Germany Wants To Put Time Limits On Porn

nappster writes: "According to this article (sorry, it's in German), Germany thinks it can control the Internet, so now it's considering requiring that porn sites restrict their hours to 11pm to 6am. Exactly how they will coerce sites operating outside Germany is not explained, hence the term 'imbecility' that some have used to describe this proposal." Swim through the German with the Fish.

Comments

Time zones?

[carpe_noctem]

So, will american porn sites be required to shut down outside of Germany's specified "porn times"? Or just filter all traffic into Germany Communist-China-style?

Re:Time zones?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it's always night *somewhere*

Either you shut the sites down for *everyone's* daytime hours (e.g. no pr0n for you!)

-or-

You shut them down only for *your* daytime hours.
(e.g. go to sites located wherever it's night -- 24/7 pr0n, just like normal) The problem with this is that you cannot tell your wife that you were "just reading the articles" when they happen to be in Chinese & you haven't downloaded the kanji fonts and she wants to know what "£ÑÑü" means.

Re:Time zones?

[thebigbadme]

As far as filtering and time zones go:
The world has twenty-four timezones; if, by some messed up sort of complete world agreement, Germany begot enforcement from other countries would it be enforced on a continual twenty-four basis? Or would everyone need to filter access at their different, local, times (five hours earlier with eastern standard time, etc)?
This is of course all hypothetical as we all know all world countries interested in filtering pr0n will insist on world enforcement of their own, unique, anti-freedom laws. I mean come on, can anyone see the French in agreance with any law that the United States would ever try to persue?
/philosophy

Re:Time zones?

[mpe]

The world has twenty-four timezones

Actually a few more. Some are centred about longitude which is not a multiple of 15 degrees. (e.g. Afganistan.)

Re:Time zones?

[arget]

heh. it's always 11pm to 6am somewhere. shouldn't be much trouble for any site that already sports server side scripting to add a paragraph to its disclaimer page.

"...I am not a cop, prude, or religious freak looking to make an example of this site.

I currently reside in GMT-1 to GMT+6.

I think she looks 18...."

Re:Time zones?

[Tackhead]

> Actually a few more. Some are centred about longitude which is not a multiple of 15 degrees. (e.g. Afganistan.)

I'd think that in order for it to be sometime in the eleventh century, you'd have to be off by more than just 15 degrees ;-)

*sigh*

[O]

I really wish Germany would stop trying to do shit like this. And I thought their technology laws were always so much better, with their good stance on crypto and such. Makes me very sad to see this.

Re:*sigh*

[tuxlove]

I really wish Germany would stop trying to do shit like this. And I thought their technology laws were always so much better, with their good stance on crypto and such. Makes me very sad to see this.

Their technology laws better? Where it costs ten times more for Internet connectivity than it does in the US? Where the government runs the ISPs? For chrissake, you can't even have red LEDs on the front of equipment there because it's against the law!

Admittedly, some of this may have changed since I last checked, since I don't live in Germany. But even so, they're still in the stone age in many ways when it comes to this stuff. Sorry if I sound like I'm Germany-bashing, but this is the topic at hand. Besides, the US gets a lot of bashing, so it's about time we spread it around a little. :) It's so easy to bash the US's stupid technology laws. It's nice to see that other countries are just as capable of making stupid technology laws as US lawmakers. Makes me feel warm and fuzzy.

Re:*sigh*

[norculf]

Are you serious about the LEDs? What's the story behind that?

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

1) There are exactly *zero* government-run ISPs over here. T-Online/BTX/Datex-J used to be, but that was back when the Telekom was owned by the government, and even then we already had independent ISPs.

2) I think nearly every single computer sold over here *does* have at least one red LED in its front, and tons of other equipment have it too, so I kinda wonder where you got that idea from.

Re:*sigh*

[hwilker]

Well, checking facts before posting would have helped in this case. I do live in Germany, and used to live in the US for a while. No other qualifications, sorry.

• Internet connectivity is not "ten times more" expensive than in the US anymore. A flat-rate DSL is around EUR 50/USD 45, available at least in many urban areas from a number of companies. This is comparable to what I paid for cable internet in California. Modem/ISDN access is still metered by time for most users, though, but can be bought at around 1ct/min. AOL monthly cost is around EUR 20, if I remember correctly.
  
• The government still has a major stake in Deutsche Telekom, which in turn is majority owner of T-Online, which is the largest ISP in Germany. On the other hand, both Telekom and T-Online have their stock traded in NY, I think. Other ISPs have no connections to the government at all.
  
• "No red LEDs on the front of equipment"? This sounds like an urban legend. It's not true; you can buy home appliances like cooking ranges that blink a number of red LEDs and 7seg displays at you, looking like the bridge on the "Enterprise", and I happen to have 1) a compact stereo system, 2) a portable tape player, 3) a stationary tape player, 4) a TV (around ten years old) and 5) a camera all sporting red LEDs somewhere around their bodies.
  

Of course all this doesn't invalidate the previous posters comments about other countries' lawmaking abilities in the tech sector...

Re:*sigh*

[Arthur Dent 75]

Where it costs ten times more for Internet connectivity than it does in the US? Where the government runs the ISPs? For chrissake, you can't even have red LEDs on the front of equipment there because it's against the law!

Ten times? We have DSL access available nearly everywhere now, for about 60 US$ (768k down/128k up) including a 2-channel digital telephone line (ISDN) and flatrate internet access. OK, there may be better offers in the US, but we play in the same league.

The government does not own any ISP (ok, it's a majority stock holder of the largest one). But there's a lot of private telcos out there, many of which also offer internet access. Or you just choose from the wide range of private ISPs. I don't see a problem with red LEDs here... The only red LED I hate is the one of my DSL modem which means "out of sync".

The major problem here is that many politicians have no grasp of the technical possibilities and limitations of the internet.

Arthur

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

YHBT, HAND.

Re:*sigh*

[AndroidCat]

And meanwhile, you can't have red EXIT signs in California, they have to be green. I suppose that there's a good reason for that.

"This door is alarmed" -- Toronto Ikea.

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

I am German. This thing has zero probability of becoming reality. The article itself deconstructs the lost approach of this proposed regulation and talks openly about the hypocrite standards that it holds. Its a discussion. Thats what democracy is all about. Think about DMCA and SSSCA and take care of the really important things.

Your friend from germany.

Re:*sigh*

[tuxlove]

Well, checking facts before posting would have helped in this case.

What the hey, I'm not an encyclopedia. I figured someone like you would clear things up if my information was outdated. It sounds like you know what you're talking about, so I'll defer. My info was out of date.

Except for one thing - red LEDs. Whoever said YHBT is a bonehead. This is for real, but apparently it doesn't apply to home electronics. I've worked for several companies who built computers for use in telephone company central offices or that would generally only be appearing in large computer labs; we went to lengths to ensure that the machines would *not* have red LEDs in front so they could be sold in Germany. We were allowed to put them in back, but not the front. I belive that's because red lights were by law supposed to signify danger, so using one as a power or disk activty indicator or somesuch was not allowed.

BTW, to the guy who accused me of being a troll, why don't you look at someone's posting history before doing that? You'll look like less of a loser if you only label someone a troll who actually is one.

Re:*sigh*

[Nurgster]

Could also be due to the fact that emergancy lighting is red, so if you have a red light on the front of your box, and everyone is fleeing in a panic, they won't notice that the 10,000V router is still on, trip over the mains cable and fry everyone who comes near them.

Of course, this is purely hypothetical...

Re:*sigh*

[kju]

you ARE a troll, because you don't stop telling your lies. There is NO law forbidding red LEDs. Maybe the customers of your company asked to avoid red LEDs, but it is absolutely no rule or law! I work for an ISP an all of our rackmount PCs, backup devices, telco devices etc. HAVE red LEDs on the FRONT.

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

Ten times? We have DSL access available nearly everywhere now, for about 60 US$ (768k down/128k up)

um yeah, but you have to wait approx 1year after application before they actually connect you.

The government does not own any ISP (ok, it's a majority stock holder of the largest one).

That's almost equivalent. There have been numerous decisions of the "RegTP" (administration for telecommunication issues) that clearly show that there is a conflict of interests (search heise.de for decisions regarding pricing of the last mile and flatrates).
Also worth noting is the fact that exactly that ISP is the one that owns almost all "last-mile" cabling in Germany and can therefore dictate prices.

Re:*sigh*

[tuxlove]

you ARE a troll, because you don't stop telling your lies. There is NO law forbidding red LEDs. Maybe the customers of your company asked to avoid red LEDs, but it is absolutely no rule or law! I work for an ISP an all of our rackmount PCs, backup devices, telco devices etc. HAVE red LEDs on the FRONT.

Gee, so I guess those mechanicals guys at TWO DIFFERENT companies were all conspiring to trick me into thinking that red lights on the front of computer equipment was not allowed in Germany. Yeah, that's the ticket. I've never been to a German telco, but by the sound of it neither have you. An ISP is a different thing than a telco, and they have very different rules. You may have "telco equipment" at your ISP, but that doesn't make it a telco. I know for a fact that we were not allowed to put red lights on our computers so they could be sold in Germany. We adhered to these rules in two different companies, with two very different sets of customers. There is, or was, clearly some reason that we were barred from putting red lights on the front of the systems we built, all for the sake of German sales. I was told by independent sources that it was because of the rules we had to adhere to. I didn't read the German telco system requirements documents myself, because that was not my job. I trusted that those whose job it was were competent. The fact that two different sets of people told me the same thing, something important that dictated significant features of our mechanicals, leads me to believe they knew what they're talking about and you don't. I have to assume that YOU are the troll, or perhaps just an idiot. Or both.

Re:*sigh*

[Xanlexian]

If memory serves me correctly (and it probably doesn't...), this is because red is associated with STOP. The last thing you need on an expressway, is the stereotypical 'Soccer Mom' to look up from her Crossword or Romance Novel and suddenly think --- ***STOP!!!***

They're bad enough as it is. No need to make everybody else associate a sudden STOP on the expressway.

--Xan

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

uhuh. come back to germany and we will beat the shit out of you

Re:*sigh*

[kju]

It seems you are to dumb to understand that this still does not mean that this is a law like you told. It might be a demand of your customers if they don't want red LEDs on the front, it is NO law, because their is no such law. And this is my point which you fail to understand.

It was told to you from more than one german person that there is no such law. So when will you start to accept that fact? It is a childish behaviour to insist that there must be some because you had to get rid of the red LEDs. Why can't you just admit that you was wrong in your statement that there is a law? Because you WERE wrong.

But i even don't believe that there is a requirement on no red LEDs specially on telco equipment. We have some equipment supplied by the telcos and all of these equipment IS fitted with red LEDs on the front. Maybe the hardware you produced were real special, but their is no general forbid of red LEDs. And no law.

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who used to work for an American telecomms company, we had to spend a lot of time redesigning kit to remove red/green status indicators due to fear of being sued under the US disability laws. Instead, the LEDs had to flash (and not at a rate that could trigger seizures, but I was angling for it...).

Stupid laws? Prime example. A bit tricky to work as a hw eng (or even a service eng) where you suffer from red/green colourblindness.

Re:*sigh*

[AndroidCat]

Um no. I mean EXIT signs inside buildings as in fire exit signs.

Re:*sigh*

[Bobo the Space Chimp]

Because flashing red lights remind people of their days in a brothel.

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

> I really wish Germany would stop trying to do shit like this.

No kidding. Their right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing (or where it is, which is to say, buried up to the elbow in the rectum of another woman in double-fisting German pr0n glory.)

Isn't Germany also the place Chessie Moore went so she could go down on Rover?

Re:*sigh*

[Alsee]

red lights on the front of computer equipment was not allowed in Germany.

I dunno, but for what it's worth I did a pretty extensive search on Google and couldn't find anything to that effect.

If something's not on the web, it probably doesn't exist.

-

Re:*sigh*

[arkanes]

Some genius a few years back decided that green was more noticable than red. Thats why they repainted all the fire trucks that ugly yellow-green-piss color. Fire truck accidents jumped by some huge percentage, everyone silently agreed it was a stupid idea, and painted the trucks red again. I guess they never bothered to change the exit sign spec, tho.

odd

[Anonymous Coward]

wtf? i thought europe was supposed to be less hung up about sex?

Re:odd

[carpe_noctem]

So I guess all the stories I've heard about being able to watch pr0n on public television may not be true. =(

Re:odd

[Teun]

It might be true from an US perspective, the German free to air satelite stations have lots of soft porn during night time. But although this stuff hardly raises an eyebrow in Europe would have you shut down and locked up in the US in no time.

Re:odd

[Anonymous Coward]

There definitely is porn, at least the softcore variety, on German television. I'm in Switzerland, and on cable, the German TV stations broadcast shows of a pornographic nature after 12ish. The tolerance barrier is generally higher in Europe, less fundies.

talk about passe

[blonde rser]

I mean Germany trying to take control beyond its borders... that's sooo twentieth century. Next we're going to here that France is going to "surrender" to this.

