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German State Alters DNS To Censor Web Sites [updated]
Rabenwolf writes: "In the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, the first ISP (ISIS Multimedia) has given in to pressure from the state government and has started to block foreign websites with supposedly "illegal content" by changing the corresponding DNS entries. ISIS customers trying to access these sites are redirected to the website of the local government. ISPs in North Rhine-Westphalia will have to pay a fine if they continue to provide access to sites with "illegal content" through their DNS servers. It's not as bad as China or Saudi-Arabia, but it makes you think... An article from the heise newsticker is here, and if you don't sprechen Deutsch, Google might help." Update: 11/22 15:23 GMT by T : As sqrt points out, this report is misleading: "A single technican altered the DNS Entries to demonstrate it is possible. His changes were already reversed. Heise already posted a new story about this today."
I'm happy to see our german friends make up for their dismal record. Censorship is not only a fact of life, it is a necessary fact of life, and despite the fact that USians can only discern other people's censorship, USians are the most censorious bastards on the planet. USian government is a sinecure thanks to the individual USian's totalitarian tendencies.
S'true.
Of course there are different ways of thinking in different countries. Gassing 6 million people is a different way of thinking. Slamming airplanes into skyscrapers with thousands of people in and around them is a different way of thinking.
Indeed it is America's different way of thinking about freedom that ensure's we get to speak about different way's of thinking. Sure, we should understand that different parts of the world are different. But they also need to understand this, too ... but without freedom of speech they cannot achieve that.
In my way of thinking, though, I see these kinds of restrictions in Germany as a return to their Nazi past. While those putting in this law might not be intent on promoting the master race, those who do can certainly make use of it's uniform acceptance, should they come back to power.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Could someone tell me, does this guy *actually* not understand that the first amendment doesn't cover Germany, or, er, did he just vote for Bush?
In your rush to avoid looking like Nazis, you act like Nazis. What was that you were saying about Nazis being "stupid"? Seems to me stupid people are not likely to take power over a large and powerful country, and then hold the rest of the world at bay during six years of war in spite of overwhelming odds against them. Suicidal and arrogant, maybe, but not stupid.
Your statements about current Nazis being poor and ignorant and jobless only applies to the skinheads, not to people in general who have sympathy for nazi ideology or who question certain aspects of received history about nazis or the "holocaust".
In fact, your rush to equate "nazis" with poor people is classic status anxiety: like most "anti-racists" your real motivation is fear that you, as a German (or a white person, or whatever) will be lumped in the same category as some poor, ignorant skinhead, lower class loser with no job, and that you will lose status - become declasse - thereby.
It is no accident that the word "racist" is a neologism which only came into widespread use after WWII: the word has been a powerful tool in the hands of post-WWII elites. When the rich and powerful were "racist", everyone was a "racist". Now that the rich and powerful are "anti-racist", everyone is "anti-racist". Can you "baaa...." like a sheep for me?