The French National Assembly has adopted a bill that would make it illegal to promote anorexia through Web sites, magazines and in advertisements.

"Encouraging young girls to lie to their doctors, advising them on foods that are easier to regurgitate and inciting them to beat themselves up each time they eat is not freedom of expression," Health Minister Roselyne Bachelot said in a speech in parliament.

The European Parliament shot down the proposal to ban file sharing by private individuals and dropped the idea to bar copyright abusers from the Internet.

In a close vote, 314 Members of the European Parliament voted to reject an amendment that would have protected copyright on the Internet and 297 voted against throwing out the amendment.

Over time, references to Quaero have become less and less frequent; it seemed that the French search project was more likely to fade from existence than challenge Google.  The European Commission has approved $152 million in state aid, however, so Mountain View might not want to forget about it.

A Web site in France that allowed students to anonymously rate and name their teachers has been ordered by a court to no longer allow the practice.

Teachers unions with the backing of the education ministry took the site to court, saying the personal comments were a breach of privacy and an "incitement to public disorder." The site note2be.com was created in January by French entrepreneurs, allowed students to rate and discuss their teacher’s abilities.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is receiving a lot of attention online for a video in which he tells a bystander to "get lost".

Sarkozy was filmed by a journalist from the newspaper Le Parisien while attending an annual farm fair in Paris on Saturday. Sarkozy went to shake a mans hand who in response said," Don’t touch me, you are soiling me." Sarkozy replied while still smiling," Get lost, dumb ass."

Online retailer Amazon.com will pay 1,000 euros ($1,500) a day in fines in order to offer free shipping in France while it appeals a December court ruling that made the practice illegal.

Jeff Bezos, chief executive officer of Amazon, sent an email to customers of its French Web site stating Amazon will continue to offer free shipping while waiting for the outcome of the appeal.

French President Nicholas Sarkozy has proposed banning advertising on public television and recovering some of the lost revenue by taxing the Internet and mobile phones.

Electronic voting machines are thought to be a way of saving money, but they often come with a hidden cost, according to a new report from the French Internet Rights Forum.

Free shipping is so nice – you know what you’re getting into from the start, with no surprises at the final checkout screen.  The French may see some last-minute additions to their book orders, however, as a court has ruled that Amazon.fr must charge for deliveries.

It is (I think) becoming public knowledge that Google has crushed all of its opponents in France – the company has a search market share of around ninety percent.  A new study is surprising, then, in that it reveals large similarities between the French versions of Google and Yahoo.

I’ve seen a lot of nationalities get insulted online, and no one seems to detect and respond to those insults as quickly as the French.  Now I know why: according to a new Forrester Research study, young French Internet users are more likely than just about anyone else in Europe to visit a blog.

Torrents and peer-to-peer networks have had a rough couple of weeks lately. In addition to Cox and Comcast’s recent blocking of torrent sites, file-sharing has been under assault in France and Canada, not to mention from billionaire Mark Cuban.

On the one hand, new data makes it surprising that Google doesn’t cater more to the French market.  On the other hand, perhaps the search giant doesn’t need to – in France, it already has a market share of almost 90 percent.

We’ve balked at France’s attempts to shortcut Google in the past, down right made fun of them for it. But the latest search share numbers in the Land of Baguettes and Snarls (gimme a break, had to get at least one in there) show that Google is near to surpassing the 90 percent threshold.

AOL France scored a deal with Neuf Cegetel to provide content, marketing, and advertising for its portal websites.

Since servers for the addictive Blackberry wireless mail service reside in places like the United States, some government workers in France have been told to eschew using those devices.

I think pretty much everyone is aware of Britain’s BBC, but France Televisions, a public national television broadcaster, may not be as well-known in America.  Now France Televisions is in talks to join the European version of YouTube, though, so perhaps its profile will rise.

Google will hold a Press Day in Paris on June 19th. Marissa Mayer and CEO Eric Schmidt will be there, among others, and we can expect they’ll bring some product or feature announcements with them (Tony Ruscoe will go to Paris to cover this for us, and I’ll be blogging from Germany). One of those new services, as rumor has it, will be the launch of European versions of YouTube, like YouTube France*.

Consumer groups from France and Germany have joined a European coalition aimed at forcing Apple to make files downloaded from its iTunes music store compatible with digital music players manufactured by competing companies.

The next president of France may owe the blogosphere a debt of gratitude after toiling in “la toile,” the fabric of the Internet.

Jacques Chirac isn’t experiencing a very good beginning to his new year. Data suggests that France is becoming even less relevant within the blogosphere, and now reports have surfaced that the nation’s joint search engine venture with Germany is about to go under.