Re:talk about passe

[stesch]

Can't see why this post is funny.

Re:talk about passe

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't see why this post is funny.

Maybe, because it is not the first time that Germany trying to take control beyond its borders? (Yeah, I know you understood the joke, but there's nothing like salting wounds of those that pretend they didn't get it, just so they wouldn't need to face their Vergangenheit...)

Re:talk about passe

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right. That post isn't funny because everyone here on /. knows that only the 'Merkins would try to take control beyond their borders.

Guess what? People are stupid, especially when they're in government. Neither the Americans nor the Germans have a monopoly on stupidity.

Re:talk about passe

[Anonymous Coward]

Can they make sure that there are no popup porn & porn in SPAM before 11pm ??

I wonder if we can time shift porn...

Re:talk about passe

[Jaysyn]

Well, if it was a snake, you'd be a puffy, blue corpse.

Jaysyn

Re:talk about passe

[Lars T.]

Well, next thing we'll see is America trying this. No wait, we did.

Re:talk about passe

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny because Germans are a bunch of goose-stepping Nazis, and the French are a bunch of limp-wristed pansies. Is it clear now?

Re:talk about passe

[Anonymous Coward]

He's probably just related to some of those Frogs that so bravely ran like hell all those years ago. A damn lucky thing America was drawn into the war, or he would know what Vergangenheit means!

Re:talk about passe

[Anonymous Coward]

only the 'Merkins would try to take control beyond their borders.

You 'Stralian...

Re:talk about passe

[Anonymous Coward]

Your jab at the French surely isn't 'passe'. Learn history, btw.

Re:talk about passe

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't see why this post is funny.

Maybe that's because you have the IQ of a ball of pocket lint.

Re:talk about passe

[-brazil-]

Big words, coming from a bunch of ignorant nitwits like the Americans...

Which is worse?

[JTinMSP]

Dunno, at least it's not the "we're saving the kids, so you have to fork over your credit card" scam that the U.S. Congress enabled.

Re:Which is worse?

[Teun]

But that's what the article says; only sites that don't have such a pre-selection (like a credit card) would be required to install the time clock.

(Oops almost left the l out of clock.....)

Re:Which is worse?

[JTinMSP]

But the problem is the scrupulous use of the credit card information... And forgery of said information as it's only for "age verification". You can get into a pandora's box here with sites charging a few cents for stuff, or giving "free" access to that site, but nailing you for $29.99 a month for a different site in a very very deeply hidden clause of the "terms of service". It's yet another case of goverment trying to do the parents job.

So what's the point?

[nil5]

What difference will this make? Now you can't jerk off until midnight?

Not to mention that this will be practically impossible to implement.

Re:So what's the point?

[ndogg]

Of course! You don't want people jerking off during their lunch breaks at work, now do you?

Re:So what's the point?

[vrmlknight]

what about my 10 gig's of porn on my harddrive? when can i look at that?

how am i supposed to...

[Shiska]

JANK OFF my penis during the DAY!? ... WHat the FUCK! /? >>. FUcking germans.

Re:how am i supposed to...

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny yes, but remember that the times are local to Germany, so if you're in the U.S. you can get started right after supper.

Govt. Mentality

[Stillman]

Well, that's about par for the course.

Non-"tech-savvy" laws being passed which can't possibly be enforced.
I'm just surprised this makes news anymore! :)

Seriously though - surely Governments have tech advisers? What do they do for their money? They never seem to stop the politicos from making idiots of themselves by passing "laws" like this.

Re:Govt. Mentality

[-brazil-]

It's not even a suggested law yet, let alone passed.

My great fear...

[TheEviscerator]

My great fear is that every country in the world is going to pass its own version of a "decency" law, then attempt to require the conformance of every other country in the world. Soon enough, the Internet will have been watered down to contain only that content which is deemed acceptable, world-wide.

One of the great challenges our world faces over the next century is our ability to accept a global Internet/marketplace, and yet maintain some semblance of independent societies, complete with our own mores and values.

Re:My great fear...

[gnovos]

Soon enough, the Internet will have been watered down to contain only that content which is deemed acceptable, world-wide.

Acceptible to EVERYONE at the same time? So your saying the internet will eventually consist of a single bit... I wonder if it will be a "1" or if the "0" faction will try to pass a law against that...

Re:My great fear...

[Spy Hunter]

My great fear is that every country in the world is going to pass its own version of a "decency" law, then attempt to require the conformance of every other country in the world. Soon enough, the Internet will have been watered down to contain only that content which is deemed acceptable, world-wide.

No, I don't think that will happen. That would require every country in the world to bow to every other country's wishes. That will never, ever happen in a million years. Instead, I fear that countries will start fragmenting the Internet by establishing national firewalls or the like. The Internet may become segregated, split into different pieces by the meddling of misguided politicians. That would be unfortunate.

Re:My great fear...

[autopr0n]

My great fear is that every country in the world is going to pass its own version of a "decency" law, then attempt to require the conformance of every other country in the world. Soon enough, the Internet will have been watered down to contain only that content which is deemed acceptable, worldwide.

Either or that, or people start using location based IP filters. Not really that hard to do. (Although it would still suck)

Re:My great fear...

[JohnHegarty]

Unless the UN get on the case...

Re:My great fear...

[QuickFox]

...only that content which is deemed acceptable, world-wide.

That doesn't exist. For instance, to a Taliban, a woman is indecent unless hidden under a burqa. To the rest of us, forcing women to live under burqas is indecent. So there couldn't be any women on the Internet. But discriminating against women is indecent too.

There is no common ground. Humanity will have to learn how to live with diversity.

Give a man a fish and you have fed him for one day. Teach him how to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime, all the while calling you a miser for not giving him your fish.

Re:My great fear...

[QuickFox]

A bit? How dare you! That's disgusting! It's far too indecent!

You're saying it yourself. A bit has to be a 1 or a 0.

Look at a 1! See what it resembles! Look at a 0! See what it resembles!

Give a man a fish and you have fed him for one day. Teach him how to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime, all the while calling you a miser for not giving him your fish.

Re:My great fear...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I don't think that will happen. That would require every country in the world to bow to every other country's wishes. That will never, ever happen in a million years. Instead, I fear that countries will start fragmenting the Internet by establishing national firewalls or the like. The Internet may become segregated, split into different pieces by the meddling of misguided politicians. That would be unfortunate.

Remember who the German government is trying to please here... I think it's most likely that this law, just like lots of other similar laws being put in around the world, are merely there to appease the voters that their government is trying to do *something* to keep the big nasty Internet away from children. Sooner or later, these same voters will wise up that their elected government is either powerless to enforce these laws, or by putting in e.g. national firewalls they dilute the usefulness of the Internet for their own countrymen. However, I bet it'll be at least another election or two before the voters get this through their skulls. Surely there's some historical precedent for this? Weren't there some weird laws passed when cars first started to become widely available? I bet the informed people of the day laughed as loud then as we're laughing now!

Re:My great fear...

[Weh]

I think the essence of what is going on here is on the character of the internet. Is it a broadcast type medium like tv? or is more like a book or a video which you can buy/rent personally?

I think the internet can be regarded as both which is why there are so many problems with decency legislation.

If one would regard the internet as a broadcast medium such as tv it would make sense to try and restrict it's content like on tv; for example "adult" material can only be shown late at night.

However someone that would regard the internet more like a book would feel like some freedom is taken away from him, since right now he has the freedom to read his playboy anytime he wants too.

I am all for freedom of speech etc. but I don't think the German government is doing something strange by trying to impose decency laws on the internet(only from a technological viewpoint maybe) Every media (apart) from the internet has been subject to decency laws so what's so different about the internet?

The essence is what kind of laws to impose. The type of laws we have for books, videos etc. (ie. age checks etc.) or the type of laws for tv (ie. hours)? The us govt. tried to impose some sort of age law for porn sites, (with the cc number thing) which shows they regard the internet more as a personal media type thing wheras the German government is trying to impose the hours type legislation, which shows they regard the internet more like a tv type medium.

I don't think the German government is stupid enough to demand the shutdown of sites outside their country at certain hours like so many people seem to suggest here. More likely it will be some kind of filtering device.

Re:My great fear...

[Anonymous Coward]

", to a Taliban, a woman is indecent unless hidden under a burqa. To the rest of us, forcing women to live under burqas is indecent. So there couldn't be any women on the Internet"

not true- there could be women voluntarily wearing burqas.

Re:My great fear...

[monksp]

I'm sure there are feminist groups out there that would see voluntarily wearing a burqa indecent. The woman in question would be wearing it by choice, but it'd only be chosen because the alternative would be to not be on the net at all.

Re:My great fear...

[HeUnique]

1. Use Squid from another country...

2. I'm pretty sure that if Germany will do that, then many porn web sites will simply move their servers to another country (and with today's situation, I'm sure that many ISP will be happy to host those sites)

Re:My great fear...

[brunes69]

It is far more likely that over the next century, the vast majority of the world will share a common view of what is deemed "acceptable". Look realisticly at the trends in globalization, and look at how amazingly homogenous the worls has become in only a VERY short time of world trade (since say, the 50's). I believe we are progressing to a global society much faster than most people realize, and the laws of any one particular nation (with the exception of the United States, whose laws apply everywhere in the world, merely because of its military and economic might) have become increasingly irrelivant as distances and time zones mean nothing in terms of technology. I believe that we are rapidly approaching the need for a true world govenment. Now, weather this means that in the end the US will dictate world policy, or weather the UN will gain alot more power, I am unsure of.

Re:My great fear...

[Anonymous Coward]

> For instance, to a Taliban, a woman is indecent unless hidden under a burqa.
> To the rest of us, forcing women to live under burqas is indecent.

Another example:

The same is true for women on US-American beaches (at least in Florida/California). To (law making/law enforcing/voting the law makers) Americans a woman topless on a beach is indecent.

To the rest of us forcing women to cover their breasts on a beach is indecent.

Re:My great fear...

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the point of policing the internet anyway?

I can't think of one single thing that could ever be put on the net that should be illegal. It's not like you can murder someone over the net, it's all just information!

Re:My great fear...

[abe ferlman]

I don't think that will happen. That would require every country in the world to bow to every other country's wishes.

Well, for now that seems to be true. But if the US keeps writing its laws by way of treaty rather than through a democratic legislative process, there will only be one Corpor^H^H^H^Huntry anyway.

Re:My great fear...

[pamri]

My predictions: Oppressive regimes like china, S.Arabia,etc will be more successfull in restricting content, mainly because they give a damn about civil liberties & can go to any extent to block what they want to block. Where as in the case of democracies, either they may give up trying to restrict certaing things like porn, hate speech, etc., which have the suffport of people ( alteast the majority) or are less harmful.& may instead go after things like child porn, etc. A case in point:- India, which has quite a few restrictions on porn, is unable to implement it. Infact, the police here (I live here) say that it's impossible to admit & instead say people should morally control (sic) themselves.

Re:My great fear...

[coyote-san]

Next we'll hear that trinary computer research is being firebombed because the new trit contains aspects of both "0" and "1", and is thus an abomination.

(Or maybe we could really jack up the funding, no pun intended, by setting up a trit porn site.)

Re:My great fear...

[innocent_white_lamb]

More likely it will be some kind of filtering device.

And we all know how well those work.

Re:My great fear...

[zangdesign]

The Anti-Trinary Computing Faction is filing a lawsuit for your use of the word "trit" which sounds a lot like a part of the female body. And as for the unholy union of 1's and 0's, we're dead against that, as well.

You SINNER!

Re:My great fear...

[be-fan]

Interesting point. So that would mean that Sweden would become the Switzerland of porn?

Re:My great fear...

[coyote-san]

Two parts, actually....

(Now THAT brought to mind an image I didn't need...)

Re:My great fear...

[grahamm]

Especially with the trend towards virtual hosts where the same IP address might serve thousands of different sites, some porn and some not.

Re:My great fear...

[Anonymous Coward]

More likely, every government will be brought together with each faction having representatives (ala Afganistan style) and they will come up with the rules that will govern everyone. The one world government will fix everything, government style.

Re:My great fear...

[talesout]

Score: 5, Troll? What the fuck?

Re:My great fear...

[Bobo the Space Chimp]

> To the rest of us forcing women to cover their
> breasts on a beach is indecent.

Thanks. It took me 8 years to get over the sight of that 78-year old Italian woman on a Mediterranean beach.

Re:My great fear...

[Bobo the Space Chimp]

If the American Revolution were held today, we'd be talking about the freedom of bitstreams instead of speech...

Wellll....

[gnovos]

Considering that it is *always* 11-6 somehwere any the world, I wonder how they expect this to change the way porn web-sites work? Maybe they'll be able to stop the rampant porn in Antartica for six months out of the year...

Re:Wellll....

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they'll be able to stop the rampant porn in Antartica for six months out of the year

Look, just because it's dark 6 months out of a year, doesn't mean time stops, or slows down to 24h=1y

Anyone want to estimate...

[Silver222]

The number of German bukkake addicts frantically checking what time zone Japan is in and planning their day accordingly?

