...in practice it often means exactly the sort of crap you just outlined.

Would not the easier thing be to just simply slap some sort of excise on buying online? That would allow people to still make a choice - either pay more to buy from a faceless, heartless, likely non-French capitaliste, whose very name must send shivers into the heart of every God-fearing citizen of France (and the atheists in double measure), or buy locally at a discount.

Oh well. What do I know? I'm just a dirty American capitalist hellbent on destroying the non-competitive French system that surely must be preserved, just as the kerosene lamp industry probably should have been preserved...