings Monday with Ms. Pellerin. In an interesting twist, its case was effectively argued by other Web publishers, including French newspapers, even though these sites are separately seeking a revenue-sharing arrangement with Google, in a related dispute.
Free, which is controlled by a French technology entrepreneur, Xavier Niél, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/08/technology/france-rejects-plan-to-block-online-ads.html?partner=rss&emc=rss