Re:Anyone want to estimate...

[Anonymous Coward]

Although I find some Japanese women quite attractive, the Japanese bukkake films I've viewed leave me cold, kinda like watching an IBM documentary on their latest mainframe operating system.

- http://www.georgekranz.com/gk/bukkake.htm

Things to remember.

[Matt2000]

The german parliament should remember to notify all search engines that cache images to shut off access to those images during those hours.

Are these hours affected by daylight savings time? It is important that the German farmers have a chance to get their porn during darkness like the rest of the entire German nation.

If a webserver is put in a balloon and is sent to different timezones where it is always day, should the site still be shut down during German nighttime?

They should also remind German porn kings not to move their sites to a different country.

What happens if the text of the website is educational, and is served from a German server, but there happens to be one picture of a sweet nude lady, but the image is on a foreign server?

These are serious issues that the parliament must deal with from the hours of 9 AM to 11 PM only.

Re:Things to remember.

[Florian Weimer]

AFAIK, the people who are suggesting to implement something like this want to take the time at the client machine into account, although this can't really work. There prototype implementations in Java (or JavaScript), but they are easy to bypass.

Re:Things to remember.

[Anonymous Coward]

The first rule of the www: Never trust the client.

Oh well, if they believe that will work then they can just go ahead and implement that. I just hope Germany is ready to change time zones when everyone starts setting their computers clocks to a different time zone.

Re:Things to remember.

[Anonymous Coward]

Which time zone?

Re:Things to remember.

[ccmay]

Not to mention the expedient of setting the clock on your client machine so it's always prime time for p0rn!

-ccm

Re:Things to remember.

[Anonymous Coward]

> These are serious issues that the parliament must deal with from the hours of 9 AM to 11 PM only.

9AM to 11PM!!! Are you crazy! Don't you know the working hours we have over here? It's probably more like 9AM to 3PM with half an hour coffee break at 10AM and one hour lunch at noon.

Long live the union!

Re:Things to remember.

[dadragon]

That's it! I'm moving to Germany when I'm done University. Any openings for a Canadian Ex-Pat Engineer looking for less hours over there? I can speak English and French, as well as a little low-German I picked up at church! :)

Well...

[debolaz]

Ein Wort beschreibt dieses: Hahahaha
(evidently through babelfish:)

Reality bite

[nr]

Fools. Then will the goverments understand they cant control and restrict access to content on the internet. The Chinese have their GreatFirewall(tm), but everyone still can bypass it easily using anonymity servers, public HTTP proxys, IPsec, SSH or ICMP tunneling, P2P networks, etc.

Re:Reality bite

[Anonymous Coward]

> ... but everyone still can bypass it...
But not little children.

Next time read the article please!
Thank you.

Re:Reality bite

[secolactico]

Uh? The younger generation is growing computer/internet literate and is not surprising to see a 10 years old child tinker with his settings. Of course, as a parent you might have to define the boundaries of where can he go and what can he do with his computer, but don't rely on his ingnorance for protection.

Re:Reality bite

[be-fan]

Dude. How do you think parents get filtering software on their computers to begin with? They ask their 12 year old to set it up for them!

Re:Reality bite

[Anonymous Coward]

> The younger generation is growing
> computer/internet literate and is not surprising
> to see a 10 years old child tinker with his
> settings.

Speaking of which, it's getting to the point where I'll have to hide my Buffy, Willow, and Star Trek various sloppy lesbian French kisses better than just checking "hide all hidden items".

What's out there that can seal up and hide massive directories tighter than a drum?

Re:Reality bite

[Dr. Mutex]

What's out there that can seal up and hide massive directories tighter than a drum?

Scramdisk for Win9x & ME (free). For NT, 2K and XP you need the non-free Drivecrypt (same place). But if you just need to keep the kiddies out, the access control in NT/2K/XP should be sufficient.

Star Trek

[Kris_J]

This reminds me of Star Trek where they arrive at a planet and decide to wait so they can beam down "at night". The show makes it sound like planets only have a single time zone, or that the whole globe goes dark at once. It all sounds very Flat Earth, but then most of the recent tech legislation sounds like it comes from the Dark Ages.

"They didn't call it the Dark Ages because it was dark." -- Daniel Jackson, Stargate SG-1.

Re:Star Trek

[Anonymous Coward]

One usually wants to beam down to a specific location on the planet, it's not like you can just jog across one.

Re:Star Trek

[Anonymous Coward]

Usually, one does not beam down to the entire surface of the planet simultaneously. Rather, one beams down to a specific location. Perhaps they wanted to beam down to that spot when it was nighttime there. Since one cannot easily alter the rotational speed of a planet, you sometimes have to wait.

Re:Star Trek

[e5z8652]

"Since one cannot easily alter the rotational speed of a planet, you sometimes have to wait."

Just remodulate the lateral array to emit a xeneron particle beam aimed at the retreating horizon. This will temporarily speed the planet's rotation. Child's play, really. Wesley could do it.

I know, I know, OT...

Re:Star Trek

[Trickster Coyote]

This reminds me of Star Trek where they arrive at a planet and decide to wait so they can beam down "at night". The show makes it sound like planets only have a single time zone, or that the whole globe goes dark at once.

Yeah, TV writers, go figure. Since you mention Stargate, there's another good example. I've been catching up on the series retroactively thanks to the late night daily syndication on local TV. It seems so often they go to a new planet, take a look at the environment around the local stargate and conclude the entire planet is like that.

It was especially ludicrous in the episode where a couple of returning team members accidently get shunted off to a previously unknown stargate located in the Antarctic.

Team Member (looking around at the walls of ice): "We must be on an ice planet."

Beats me how people with such low intelligence ever got selected for a scientific task like off-world exploration...

Trickster Coyote
Pick a reality, any reality...

Re:Star Trek

[Tackhead]

> Since you mention Stargate, there's another good example. I've been catching up on the series retroactively thanks to the late night daily syndication on local TV. It seems so often they go to a new planet, take a look at the environment around the local stargate and conclude the entire planet is like that.

So every planet other than Earth (and the ice planet you mentioned in your post) is a "Somewhere in British Columbia" planet? ;-)

Re:Star Trek

[Trickster Coyote]

So every planet other than Earth (and the ice planet you mentioned in your post) is a "Somewhere in British Columbia" planet? ;-)

Yeah, pretty much. Interesting how every planet that has a forest has redwood cedar trees ;-) The "ice planet" was probably just a set on a soundstage at the Bridge Studios.

I used to work in the film industry in Vancouver, so when I am watching Stargate, I like to amuse myself by identifying the locations of alien planets. For example: the Tollan's capital city is the very recognizable campus of Simon Fraser University.

In the episode where they first meet the Tok'ra, they arrive on a "desert planet". Just over that dune in the background I was working with another film crew shooting beach scenes for the movie "Double Jeopardy". So much for being on an uninhabited planet.

Trickster Coyote
We now return you to your regularly scheduled reality.

Re:Star Trek

[Bobo the Space Chimp]

> So every planet other than Earth (and the ice
> planet you mentioned in your post) is a "Somewhere
> in British Columbia" planet?

Much like the same parallel worlds where people in Chicago, Detroit, New York, et al. all drive by palm trees.

Let me get this straight...

[Anonymous Coward]

The worst terrorist attack in recorded history occurred in September, followed by a deadly and bloody WAR against the Islamic faith (against the holiest of Muslim clerics and scholars, the beloved Taliban leaders of the Afghanistan people) and now we're struggling to bring order to Afghanistan with the establishment of an interim government, and you people have the gall to be discussing porn time limits???? My *god*, people, GET SOME PRIOR....

Oh wait, you're discussing pr0n? :-D~~~

Carry on amongst yourselves, my bad! (I think I'll pay a visit to http://thumbnow.com/ in the meantime.)

Re:Let me get this straight...

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if whoever modded the parent to this jerks off the same way: quick glance, a stroke, then hit the mouse button for the next one.

Communist China Filters

[J.C.B.]

The only way they could ever possibly do this is with communist-china-style filters. I could see American/etc porn sites just giving Germany a big fuck you if they try to make them shut down during the day. Porn sites are just far too numerous for Germany to put the kind of pressure on them like France did to Yahoo & (correct be if I'm wrong) ebay.

Re:Communist China Filters

[YKnot]

The local government is willing to take the necessary steps, no matter how stupid and counterproductive they may seem. Providers are forced to block sites

Re:Communist China Filters

[Stone Rhino]

It was germany and ebay, and the controversy was over Nazi memorabilia. (anything related to Nazis is banned in germany, i.e. skinhead groups, wolfenstein, etc.)

Re:Communist China Filters

[-brazil-]

Actually, the law if it is ever formally suggested (which is not yet the case), let alone passed, would only make it illegal to have certain content available to everyone at certain times. Age-based access restrictions would be required at other times. This wouldn't faze most porn sites a bit, since they make their money by implementing access restrictions.

Anyway, it's simply an ignorant attempt to translate a law that was designed for TV and works well there onto the internet. But again, this isn't even yet an officially suggested law.

I dont ask much...

[Anonymous Coward]

I only want to stop being forcing to see these anime stories on slashdot. I mean, I've checked the anime box in the preferences screen... what more am I supposed to do?!

The is appropriate (almost)

[tRoll with Butter]

The English are known for Tea Time, and now the Germans will be known for Porn Time. What a thing to be associated with! Over here in the states, we simply call it "happy time".

Re:The is appropriate (almost)

[hitzroth]

we simply call it "happy time"

That's "happy hour," bub.

From 3p to 11p down at the local Golden Nugget.

Here's the reason

[batobin]

Although I don't agree with their decision, I can see where they are coming from.

I was in Germany last summer, and was quite surprised as to what material showed up on my TV. After coming home from a beer garden one night, I flipped on the TV and saw raw porn right before my eyes. I changed the channel, and found more. Public TV, no joke.

The reason for this was that Germany has a kind of "everything goes" rule after 11 PM. TV stations found serving perverts at night was more profitable than merely going off-line.

I think Germany's new proposal is silly, merely because of the vast differences between TV and the Internet. On TV, there are a limited amount of channels, and setting restrictions on what they can display is legitimate. Setting those same restrictions on the much more open Internet just doesn't make sense.

Re:Here's the reason

[ndogg]

Setting those same restrictions on the much more open Internet just doesn't make sense.

Perhaps, but it does allow them to say that they are at least consistant.

Re:Here's the reason

[gregfortune]

It's not really *that* different... See comment about a national firewall. There are only so many access points into the internet infrastructure of Germany and the companies that own that infrastructure can most likely be pursuaded to follow the government's request... Yes, of course someone could get a private satellite link, but that's not going to be very common for some time.

So, as the channels are the control on your TV, the lines in and out of Germany are the control for Germany's internet. Of course, the tech savy can get around blocks like that, but the general populace could be restricted very easily...

Re:Here's the reason

[Teun]

That's where we Europeans as a whole differ from North Americans; what German TV is showing at night time is not realy concidered porn over here, OK, the label Soft-Porn is often used but say in Holland, Italy or Denmark you could possible air a minute of that stuff at prime time without getting complaints.

Re:Here's the reason

[Anonymous Coward]

What you saw is NOT porn by Germany's legal standards.
The definition is AFAIK: porn contains images of sexually aroused genitals.
That means: penis bird is porn, biology books are not, I'm not sure if goatse even counts as porn.
The films you saw count as "erotic", the means they show sexual actions but not beaver shots etc.
The main brackground for this fuss is that making porn aviable to minors (below age 18) is illegal in Germany (you might get into prison, no joke). In this sense the time retriction is rather braindead, because the porn sites won't be allowed to show porn to minors anyway (at the whole day).
As you correctly noted, the restriction comes from the TV regulations, where erotic content should be only show after 11 PM. AFAIK there isn't even a clear law for this, because some private TV channels show discussions with sex themes even in the afternoon, but they usually get bashed (only verbal) by the official youth protectors afterwards.

But before you whine all along there is something I must point out: Germany and Europe in general are much more tolerant to these things than the US, what they usually sets off is violence, not porn. I must remind you that the US is a country where "fuck" is beeped out in some US shows. These regulations on the internet for Germany are pretty retarded, but never forget that the US have their own retardness in many other respects.

- Posting AC due to NAZI bitchslapping.

Re:Here's the reason

[tempfile]

Wrong. Hardcore porn isn't allowed after 11pm either (I think Pay TV has different rules). TV stations sometimes try to override that rule, but usually get kicked in the butt afterwards.

Re:Here's the reason

[alhague]

The reason for this was that Germany has a kind "everything goes" rule after 11 PM.

It's really only "a kind of", because "everything" means the same as FSK18. FSK18 means the "Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle" (this is supposed to mean: "there is no such thing as censorship, only voluntary restrictions") says you must not see this unless you're 18.

FSK18-rated movies my be shown in Cinemas, on Public TV from 11pm to 6 am, on encrypted digital TV from 8pm to 6 am (FAQ de.rec.tv.misc). They must not be made accessible to children by anybody (in public) apart from their parents (but only in private).

