The biggest clampdown on the freedom of cyber-speech so far occurred this week in France. The French Constitutional Council approved a broadly worded law banning mere citizens from filming acts of violence and broadcasting them on the net.

The role citizens play in reporting local news is still a contentious subject in newsrooms around the world. But editors are beginning to realise the interests of the community are at the heart of most reader's move from interested citizen to citizen journalist.

Far from being a threat to the news business, citizen reportage puts more eyes and ears on the street allowing newsrooms with tight budgets to cover their neighbourhoods more closely. No more town council meetings without coverage, goes the thinking, adding a healthy dose of accountability to the roles the elected officials, judges and civic leaders play in our lives. Perhaps, this is why these civic leaders are so opposed to citizen journalists.

The law was first proposed by presidential hopeful Nicolas Sarkozy in a dubious attempt to crackdown on 'happy slapping' - the teenage prank where one person slaps a complete stranger and a giggling sidekick films the outraged response.

Perhaps Sarkozy is also remembering the role amateur shutterbugs and digital camera-toting citizens played in documenting and bringing to the world's attention the civil unrest in Paris' banlieue in 2005. Riots which many senior politicians would rather have kept away from the media's attention.

"I am really concerned by this law," said Julien Pain, head of internet freedom at Paris-based media agency, Reporters Without Borders.

It targets and criminalises recording and publishing to the web of the kind of violent acts the digital age has had so much success exposing and uprooting. In France, the proposed sentence is stiff: up to five years in prison and a fine of 75,000 euros.

"This law could lead to self-censorship on the net," says Pain, "which could be good when you talk about 'happy slapping', but it's not a good idea when you are talking about exposing police brutality."

"Basically, it says that if you shoot with a camera phone or with a digital camera a policeman beating up a protester, or anybody, you cannot go to YouTube or to the net to publish it, or else you could be jailed or fined. Now, you can only go to a justice official or give it to a professional journalist," he says.

Reporters Without Borders chronicles the crack down governments around the world are inflicting on bloggers and other so-called 'cyber-dissidents'. There are now 60 internet journalists and bloggers in jail around the world, the organisation says, including an Egyptian blogger who was sentenced to four years in prison recently for using the net to broadcast tales of documented prisoner abuse. The muzzling of reform-minded web journalists is nothing new. But said Pain, "even Egypt has not passed the kind of legislation that was just passed here in France."

As the new French law shows, democratic societies and totalitarian states hold an equally deep suspicion of citizen journalists. In the United States, the journalist currently serving the longest sentence is blogger Josh Wolf. He is in jail for refusing a court order to turn over unpublished footage of street protesters setting a police car ablaze. 24-year-old Wolf has become a symbol of the need to protect free speech, even in the world's largest democracy.

Ordinary citizens gaining the freedom to publish and broadcast their observations unsettles those in authority. Dealing with a quantifiable number of official journalists is manageable. Monitoring hundreds or even thousands of online scribes is not. As Pain says, "They represent a direct threat to authority. Even in a democracy, they can change politics. They can force the government and officials everywhere to be more careful about what they say and do."

Talk about a slap in the face.

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