FSK18 is the least restricted class of ratings that is available, but it doesn't cover everything. So there remain certain films,comics,games etc. which may neither be mentioned, nor be made commercials for, nor be broadcast in any media. They may be legaly sold "under the shelf", however, which distinguishes them from still another class, which is actually prohibited material (h*rdc*r* pron, hate speech ...)

Re:Here's the reason

[Anonymous Coward]

Hope you enjoyed your visit to the free world!

Re:Here's the reason

[CokeBear]

Are you Brian Tobin, the next Prime Minister of Canada?
(Yes, the next PM will either be Brian Tobin or Paul Martin)
I hope our next Prime Minister reads Slashdot. That would just be too cool.

Re:Here's the reason

[k2r]

I flipped on the TV and saw raw porn right before my eyes

Npe, it can't have been real porn (tm). We have a law in Germany that defines in detail, what porn is.
And since we are Germans, I mean _really_detailed_ . For example: In Germany we now, from which angle on a man has an erection! It's the law!
And showing this on TV is illegal, so you can't have real porn on TV.

Mail-Ordering real (tm) porn is illegal, too.

So nothing can harm us. We are cute little citizens and the government cares for our mental health. Thank you!

Re:Here's the reason

[batobin]

Nope, but I'm aware there's some Canadian running around up north with my name. Personally, I'd like him to stop. It's my name, not his.

Please help

[Anonymous Coward]

When I tug on my penis many times in rapid succession, it ejects a sticky white liquid and I experience a brief sensation of euphoria. Would someone please explain to me what is going on?

Re:Please help

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd enlist the help of an expert in this field of study. Ie: a prostitute.

Re:Please help

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds like you have a pimple problem.

To fix it rub oxy pads (extra strength) on the area where the white goop exits.

Re:Please help

[Anonymous Coward]

pour gasoline and anti-freeze down there too while your at it...

Re:Please help

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like you have been looking at porn between the hours of 6AM and 11PM. This action is deemed illegal in Germany and so you must remain where you are, authorities will be by to arrest you in a few minutes.

It's only a discussion...

[S.Gleissner]

Come down, they only discuss it.

They are talking about installing these mechanisms on german portals like www.t-online.de (the biggest german provider). Two clicks away from the front page, i've found a lot of softcore (really nice ;-) ). They want to restrict the linking to sex sites.

We have a law here in germany, no softcore porno before 10 pm in free tv.

Simon

Re:It's only a discussion...

[Anonymous Coward]

Even AOL has porn in Germany.

Re:It's only a discussion...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, I can't resist:

We have a law here in germany, no softcore porno before 10 pm in free tv.

So hardcore porn before 10 pm is OK?

Holding back the evil

[imrdkl]

First DNS manipulation in an attempt to block nazi sites, and now this. I guess they have good intentions, but it's just tilting at windmills, imho.

Re:Holding back the evil

[sholton]

All of you "...they're just tilting at windmills..." and "...this can never happen..." types need to spend a few minutes thinking about a world in which it already has happened.

The Internet is a human construction. It can be built or rebuilt to suit whatever criteria its builders choose.

The 'Net we are heading for has no anonymity, is zoned on a per-country and per culture basis, has routers blocking every port but 80 (you can use the others, too, for a price) and only allows "approved publishers" to create content.

- The rage in the router world right now is 'intelligent content sensitive blocking' which would allow, for example' your cable ISP to block H.323 packets (voice over IP) unless you've paid for the service.

- Right behind this is the ability to QOS their routers to "encourage" their customers to use preferred services (== companies with which they've formed a partnership) over competitors. (If you don't like your current ISP, but the competitors home page takes 5 minutes to load and doesn't render right, are you going to switch? Surprise, it may have nothing to do how fast the competing ISP is, or how well they've designed their home page.)

- As previous slashdot stories have pointed out, whole countries (like Saudi Arabia) are firewalling off the rest of the world. AOL does this, too, but their 'zone' is paying customers. Products like SurfWatch allow anyone to do this for themselves and those they "represent".

- We've already lost port 25 (SMTP) because of the spammers. Don't kid yourself into believing the ISP were anything but estatic about being able to take that away, for "anti-spamming" reasons, and now charge us extra for our email accounts.

In the new 'Net world, you won't even get onto the internet without "the 'Net" knowing exactly who you are, what you're allowed to access, and who to charge for every piece of content you view. And BTW, they'll also know what you're likely to buy, how much you can afford, and whether they can charge you for it (because you're already hooked) or have to give it to you for free.

(Just to keep ontopic; once they figure out that you prefer tits to ass, they'll charge you for tits, but ass will be free.)

Imagine an internet no bigger than AOL, or MSN. Imagine an Internet ab bland and braindead as broadcast television is today.

You'll be allowed to create your own home page (for a price), but if there's anything contraversial (== not profitable to the 'Nets owner) you won't be allowed to post it.

If you rest on your laurels, confident that it can never happen, you lose your vote in how you want the Internet to be built. It can be built differently, but you'll have to do it yourself.

Re:Holding back the evil

[imrdkl]

In a sobering and insightful comment, sholton wrote: It can be built or rebuilt to suit whatever criteria its builders choose.

While I do see and concur with a number of points you make, this one is just a bit naive, I feel. The very criteria of the internet is that there is no criteria. No one single company or provider has the time or the manpower to make such evaluations, much less dynamically, of their customers. Bulk mail and spam will be the way of things for a long time to come, I think. At least until neural is adapted to such a job. Data mining for the sake of targeted marketing is one thing. But customized content is still just a pipedream in the bowels of the marketers.

Btw, the port25 comment doesn't really make sense to me. Perhaps some providers have disallowed port 25, but most of the recent worms propogated automatically over port 80.

Re:Holding back the evil

[Alsee]

'intelligent content sensitive blocking' which would allow, for example' your cable ISP to block H.323 packets (voice over IP) unless you've paid for the service

While I agree with your concerns, I just wanted to point out one of the great defenses of the internet to much of this idiocy: It's always possible to write a program to redirect/filter the data so it goes over the internet looking like ordinary HTML(or anything else), and optionally encrypting it. You just need the same program at both ends.

-

Destroy all censorware

[Anonymous Coward]

Those fuckin' censorship nazis! What's next, IP banning and "Users" modding down posts at whim?
Oh, wait, that would make them Slashdot.

WHich reminds me: teen free porn pics free porn free adult model pics adult model gyno cams voyeur vision speculums enema punishment dungeons bondage ropes and pain sex toys dildos vibrators anal beads or maybe teensex swallowing cum drinking sperm nude cheerleaders and babysitters schoolgirls black bitches and booty whores sluts ebony hardcore free sex or nude asian babes hentai and manga pregnant woman transsexuals or trannys and grannys or trannies and grannies on nude pics or pornstars like Jenna Jameson Sylvia Saint Raquel Darrian Devon Asia Carrera Tiffany Mynx Nikki Tyler Tara Patrick
teen models cum swallowing whores wicked lesbians anal whores nudeolder women fatty fatty pussy sex XXX Preggos BBW models anal whores ass older sluts fat older women hardcore lesbos XXX anal amateur whores anal site all pregnant porno bent over free porn fisting teenagers sex teensex teenporn nude cheerleaders hardcore cum nasty lolitas sex at 18 boobs palace sex top list free nude amateur

My GOD?!

[tRoll with Butter]

The worst terrorist attack in recorded history occurred just under four weeks ago, and you people are discussing Germany Wants To Put Time Limits On Porn???? My *god*, people, GET SOME PRIORITIES! The bodies of 50,000+ dead people could give a good god damn about Germany Wants To Put Time Limits On Porn, your childish Lego models, your nerf toys and lack of a "fun" workplace, your Everquest/Diablo/D&D addiction, or any of the other ways you are "getting on with your life". This post brought to you by: TrollMaster 2001, making the "get some priorities!" troll simpler than ever, thanks to the tag, pulled directly from the IE title bar. Check out TrollMaster 2001 today at http://www.geocities.com/frostpist

Dammit! It's 9pm...

[Anonymous Coward]

...I'm horny. And now I have to wait two freaking hours to jerk off. This is nicht gut.

it's always 6-9 somewhere!

[hashish]

it all depends on where the content is posted (not viewed).

it's never boring in germany

[fr00d]

man. i am german and i must admit that i feel ashamed of all these stupid ideas. do you remember how Eichel (minister of finances) tried (not successfully) to make a law which would force every employee to keep a log of visited internet-sites (total time of visit, purpose of visit, etc.). just to get more taxes out of us?
;-)

this stuff makes me want to live in another country...

Re:it's never boring in germany

[Anonymous Coward]

Which other country?
Switzerland? Austria? (they probably don't want you anyhow, and their laws are similar to yours', albeit not quite as ridiculous)

France? (the goverment there has nothing against porn, the French consider it, more or less, part of their culture, AFAIK)

Denmark? Poland? (don't know about Denmark, but Poland isn't exactly going to have a lot of high bandwidth ISPs)

Re:it's never boring in germany

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully other countries will still have non- stop access to Dutch porn.

Not even during the day...

[autopr0n]

Actually, American porn sites would have to be up from around 7am to like 4pm, depending on where in the country they are.

So yeh, it doesn't seem to probable.

Re:Not even during the day...

[Aramoro]

7am to 4pm?

So all the middle management will still be able to browse porn on the company high speed connection?

Re:Not even during the day...

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever heard of anything called timezones?

As a german citizen

[Kong the Medium]

I read this piece of "NEWS" (ix.de reported this item last week(Use the fish)), and promplty filled my nose with coffee.

To clarify: the main reason for this so called "Sendezeitbegrenzung" from 11 pm to 6am is the childrens protection act. ( Will somebody please think about the children :-)). It seems some of our politicians haven't greeped the fact that Germany isn't the navel of the world anymore.

In essence this new Law the "Jugendmedienschutz-Staatsvertrag (JMStV)," proposes to extend the youth protection laws allready in place for Radio and TV to the Internet. ( Think FCC for Internet for the North-Americans on /.). So this will be another try, to censor content or to restrict the access to information on the internet. But we all know, how effectfull the earlier tries have been.

I'm sure everybody knews how resourcefull 6-18 year olds can be at getting the po^H^Hinformation one wants.

Re:As a german citizen

[Anonymous Coward]

$ greep
bash: greep: command not found

-- just teasing :)

Re:As a german citizen

[Anonymous Coward]

kong@Angua:~>alias greep='grep -E'

Re:As a german citizen

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems some of our politicians haven't greeped the fact that Germany isn't the navel of the world anymore.

I'll think you'll find that's a problem no matter what country you're in. Politicians don't get where they are by being humble.

Shame about the spherical earth thing

[Atrax]

what with time zones being all different and that. however, I have a solution.

We flatten the earth. yup. flatten it. With German industrial ingenuity it shouldn't be a big problem. then we all have roughly the same sunrise and sunset times, therefore allowing germany to restrict opening times in line with other net-opressive nations (Australia - Richard Alston take note)

Of course, how exactly are they going to define "porn", and then how are they going to patrol the net to enforce the whole thing?

It could, of course, be the end to World Unemployment - just give every unemployed person a net connection and ask them to rate porn sites for the German government. SIGN ME UP! I'll quit my job now.

Re:Shame about the spherical earth thing

[scott1853]

If we build a large reflector that encompasses half the earth, with pivot points on the poles, we could turn it to face away from the sun when we all want it to be dark and turn it toward the sun when we want it to be light. Then the entire planet would be affected at once. That seems more feasible. I'll make out an invoice for Germany tomorrow. Let them foot the bill for their anti-porn measures.

Re:Shame about the spherical earth thing

[vrmlknight]

uummmm news flash but just casue its light or dark out side DOES NOT CHANGE THE TIME OUTSIDE IT JUST makes it light or dark out

Re:Shame about the spherical earth thing

[QuickFox]

a large reflector that encompasses half the earth [...] I'll make out an invoice for Germany tomorrow. [...] For Sale: /. acct. w/50 karma.

We all like to think /. carries some clout, but you're too optimistic about what you can achieve with a /. account.

Re:Shame about the spherical earth thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Ermmm... I guess you realise that the reason we have different time zones is because it gets light or dark at diferent times (using a universal standard e.g. UTC) depending on where you are? Making it light or dark outside on a one off basis doesn't change the time but what time it is is entirely a human creation and if we could fix it so that it was light everywhere at the same time and dark everywhere at the same time then there would no longer be any reason for us to have diffeent time zones, it would be the same time every where.

Again, what time it is is a human creation. Time zones are a human response to the fact that when it's dark in one place it's light in another.

Re:Shame about the spherical earth thing

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that was his point. You don't need to make it light and dark at the same time all over the planet, which would be a major pain given our current level of science, you just need to pass legislation to redefine the time zones so they're all GMT+1. Sure, in some countries this will mean that you'll be getting ready for work just as the sun sets, but some foreigners never seeing daylight is a small price to pay for the safety of our children.

Re:Shame about the spherical earth thing

[phutureboy]

It could, of course, be the end to World Unemployment - just give every unemployed person a net connection and ask them to rate porn sites for the German government.

Hehe. www.amipornornot.gov.de

Re:Shame about the spherical earth thing

[CtrlPhreak]

We could build a huge atom smasher using all of germany's wealth with enough power to open up a wormhole into the forth spacial dimention and shove all the under 18 year old germans into it. It would seem to be easier than flattening the earth and more benificial to science at the same time.

Re:Shame about the spherical earth thing

[Regolith]

No, no, no. Simply convert the Earth into a Dyson sphere. It would work much more nicely, I think.

Re:Shame about the spherical earth thing

[Anonymous Coward]

> You don't need to make it light and dark at the
> same time all over the planet, which would be a
> major pain given our current level of science

And by the time it's not a major pain to our level of science, we'll be able to use transporter technology to rearrange our genitals into planetary-sized objects and engage in eon-length copulations.

Go figure, you lose either way.

Strip clubs and how this could be done...

[powerlinekid]

Now I'm not a german and have never been to germany, but do they have laws governing when strip clubs can be open? I ask this because at least in the US you have to be 18 to get into a strip club, just like the porn sites. Now with that supposing to cover the minors (which it really doesn't... "Please be honest, are you 18?", how is that fair if strip clubs being open whenever they want and porn sites not? I mean in both places you can't really touch the girls anyway (supposedly). Now I've been to strip clubs (I'm not so proud to admit) and to be entirely honest the effect ultimatly isn't that much different from looking at porn. Now on a technical point of view, you could probably make a script in an hour and cover all of this under a crond job for relatively weak enforcement. Basically the front page isn't supposed to have porn on it anyway, so that be freedom of speech should stay up with the rest of the site being chmod 700 when its supposed to be down or chmod 744 when its supposed to up.

Sorry the internet will be closed

[JohnHegarty]

Sorry , becuase of Germany the internet will be closed for the next 12 hours. Please check about again at 11pm CET. ;-)

i do not

[Anonymous Coward]

think i am qualified to post.

Re:Flatten the Earth

[tRoll with Butter]

Why didn't anyone think of this sooner?

I LOVE this idea!

I wonder if the domain "www.flaten-the-earth.com" is taken? I'd sign the petition in a heartbeat.

Just think of all the problems it would solve... Maps of the earth would finally be accurate without those stupid distoted lines, ships REALLY WOULD fall off if they sailed too far (it would be a great way to increase the Darwin awards...). The overall benefit to Humanity would be unmatched. Microsoft has ample resourses to fund this endeavor, I'm sure they'd be more than happy to invest in such a worthwhile cause.

I'm going to write my congressman today and you should too! Let's work together to make sure the world our children live in, is a FLAT one!

For crying out loud...

[jlowery]

Someone needs to run over and remind them that THEY LOST THE WAR!

Oh no. Censorship.

[Anonymous Coward]

I expect this post to be moderated into oblivion, but I'll say it anyway ...

Let's all watch a government/community/whatever attempt to moderate media according to their values or tastes and then let's all get on a posting board and act blase because we all know it's *impossible* to implement. Or here's an idea, let's react with pseudo-intellectual outrage because CENSORSHIP IS A BAD THING. That'll be new and different.

Then let's make jokes about wacking off to lighten the issue and above all, and let's not forget this, let us make sure that we never impinge upon the rights of pornographers to make and sell porn because, heaven forbid, if we did that then we might lose other rights as a result down the road not to mention, heavy gasp, impose our sense of morality on someone else.

We must stamp out censorship! Replace religion with tolerance. Everything's all right as long as some moron out there wants access to it.

Well, here's my two cents. Shout it down if you want: Good for Germany. Good for a country that has the guts to pass a law that tells pornographers that their crap should be kept away from children at least in some small way, even if it isn't enforceable. Good for Germany for not worrying about what some lobby of litigious idiots will have to say about their industry being threatened.

To hell with the pornographers. I'm sick of their spam, their Web practices, the press they get and the fat, acne-ridden nerds that jerk off to their computer screens and provide and audience for articles on CNet like "What we can learn from porn sites". Jeez.

Disagree? Yawn. Go pull out your old Ethics text book and be righteous. God knows there isn't enough of that going around. Just don't force your opinions on me.

Re:Put up signs, like Disney Does!

[tRoll with Butter]

"This website is closed for your future enjoyment."

just set up a porn-get cronjob

[Anonymous Coward]

porn-get

It's not quite that bad

[tempfile]

I agree that the idea is a joke, but first I want to clarify something that probably got lost in all the babelfishification (I'm German). The article says that "content not suitable for minors may only be made accessible between 11pm and 6am, if there are no access-control facilities installed". First, Germany's laws about erotica are rather lax. Softcore is rated "16 years" per se, so it's not even affected. Second, the law would only affect sites that freely distribute their content without stuff like adult content.

So the bottom line is that the only sites affected would be free-access hard core porn sites. Of course, controlling all this is technically impossible, and the very arising of the idea is due to technically illiterate German politicians. Several of ideas like this were turned down over the past few years when the people who know what they're talking about basically told them that they would be either technically impossible or extremely expensive.

Re:It's not quite that bad

[tempfile]

Ugh, of course, "adult content" in the first paragraph should read "adult check". Note to self: Use the preview button.

Re:It's not quite that bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, most Americans would be surprised that prostitution is generally allowed all over Europe, except, perhaps, in the Vatican City (they've got nuns there, don't need no prostitutes!)

Re:It's not quite that bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, really. I mean, let's be realistic here. This is GERMANY we are talking about. To them, "porn" probably means people squatting over each other, using each other as human toilets, and eating shit.

Good ole fashioned clean intercourse is probably considered family entertainnment.

Re:It's not quite that bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. *ahem* cartman's mom *ahem*

Re:It's not quite that bad

[Alsee]

would be either technically impossible or extremely expensive.

I thought those were two traits that made a project MORE appealing to politicians.

-

Sample "Out of Time" Message:

[mESSDan]

www.germanpr0n.com

login:h0rnyN4zi
password:xxxxx*x
.......
Gutentag!
I am being very sorry, but it is currently only 3:30 PM where you are being located. This is meaning that we are not able to be serving you any pr0n until it is being 11 PM your time. Please, it is still early, so going out and trying to get laid, if you are unable to being laid, you may visit us at 11 PM where we will serving you many a good pr0n!

Government Performance Reviews

[scott1853]

Why is it that government officials aren't paid based on performance, like the rest of us are? If you give the greedy bastards the option of either being an idiot and making $100,000 per year, or being halfway intelligent and making $250,000, which do you think they'd choose.

This reminds me of that official that said masturbation should be taught in the schools. I believe she exceeded the red line on the stupidity gauge and got fired.

Re:Government Performance Reviews

[ImaLamer]

This reminds me of that official that said masturbation should be taught in the schools. I believe she exceeded the red line on the stupidity gauge and got fired.

Why is that idea so stupid?

It was a suggestion by the Surgeon General [whom no one ever listens to] because of AIDS [etc] and teenage pregnancy. I still believe that it was a great idea, but no one really knew why she had suggested it.

She didn't want to teach techniques [we all figured it out on our own] she wanted to remove stigma and simply give the idea up for an alternative to fucking the person who sat in front of you when you were board.

This type of law would keep boys from beating it [or girls from swirling it] and leave them no other choice but to either go for the [family pet here] or their friends.

Re:Government Performance Reviews

[matrix29]

This reminds me of that official that said masturbation should be taught in the schools. I believe she exceeded the red line on the stupidity gauge and got fired.

Why is that idea so stupid?

Kid: "MOM! I got a D- in masturbation!"

Mother: "Oh son, how many times do I have to tell you? Up and down. 'Slapping it' is just a expression."
______________

Teacher to parent: "It seems your boy is only masturbating at a 4th grade level. We've shown him porn movie after porn movie and he doesn't seem to get the concept. How can we help your child if you, the parent, aren't willing to help him with his studies?"
_______________

Teacher: "Now children, tonight you have to dig deep into your parent's porn collection for show-and-tell. I want to see some Big Titty Bimbos and some Macho Leather Studs magazines. Extra credit for some Falcon Studio videotapes."
_______________

At least that's what the parents thought. Not the basic concept of "Masturbation is an acceptable method of not engaging in actions which will result in sex." But then again, not paying attention to personal cleanliness and having no social skills will do that too. So what the heck, let them have their handjobs as they won't meet nice people.

Re:Government Performance Reviews

[Sabriel]

Why is it that government officials aren't paid based on performance, like the rest of us are? If you give the greedy bastards the option of either being an idiot and making $100,000 per year, or being halfway intelligent and making $250,000, which do you think they'd choose.

Uh, we tried that in Australia. It didn't work. Guess who decides whether government officials get their performance bonus each year...

Yep, other government officials who depend on the first lot for their own funding. Doh! Heck, our porky pollies down under took this a step further - they get to decide their own salaries and superannuation benefits! It's obscene. Hrm. Maybe we could get Germany to ban them as well. :p

Re:Government Performance Reviews

[ImaLamer]

I simply mean that it is a crazy enough idea that it would work and the USA is afraid of it.

Medically speaking - many people with healthy social lives masturbate - because no one really cares.

When you were 13+ though your friends would make fun of you. When you met a girl that could admit she did it and you also did the same to her, then you had something special.

The reason is the taboo. Why not try to help puberty aged childern release that stigma and realize that masturbation at that age is ok, while our society doesn't allow any room for teenage parents.

Somewhere along the line I think we decided that we shouldn't marry or procreate at that age - but either G-d or mother nature wants us to, or we'd develop a lot later.

Is there any evidence that points to this? At one time wasn't our life expectancy only around 30-40 years old? Why is it we still produce the functions so early?

You do remember how you felt when you hit that age, right? Either you wanted to touch it or someone else - some ppl didn't care who it was, maybe /. editors today.

What about cached pages?

[Anonymous Coward]

... and desktop papers, and screen savers? =:-b

Did anybody read the article?

[JohanV]

My German isn't that good, but I believe that the fragment falls keine "Vor- und Freisperrtechniken" installiert sind translates roughly to if no access controls are implemented (please correct me if I am wrong, but Babel Fish is as useless as usual).

Bypassing the technical/political/legal issues (I think we all agree on the feasibility of this proposition) I believe that it is a good thing if a country limits access to sexual oriented online content in accordence with the law IRL. And as I say in accordance with the law IRL this naturally implies that the law should not have any extraterritorial effects.
If the Germans wish to limit uncontrolled daytime access to sexually oriented content located on servers on German territory they have my blessing.

Re:Did anybody read the article?

[Alsee]

If the Germans wish to limit uncontrolled daytime access to sexually oriented content located on servers on German territory they have my blessing.

While I technically agree with you, it is still incredibly idiotic.

Ok, lets assume they pass a law regulating servers in germany. What's the point? 1.5% of all porn sites are resticted to 11pm-6am, and that's only until they get around to relocating their hosting. Then politicians just have to close the little loophole of porn from outside germany. No big deal, just a minor revision to a sucessful law.

-

Lucky For Me...

[DelyApple]

My Pr0n Network is out on International Waters, sattelite-uplinked from a fixed-up Taiwanese Cannery Boat! Take that, decency laws! No one can stop me... unless... oh no, the dolphins! They're... Noooo!

*transmission lost @ source*

sensation of euphoria = moment without computer

[Anonymous Coward]

That brief sensation of euphoria must have been this moment without your computer

Stupidity

[whanau]

You gotta admit this is the ultimate in stupidity - I can have sex
24 hrs a day whenever I want, but I can't watch others between a
certain time. WTF?

Re:Stupidity

[Suicide]

Wow, I want your life. I live with my girlfriend and I can't have sex whenever I want.

And furthermore, why would someone who can have sex 24 hrs a day whenever he wants ever even consider watching other people? Honest question.

Re:Stupidity

[whanau]

no worries mate.
I too live in with my SO and she doesn't put out as much as I would like.
Its just an analogy to point out the hypocrisy of regulating porn like this
I doubt there is anyone in this position

Re:Stupidity

[Anonymous Coward]

"she doesn't put out as much as I would like"

so your girlfriend is a service, not a person?

you don't deserve her.

The Pr0n can also be found offline

[Serpentis Letalis]

I think all we know that xxx rated stuff can be found in some black market places.
Setting time restrictions isnt a solution.
Such 10-16yrold kids will find that stuff through friends, ads, or even ask someone adult to buy a videotape for them.
I'ts like fighting a Hydra -> head down - more left.
Germans need to block offline content first.
Such rules - just ridiculous stuff

Don't be so hypocritical people

[evilviper]

I admit that the headline sounds very infamatory, but we really don't know much about why they made such an obviously insane law. We must remember, every country has it's stupid laws.

Here in the good ol' USA it's illegial to 'Link' to sites containing information about DeCSS. That doesn't mean you can't post the URLs... They just can't be in link form. Not to mention the narrow-ness of the ruling. It's still legal to link to sites which link to DeCSS, and css-auth is still perfectly legal as well.

That's just the example off the top of my head. There's obviously tons of others that could be sited to show the stupidity of some laws.

Re:Don't be so hypocritical people

[Anonymous Coward]

My site has the link
/ReferTo.php?URL=http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCS S/Gallery/

It's not a link to any site, it's a link to my referral page. Neither does my referral page have a link to the site, it just goes where you tell it.

Is this covered by the DMCA?

Britain is not in europe

[t_allardyce]

On behalf of everyone here, I want to make it absolutely clear that Britain is not part of Europe. We have nothing to do with stupid French or German laws (Switzerland and Finland are OK). We don't like Europe and we don't have anything in common with them. In fact we are not even technically in the continent of Europe - this dates back to caveman-times when we attempted to separate ourselves by digging a _massive_ channel between them (the channel tunnel has an emergency flood feature just in case). Unfortunately, we think Tony Blair is 'European' if its true, he will be shot as a traitor.

When governments realise that they can't censor the internet, and corporations realise that they can't make any money off it, and the recording industry realises that they can't stop P2P, then there will be allot of pissed off people - hopefully some of them will jump off buildings making a _great_ show :)

Re:Britain is not in europe

[Anonymous Coward]

Fortunately, we Swiss think much the same. Switzerland wants nothing to do with Europe, beyond Lichtenstein, which is too small to be significant anyhow. It's interesting that all the EFTA members stayed out of the EU... Norway, Iceland etc. Perhaps because the issue was actually a referendum, not merely a parlementry decision. Our laws are hardly ideal, there's a lot that I'd like to change, but the goverment hasn't seriously tried to block large numbers of sites.

France isn't so bad (they're only trying to censor right extremist stuff, which is somewhat oppressive, but still tolerable), if you don't count some rather ridiculous practices, like regular strikes, and "soldarity strikes". This country started off the whole oil crisis in Europe a year or so ago.

Germany is already a hardcore (excuse the pun) censorer. They've talked about censoring games too, that is, online games are 'blocked' between certain hours. Freedom? If you want that, you must be a neonazi, anti-WTO anarchist or an immoral child-raping pervert. Yes folks, some things never change.

Re:Britain is not in europe

[Anonymous Coward]

speak for yourself, shit-nozzle.

Whats from 6AM to 11PM? News and cartoons?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm, then from 6AM and 11PM servers can
be used for some family matters and cartoons for children.

OK, this is my plan for more ambitious porn site:

6AM-8AM: Donald Duck
8AM-10AM: Toy Story
....
8PM-9PM: News
9PM-11PM: Shakespear in Love
11PM-6AM: porn

Kubus

Re:Whats from 6AM to 11PM? News and cartoons?

[Anonymous Coward]

huh , iam also from germany, please don't lough....
the T.V. channels even show cartoons for children at morning.... and later it shows some porn at 11PM or 12PM

an example is german RTL 2
http://www.rtl2.de

so look at their menu, did you find the "erotik" link?

Re:Whats from 6AM to 11PM? News and cartoons?

[Anonymous Coward]

And what category should in-between stuff fall into? Things like videos of horses mating, or cute shots of JLo's feet?

Why not filtering & monitoring tools?

[webwench_72]

"Erotik providers are the only on-line industry, which writes black numbers." LOL!

German politicians would emphasize parental responsibility (to beat a skeletal horse) instead, via the use of personal filtering and monitoring tools, or even *gasp* supervision! Surely this would give them better results than attempting to regulate 'hours of operation' of porn sites over which they have no control whatsoever.

I love when politicians attempt to draft legislation around technical issues, without the slightest attempt to learn about the issue. There's really no excuse for it.

do american portals have links to porn

[jas79]

On portals such as T-Online on Erotik pages without sufficient acces protection one link
a mayor german ISP shows links to porn on there main page. what would happen if AOL did that?

"It expects now a stronger printing on the contents contents of to banish references to Sex supplies in the virtual Hinterzimmer"
It is about the links to the sites. If someone want to find the sites they can , but they just want to make it harder.

Hackers?

[Anonymous Coward]

How would it be done? It would probably have to check the time of its users clock (which isn't too hard) but you could easily change the clock. Don't forgen theres a lot of hackers who could probably crack this nonsence. I don't want to get up 11pm to look at dirty pictures! I wan't to do it now :)

Unemployed.

[ImaLamer]

I sit at home all day, with no transportation, nothing really 'to-do' 'cept read /. and beat it.

Now if I can't do that, I'll go back to sleeping all day and staying up all night.

Good thing I'm a US citizen...

... did I just type that?

One Porn... (One week Parody)

[Anonymous Coward]

Sung to the tune of "One Week" It's been a week since you e-mailed me. If cyber offends you don't think that I am sorry. Five days since you punted me. Said GPF error (Didn't use CYRiX's anti) Three days since the kiddie porn room. Downloaded hundreds of pics after many moons. Yesterday you tried to TOS me. But it'll be 2 years until AOL terms me. Hold my schlong now and watch my screen blink. Haven't showered now I stink. When you smell me you'll wish I had Earthlink (or think I am that Wurkin' Man) Thanks for the bisk but I got phished although I am pissed I like to chat; it's like a free porno mag! Hot like 1900 when I send IM's, Big like ISP's (I don't know the meaning of value) Inside-AOL's got lots of hits, Cassell's fulla shit, the newsgroups flame me, but I come through. Gonna make a fake, can't take a break, I'd like a stinkin' fuc*ing proggie I am a leet0 haxor gonna scroll a phucking macro! Cause then you'll know that it is you I own cause I'm so dangerous I've owned you from the get go. Can I help it my AOL gets paid by mom and dad? If I had a job they'd be really glad. I'm the kinda guy that quit school to be online.. can't reed or spiel and I don't think I'll ever try. I have a tendency to lose my head when I sign on.. I have a history test but I am gonna ditch. It's been one week since you all trolled me. (If I get an ISP, they'll all say they're sorry.) 5 days since you cybersexed me I still got the friction-burns on my keys. 3 days since that afternoon It's not my fault I lose my connection so soon. Yesterday since they all spammed me... And now I sit back and look at all this porno I got for free.. Porny porn room, I'm chokin' my chicken.. I let go of my prick and my brain stops tickin'.. Look at my pics with the lights on, if I turn the light off, in comes my dad and mom. I'm a haxor I worship Kevin Mitnick Like TOS I am spastic... Like my connection I am guranteed to lose it. Like AOHell I make the mad progs Ok I don't make progs But if I did they'd be really leet.

Who is going to enforce this?

[shd99004]

Will they hire a lot of people checking out every link and then make a decision, should this go or not? As the brittish censor John Trevelyan said: "We are paid to have dirty minds".

Not unexpected

[hwilker]

Most of the stupid things about the internet emanating from Germany these days seems to be the result of people in certain positions trying to apply the laws and rules for which these positions are responsible to the "new" medium "Internet". An example other than the porn time limitation is the debate over a regional agency trying to single-handedly block access to extreme-right and neo-nazi web sites.

The originators of these, to /. readers obviously hare-brained, ideas usually have a pretty narrow outlook on all this, because they try to enforce a single law or set of laws. The would-be porn banners (p.i.) see that it is forbidden to broadcast certain types of content, including porn/nudity/etc., at certain times over old-style media like TV. They see the Internet as "something like TV, because pictures appear on a screen", and try to regulate using the old rules.

The fact that this might not work doesn't even enter their bureaucrat heads until the moment when they wonder why they are the target of much ridicule and laughter.

Right. I forgot that they a) don't care about what others say, because they are right anyway; and b) they are unlikely to hear the laughter anyway.

Should be restricted to TLD's

[Anonymous Coward]

Ive never understood this one. We discussed it a while ago on the TLD subjects.

Why dont all pr0n sites use .xxx as their TLD. Anyone not having xxx as their TLD will be shut down. Its really that simple.
You can then restrict at the TLD level for a whole host of reasons.

Re:Should be restricted to TLD's

[tRoll with Butter]

I actually agree with this. Then I can set my browser to avoid all .xxx sites so I don't have to see their stupid pop-ups while I search for ware^H^H^H^H pictures of cute kitties.

Re:Should be restricted to TLD's

[Bobo the Space Chimp]

> Then I can set my browser to avoid all .xxx sites

Sorry, your kids already probably know enuf to plug it into an anonymizing redirection service, or hell, babelfish for that matter.

This coming from the country of Scheizer Videos...

[suougibma]

Should anyone even listen to a country that is famous for making porn where people SHIT into each others mouths?

It's guarateed incompatibility with rest of world

[orius_khan]

This is such a self-centered proposal, assuming that they can tell everyone everywhere what they can and cannot put on their web site, based on what time it is in Germany! There is no reason to support such legislation in other countries, especially those across the Atlantic, because those hours here don't mean anything.

If for some reason these types of laws DO take off, you'll end up with a situation where everybody's porn servers go down during the daytime hours of the country they're hosted in, and everyone gets used to looking at foreign porn sites. That, or there'll be a new-found interest in the soveriegnty struggle of "Sealand"... :)

Goddamned Governments...

[Eggplant62]

All the time, wanna tell me when I can wank off. I guess if I were German, I couldn't come home for lunch and shake hands with Mr. Happy anymore. I suppose I'd have to do a Pee-Wee and find an x-rated theatre. Are there any good German x-rated theatres? Or are they all outlawed because of the children?

The report isnt about porn in general at all.

[Tomji]

It's about german Portal Site that have Ad's for Erotic websites all the time.
I think it makes sense to not show them.

About the guy that said 'scheisse' video's. I have seen american made shiteating vid's as well. (and all kind of other gross stuff) wouldnt be too proud of 'your' people.

Re:The report isnt about porn in general at all.

[Anonymous Coward]

> I have seen american made shiteating vid's as well.

It's been tough since Scour shut down, hasn't it? Bearshare and friends just aren't up to the critical mass, yet.

Not unlike TV really..

[macpeep]

Interesting how everyone is dissing Germany about this but fail to understand that the exact same thing is happening in most countries in the world when it comes to TV. All this really is, is that they are trying to extend existing laws to also cover the Internet, which totally makes sense if you already have laws like that in place! I mean, why would porn on TV at 6 in the evening (primetime for kids watching) be forbidden but porn on the Internet at the same time be ok? That's like having laws against speeding with cars but at the same time allowing speeding with motorcycles.

So the question is really about censoring as a whole. Should you forbid porn on TV (or violence or whatever else that is censored) or should you be allowed to air it at any time you want? When the question is asked like this, I'm pretty sure a lot more people don't find it as obviously wrong anymore. I imagine the majority of all parents want restrictions on airing time of porn on TV.

Then there's the whole issue about how you would do something like this from a technical perspective (you can't block kids from playing porn DVD's either, can you?) which is totally ridiculous.. But I guess if China and Singapore can pull it off technically then it should also be quite possible for Germany.

Personally I'm against all kind of censoring on media *where it's your choice* to watch something. Nobody is forcing you to go to www.persiankitty.com. Nobody is forcing you to turn on the Playboy channel. Nobody is forcing you to buy the magazine or the porn DVD.

Re:Not unlike TV really..

[Anonymous Coward]

>Nobody is forcing you

OOOH! AAHHH! Nein Mistress! Don't maken me looken at zee dirty pictures!
Ooohh Nooooo! You vant me to do vhat? Oooooooh I feel soooo dirty! aaahhh frauline.....mein backside....

8 P

Re:Not unlike TV really..

[be-fan]

Actually, the US supreme court has made an official stand on this. The internet is *not* like TV, it is like the press. Just as the press can publish anything it wants (even libel gets through these days, read a copy of Enquirer some time) the people on the 'net can publish anything they want. Of course, reasonable steps can be taken to allow parents to control what their children see (like not allowing Toy Stores to stock porno mags) but there is not a whole lot the government can do even in that direction.

Re:Not unlike TV really..

[macpeep]

"Actually, the US supreme court has made an official stand on this."

I agree that the Internet is like the press and not like TV.. However, the US supreme court rulings mean dick all in Germany.

Re:Not unlike TV really..

[Bobo the Space Chimp]

> However, the US supreme court rulings mean dick all in Germany.

&lt a ObscureReference="On"&gt It's been awhile since we've sent a Supreme Court justice over there, hasn't it? &lt/a&gt

Re:Here's the reason: Commercials!!!

[hughk]

Yes, there is a lot of bonking going on during straight (as in non-sattelite, non-encrypted) late night TV, however, it is usally easy to find a channel that you can watch with your 16-year old daughter without blushing (The kids can stay up late at weekends).

Then come the commercials that get me. They are ubiquitous and leave absolutely nothing to the imagination for what you get calling the 0190 (extra-toll) and 00 (international) telephone numbers. Btw, I know what the original poster means about "perverted", it seems that the qualification to appear as a model on one of these ads is to be anything but normal looking!!!

I don't object to porn on the net because it doesn't interrupt 'normal viewing' you have to click the URL and it is usually clear what you are getting (apart from Goatsex, don't click this one). Well maybe if VA Software get desperate and start some pop-ups in slashdot for extra funding - then we could be worried.

The last point is why restrict the time slots, many kids over the age of 14 have a computer in their room and I don't want to give them another reason to break curfew and stay up late. It is bad enough with them playing computer games until all hours!!!

Moderators Please Note: The above goatsex link is actually on topic for once!!!!

Vote Babelfish for entertainer of the year!

[orius_khan]

Sometimes I think Babelfish was worth doing, simply for the entertainment value. Let's have a look at a couple doozies from today's article:

The introduction of a " positive Ratings for harmless supplies " is suggested, which rejects the economy as " vorzensur ".

OK, that wasn't that funny. Here's a better one:

" the youth medium protection is already monastery suited compared with other countries almost in Germany "

I think this one sums up the whole article:

It is too simply, itself after land woman manners " bigott over the dirt " ...

Of COURSE it is! And possibly the most interesting:

the SPD wants to put " dinosaur discussions over transmitting time delimitations and license obligations " for for Internet forward a latch plate

Dinosaur discussions! Fantastic!!

But my favorites are the conversion of people's names into common words... Some of today's quotes are provided by: "franc walter stone Meier", "peace man Schindler"!

I think the next "All your base..." wave won't come from some Chinese game company's pathetic attempt to translate to English, it will come from Slashdot funneling a million people through the fish... any day now the golden nugget of automated translation will be found!

But I guess I shouldn't make fun of Altavista, since at least they have survived this long... in an industry that rarely "writes black numbers". Heeheee I kill me!

Re:Vote Babelfish for entertainer of the year!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the next "All your base..." wave won't come from some Chinese game company's pathetic attempt to translate to English

That's good, because the last one didn't either. They were Japanese. Believe it or not, there's a difference.

Re:Vote Babelfish for entertainer of the year!

[Alsee]

They were Japanese. Believe it or not, there's a difference.

Ok, I'll bite. What is it?

-

People here seem to think this is unenforceable

[Anonymous Coward]

I have had my eyes recently opened by a member of the european parliament in a presentation. If you've got a country battling you, you've got a major problem. First of all, you cannot go to the country in question (unless you want to be arrested). In the near feature you will not be able to go anywhere in Europe with an outstanding german warrant on you. Furthermore you are running a risk that other authorities hold you pending a decision to extradite you or not, which can take a long time.

They can probably block access to your site (your hosting company gets bandwidth from an international corporation, if that one wishes to continue existing, they will listen, which would block the site not only in Europe, but also in America)

That's half the German web

[kruczkowski]

Just goto t-online.de (the main german ISP) and look at all the porn ads on the side.

Germans are in love with porn... just goto any local magazine shop, or just watch the tv here. Porn is everyware.

There is also a reson for this, Germans population grouth is the only that is in the negative. More Germans die than are born. And Germans normany get maried around 30-40 years old. The goverment promotes you to have kids (kindergeld?) They pay the mother a large sum for every child they have.

Re:That's half the German web

[sholton]

Germans are in love with porn...

Germans population grouth is the only that is in the negative.

Is that cause or effect?

Re:That's half the German web

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the intended meaning was neither; parent post was saying that the German gov wants to encourage folks to have kids by having lots of sex-related material readily available, to hopefully get things rolling so their birth/death stats are a little more in balance.

so, what's new? others tried it before

[twms2h]

Yes, the people who came up with this don't know a thing about how the Internet works, but we saw this before. Governments trying to take control over the Internet. The only ones that kind of succeeded are the ones who implemented a filtering system at their "border", namely China an Saudi Arabia (I have been told).

France tried it and is still trying it with their court case against Nazi pages on Yahoo.

America tried it several times, remember obligatory filtering on public internet access points in libraries?

India tries it by having a camera at the access points and publishing pictures of "porn site offenders".

This is not going to get anywhere, and sooner or (more likely) later they will realize this.

Germany is more free than America....

[t_allardyce]

The United Nations Human Freedom Index (0 = least freedom, 40 = most freedom):

Sweden 38
Denmark 38
Netherlands 37
Austria 36
Finland 36
France 35
Germany 35
Canada 34
Switzerland 34
Australia 33
United States 33
Japan 32
United Kingdom 32

Ooops.. looks like Sweden is the best country on earth.. Um the UK.. er.. must have been pulled down because of err Wales.. yeah, if it was just England then we would be right up there. HA HA HA HA the US is crappier than Canada and Germany :)

Source: http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/8Comparison.htm#Back 87 (does anyone know where the newer index is?)

Re:Germany is more free than America....

[Anonymous Coward]

I read the article you cited. The article was speaking AGAINST individualistic societies. So I guess if you measure freedom by the smount of pot you can smoke and the variety and availability of porn, then yes this list is accurate. Of course, in Huxley's Brave New World they also had all the soma that they wanted, which seems to be where Europe is headed towards.

Re:Germany is more free than America....

[easter1916]

We're trying to catch up with the US obsession with Prozac, etc.

Re:Germany is more free than America....

[Anonymous Coward]

Err... I think you got that wrong - it's the Scots that are dragging the UK down. Worthless haggis-eating kilt-wearing haggis-eating stingy-assed haggis-eating funny-sounding haggis eaters!

Re:Germany is more free than America....

[t_allardyce]

Yeah, but they invented TV...

Re:Germany is more free than America....

[Anonymous Coward]

It's quite clearly the English. They been dragging this country down for 1500 years.

Re:Germany is more free than America....

[coyote-san]

Any index that tries to reduce a multidimensional variable to a single number is going to reflect the biases of the observer more than the "truth."

What are some of the variables? How about state religion? On the extremes you have a country such as Saudi Arabia (where non-Islamic services are illegal) and the free-for-all of the US. On this axis, the UK and Germany are far from free (the UK has an official state religion with the monarch as secular head, but has dropped the civil service requirements; Germany (as I understand it) collects taxes for contribution to the church unless you explicitly document that you're a non-Christian) even if they current policies are far freer than at any other point in their respective histories.

What about freedom of speech? The US is pretty free, DMCA and similar crap notwithstanding. The UK is scary because of its libel laws.

What about freedom to peacefully possess firearms? (Nobody defends the right of violent criminals to be armed.) And don't forget that gun rights usually mirror all other questions around self-defense, e.g., whether you have an obligation to retreat.

For that matter, what about the right to march down the street in a Nazi uniform shouting "Seig Heil!"? Isn't neo-Nazism a crime in Germany? It's not exactly popular here either, but the state will issue parade permits and even provide police protection to the dregs of the gene pool.

I'm not saying that the US is perfect, far from it, but it's silly to reduce these complex issues to a single dimension.

Re:Germany is more free than America....

[t_allardyce]

umm yeah.. any country where they strap you to a chair and electrocute you, and in some places homosexuality is still illegal must be a modern and civilized society (I won't even mention the DMCA, SSSCA (proposed) and the gun crime rate... ooops - just did) :)

The UK may not be perfect, but at least our schools don't have metal detectors, and the death penalty. (and Bush! lol)

Re:Germany is more free than America....

[Galvatron]

Okay, first of all, the death penalty vs. life in prison has nothing to do with human freedom. Either way, you will never be free again. You may consider the death penalty despicable, but don't try to make it a freedom issue.

As for homosexuality, yeah, it's pretty pathetic that somewhere around 25 states still have laws on the books against homosexuality. But, these laws are not enforced. Likewise, I'm sure England still has bizarre laws about rights of the nobility and crap like that that no one pays any attention to, but are still *technically* on the lawbooks.

Regarding our schools go, yeah, no shit, they suck. OTOH, the metal detector issue relates to an issue (guns) that the UK dealt with by a simple outright ban. Who's more free there? I remember in London seeing signs declaring that even carrying a knife is illegal! A knife is a frickin' tool, with many legitimate uses! Feh, ridiculous.

Re:Germany is more free than America....

[t_allardyce]

If you're in prison and they find you're innocent, fine - they can let you out. If your body has been fried then.. well they could dig you up and give you a suit and some money but i don't think it will help. The death penalty is a freedom issue - the freedom to live is a basic human right (even if you are in a shit prison). Oh yeah, i forgot - America doesn't have human rights (if they did, then they've all been bought by the RIAA.)

the metal detector issue relates to an issue (guns) that the UK dealt with by a simple outright ban

I don't own a gun, i don't know anyone that does (or did) i also don't feel the need to carry a knife around. I like the gun and knife laws because anyone who feels they need to carry either around in public shouldn't be in public. (can you _really_ come up with a use for a knife in london?) Also, the fact that all guns are banned is a total myth. Anyone (sane) can get a licence. My school had a range and a nice safe full of weapons (mmmm big rifles... dribble...) AFAIK no one was ever shot there or stabbed.

I'm sure England still has bizarre laws about rights of the nobility and crap like that that no one pays any attention to...

Yes, there is a law that makes it legal to shoot a Welsh man on a sunday (or wednesday, i forget) as long as you use a bow and arrow, and are both in a grave yard. (might be church yard).

You have Bush as a president (Blair is a looser too but not _that_ much..)

Re:Germany is more free than America....

[Bobo the Space Chimp]

Looking at the list of items that constitute the ranking, although "God" isn't a country, the Afterlife wouldn't rank too darned high...

Re:Germany is more free than America....

[Bobo the Space Chimp]

Europe holds their nose in the air about the death penalty because they have a long history of political abuse of it.

You can argue about the implementation quality (certainty of conviction, racial bias, etc.) but to argue it is an improper punishment for a murder is ludicrous.

Re:Germany is more free than America....

[Galvatron]

The death penalty is a freedom issue - the freedom to live is a basic human right

Violent criminals are deprived of their human rights, after convicted in a fair trial. Freedom of speech, freedom of representation, freedom to keep and bear arms (yes, some of us do consider this a freedom), privacy rights, and so forth, are all taken from criminals. Right to live is just another right that may be taken.

America doesn't have human rights (if they did, then they've all been bought by the RIAA.)

Huh? I don't follow you. The DMCA sucks, but saying that means we have no human rights because of it is kind of ridiculous

can you _really_ come up with a use for a knife in london?

Yeah, sure, cutting things. That's what a knife does fer chrissake. How do you cut the tape off of boxes, with a safety pin? A knife has first aid uses, for cutting away clothing. Some people enjoy whittling. Granted, one could just leave a knife everywhere one is liable to be, but I'd rather carry mine with me.

You have Bush as a president (Blair is a looser too but not _that_ much..)

Again, not a human freedom issue.

Re:Germany is more free than America....

[t_allardyce]

Hmmm yes, your examples of the usefulness of a knife in London are most inovative. I wasn't clear.. what i ment was "can you really come up with a use for a knife _in_ london (actually outside, on the street) i won't count 'hunting the small animals that roam the streets for food'

The WTC terrorists only had knifes and no-one complained when every airline banned them...

Germany != China

[BadDoggie]

Why is it that when Orrin Hatch or some other idiot Congressman wants to "Make The Internet Safe For Children (TM)", the story reads "Hatch's Latest Numbnuts Idea: Nekkid Chickflesh 10pm-5am Only", but when an equally synaptically-challenged German politician says something equally stupid and unworkable, the headline is "Germany Wants to Control Net"? The US does NOT have a monopoly on idiots in government.

You also don't seem to realise that when they're talking about pr0n in Germany, they mean hardcore, as in "penetration". There's nekkid tits on all kinds of magazines, on TV ads, on billboards.

Of course the idea is unworkable, as are most politicians' ideas whenever they wat to "protect" people from themselves. This too shall pass. Move along. Nothing to see here.

woof.

Have you ever noticed that when someone wants a restrictive law, it's always a restriction on someone else? The inevitable excuse is always that someone *else* is being "protected". You and I are smart enough and capable enough to take care of ourselvesand our families, but those other people need protection from themselves.

Re:Germany != China

[bryan1945]

It is because more or less the US is now run by the media (yes, I know that that statement is a bit much). But really, Joe SixPack sees 'a whole lotta porn going on, they will rape your daughter next!)

'Gays love your sons! Lesbians want to eat your daughters! I want your wife!' And we still rely on the TV news for facts???

No going into what freak acts the Germans and Japanese like to see... it would be too easy.
(Japan- rape all the girls you like, just don't show any pubic hair; germany- yeah, like they care?)

Bah!

Re:Germany != China

[sholton]

The US does NOT have a monopoly on idiots in government.

This is not about quantity, it's about quality.

Re:Germany != China

[shaunak]

The US does NOT have a monopoly on idiots in government.

No, but it does have a monopoly on idiots in the 'news for nerds' business. Oh wait, Timothy.
I take back my words ...

Filters don't work.

[hughk]

I have worked at a large German financial institution and they have one of the web filters who I won't even to promote by naming it. Amongst other things it blocks the fish because it can be used as a proxy. It is a pity because I sometimes need to translate info about the Russian markets into english.

It is also pointless because the meta keyword checking doesn't recognise Russian. If I do a search on say, Google for "devochki", the latinised version of the Russian word for Girls, I can find some very interesting and explicit, which pass effortlessly through the filter.

Another well-known US financial institution filter out yahoo and google amongst others to get around caching. I don't know what their employees do for web searches.

The Pr0n business is a big one in Germany, please remember that some of these companies are listed at the exchange and have an investor relations page. Make a wrong turn near a major railway station and it is hard to avoid red-light areas.

It has already been mentioned in another article about how useless national firewalls are and how easy it is to circumvent, particularly when they only run part-time as is proposed here.

Also, has enyone told these idiots about http tunneling?

Note that telephone sex lines are available 24Hrs the companies that run them split their take with the provider, usually Deutsche Telekom. Maybe those companies have been taking too much of a hit in their profits from unlimited access via the Internet? Ask not where the campaign contributions have come from?

This is already in effect!

[Zero__Kelvin]

"Germany thinks it can control the Internet, so now it's considering requiring that porn sites restrict their hours to 11pm to 6am"

I don't have problem with something that is already in effect and hasn't affected anyone. You see, due to the cyclic nature of our planet and the global nature of the Internet, it is always between the hours of 11pm and 6am on the net!!!

If stupidity were Gold, the whole of humanity would be quite rich ... er ah .. wait ... the value of Gold would drop quite a bit there, eh ... OK ... if stupidity were Gold all of humanity would have a plethora of soft shiny metallic paper-weights 8^}

Re:This is already in effect!

[Anonymous Coward]

On the Internet it's always between 11pm and 6am?

You miss the point: The times are local to Germany. That's 11pm and 6am GERMAN TIME. You need to adjust it according to your local time zone

Re:This is already in effect!

[Zero__Kelvin]

"You miss the point: The times are local to Germany. That's 11pm and 6am GERMAN TIME. You need to adjust it according to your local time zone"

How come everyone who completely misses the point accuses me of missing the point? 8^}

VCRs, DVDs also afffected

[Alien Being]

At the specified time, regardless of the time remaining on the movie, the media will be PREMATURELY EJECTED.

Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I've been to strip clubs (I'm not so proud to admit)

Why not so proud? Do you have something to hide?
Only in the US can people be so strange as to hide and censor there natural sexual feelings. Especialy whilst showing ('"unnatural"') sadistic violence in films whithout a second thought!

and to be entirely honest the effect ultimatly isn't that much different from looking at porn.

LOL! What did you expect!

Re:Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shiteater! He's a shiteater! Get him!

Re:Eh?

[easter1916]

I think it's "coprophilia", not "cocrophilia". Point taken, though.

I especially like this one

[GeekDork]

Experten lehnen Teile ab

Auch Internetexperten der Bundestagsfraktionen lehnen Teile der Absprache ab. "Der Jugendmedienschutz ist in Deutschland bereits im Vergleich zu anderen Ländern nahezu klostertauglich", sagt der medienpolitische Sprecher der FDP, Hans-Joachim Otto. Es sei zu einfach, sich nach Landfrauenmanier "bigott über den von Millionen Deutschen konsumierten Schmutz" zu ereifern. Erotik-Anbieter seien die einzige Online-Branche, die schwarze Zahlen schreibe. Auch die SPD wolle "Dinosaurierdiskussionen über Sendezeitbegrenzungen und Lizenzpflichten" für das Internet einen Riegel vorschieben, sagte Jörg Tauss, Beauftragter für Neue Medien der SPD. Die Eckpunkte seien nicht konsensfähig.

Early morning (1:30pm) translation:

Experts refuse some parts

Even internet-experts of the [Bundestags]faction refuse parts of the agreement. "Youth protection in germany is, in comparison with pother countries, almost suitable for cloisters", says the media-politics spokesman Hans-Joachim Otto of the FDP. It'd be too easy to get excited over "smut consumed by millions of germans like country-women". Erotic offerings were the only online-business with an actual income. The SPD [government party] would like to stop "dinosaur-discussions about time-limits and license obligations" for the internet, says Jörg Tauss, comissioner for new media (SPD). The (corner-points???) are not suited for consent.

So, at least there's some hope. I wonder how that darn country got this far and how I can out of it! But... are there any free places out there?

The scary thing is, it could work.

[ClubPetey]

So I'm playing devil's advocate here, and thinking of a way to get this to work. Here's my thought:

Germany tells Microsoft they are going to unleash a BIG NASTY lawsuit unless MS makes a couple of changes in their browser, since browsers are country-dependant to some extent anyway, this isn't all that hard. MS adds code into the German version of IE that calls out to an external time server to grab the correct time. If it's not 11-6 wherever the person is they cannot view the X-rated sites. Repeat process for Netscape and Opera and you have 90-something percent of the browsers out there.

But how to determine an X-rated site? Two options, one have the browser read the RSCA(?) rathing information for the site, if it's not there assume it's X-rated; two, have a state run server that the browsers talk to and a bunch of government workers finding the porn sites to enter in the server (I'm sure there's some religious zealots who would be GLAD to help). The first is userful if you know the web sites will conform, which, if more countries jump on the band wagon, they will for fear of losing customers. The second is a "start-up" plan until the idea gains traction.

Will this stop all the porn? No. Many people will stick to a browser version that doesn't have the "locks" (but they'll be left out of new browser features) or change to a less-known browser, but that's doesn't matter, if the German gov't has the major players under it's belt it can claim a success.

Seriously... if they hand some smart planners, they could pull it off...

Re:The scary thing is, it could work.

[SpinyNorman]

... but Mozilla is avalaible for every platform, so open source saves the day, again.

I don't think it'd take very long for a kid deprived of porn to slide on over to mozilla.org and download a build.

Re:The scary thing is, it could work.

[Armaphine]

Germany tells Microsoft they are going to unleash a BIG NASTY lawsuit unless MS makes a couple of changes in their browser, since browsers are country-dependant to some extent anyway, this isn't all that hard.

I really don't see this one happening. MS was already able to basically tell the US gov't to shove it, and at a cost of $10M a day. Even if Germany did make the threat, MS could always just start bringing out the checks for software piracy in the German gov't. (Because you know that SOMEWHERE in the German gov't, there's an unlicensed copy of Windows/Office/whatever.)

Re:The scary thing is, it could work.

[Anonymous Coward]

It'll take about 30 seconds for Germans to realize they should just go download some other browser or the American version of IE, or any one of 10^^30 mirrors of any number of older browsers.

A proper translation

[TACD]

Eeesh... you still use BabelFish? World Lingo has always been a better machine-translator:

Agreement with protection of children and young people in the Internet

Federation and countries agreed after one year's negotiation on principles for the protection of children and young people in the InterNet. The measures to temporal limitations for youth-endangering contents encounter criticism. On the corner points the bosses of the state and Senatskanzleien of the countries and the boss of the Office of the Federal Chancellor, franc walter stone Meier agreed, on Thursday in Berlin. The paper is present the Financial Times Germany. Basically the countries are to be responsible for the protection of children and young people in the media. The federation reserves itself rights of codetermination. The introduction of a " positive Ratings for harmless supplies " is suggested, which rejects the economy as " vorzensur ". The paper is to become basis for a youth medium protectorate contract (JMStV). On portals such as T-Online on Erotik pages without sufficient acces protection one link, says peace man Schindler of the Mainzer authority protection of children and young people.net. It expects now a stronger printing on the contents contents of to banish references to Sex supplies in the virtual Hinterzimmer.

Not youth-free contents only in certain times

According to the paper youth-free contents might not be made common " or accessible " only between 23 o'clock and 6 o'clock, if no " pre and free check techniques " are installed. Such demands were not practicably called of experts so far. " we can check not all contents in the network ", said Arthur Waldenberger, Vorstand of the freiwilligen self-check Multimedia (FSM). That is in view of billions on the part of " imbecility ". The fact that the self-check is to be subject to a " sovereign certifying " by a " commission for the youth medium protection " is not acceptable " ".

Experts reject sections

Also InterNet experts of the Bundestag factions reject sections of the arrangement. " the youth medium protection is already monastery suited compared with other countries almost in Germany ", says the medium-political speaker of the FDP, Hans Joachim petrol. It is too simply, itself after land woman manners " bigott over the dirt " consumed by million Germans too ereifern. Erotik providers are the only on-line industry, which writes black numbers. Also the SPD wants to put " dinosaur discussions forward over transmitting time delimitations and license obligations " for the InterNet a latch plate, said Joerg Tauss, representative for new media of the SPD. The corner points are not consentable.

What do you use

[SomethingOrOther]

I can have sex 24 hrs a day

Viagra ? :-P

government out of touch

[Anonymous Coward]

My take on this is that the people concerned are as out as touch as the Dutch Prime Minister, who physically clicked a mouse on a computer monitor when asked to double click on an icon.

Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you telling me that in the whole of the US (however many million population), nobody is into cocrophillia ?

Personaly I find sadisitc violence in the average holywood film far more disturbing than any consensual sex acts filmed by the most perverted German adult producers.

But then I have no hang-ups about sex.
You seem to have many. (It is "to each to their own" you know!)

Damn

[Anonymous Coward]

There's nothing like Scheiser on a crisp Bavarian morning. Guess I'll have to start getting up extra early.

history repeats ...

[Anonymous Coward]

uh oh ... it happened again , a bunch of mentally deficient ape-descendants trying to decrypt german
law proposals with help of the almighty fish...
i think after 4 trys you should have learned that babel sucks hard at translating whole articles (or is it just you that get things always wrong?).
here is what you fin in the article:

1. it is an extension of youth protecting laws
   
2. this "from 11pm to 6am" stuff is just mentioned EXTREMLY shortly, its not a main point in the topic
   
3. the law would only affect ISPs
   
4. most stuff is being abolished anyways
   

--> no need to exaggerate

man... slashdot was once really mindfull and smart but it became another flame wars and misinformation site.
three points on my shitlist.

I don't see any danger to the internet here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Reading through the articles postings, it seems that nobody has actually read the german article. The most important thing to notice is that almost everybody (the media producers, internet experts working for the government, some political parties (FDP, SPD), ever the guys who's job is to watch over content which might affect young people (Freiwilligen Selbstkontrolle Multimedia)) thinks that this proposal (attention: we are talking about a proposal, there is no such a law) is not usable. The paper proposes that the 'Bundesländer' have to take care for the media regulation, so that the government won't have to care about it :) I don't think that germany or the internet will become more restricted that way.

"Imbecility"

[GnulixRulz]

I like the following quote by the spokesman for media policy of the Free Democratic Party, Hans-Joachim Otto: "The youth media protection in Germany is already, in comparison to other countries, almost fit for a monestary."

Time limit on porn?

[sporty]

That COULD be funny. "Gadget, we have a serious matter for you to take care of. But first, I must warn you, the porn you are looking at will self distruct in 5 seconds." *Boom*

Get a night jobb!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

That must then mean that if you work at night, you must be allowed to visit pornsites at work, since the law forbidds you to do it on other hours....

ROTFLMAO

[nusuth]

What are the initials for ROTFL in german? Please wait 3 hours (counted from posting of this message) before posting initials for MAO part; that might offend German government, as all of us know very well from the last century's experiences, is not a good idea at all.

Re:This coming from the country of Scheizer Videos

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't know my country was famous for that kind of porn ... Could it be that you just watched "South Park" and took it it too seriously? Please grow up before posting "shit" like this ... [Btw, shit is written as Scheisse]

the english version

[vikool]

click here for the english version of the article: http://translate.google.com/translate_c?sourceid=n avclient&hl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ftd.de%2Fpw%2Fde %2FFTDPRAR3MUC.html

Weird trend...

[Cedric C. Girouard]

Isnt it odd that the German government thinks it can control the world ?

They failed in 1945. What can make them think that the world will bow down to them once more ?

Do they have 133T 5Ki115 we're unaware of ?

Get a grip...

[dillon_rinker]

I am not a fan of porn &lt/understatement&gt), but folks, this is Germany. Ever been there? i have. I visited several small towns and one moderately large city. Every bookstore and newstand had a large selection of pornographic magazines. In the small town I stayed in, I noted one that featured people in sexual situations in the magazine rack at a toy and school supply store. Think about it - hardcore porn in a store for children in a small town. The newspaper featured frontal nudity most days - sometimes relevant to a story, sometimes not. MTV videos contained nudity.

In short, I think the German politicians (or whoever) that are proposing this can't be taken seriously. I think it would be roughly analagous to US senators declaring that images of people in swimsuits should be outlawed. No one would take them seriously, in the sense that no one would think that it could actually happen. It would be a rhetorical ploy with some other political goal in mind.

P.S. This is why you should travel..so you can spout inane drivel on slashdot and sound like you know what you're talking about :)

Re:Get a grip...

[A_Non_Moose]

It still suprises me that no one picked up on the subject line.

Ok, a show of hand how many ppl think this idea won't work?

.

Some background on this...

[gloth]

In Germany, movies with age restrictions may be shown on TV only on certain times. This means that, while nudity is genenrally acceptable, soft porn is not broadcast on the afternoon. Gory violence isn't either (unless it's a comic strip, but that's a different issue altogether).

So what happened here was that some clueless bureaucrates/politicians made the suggestion that this scheme should be applied to internet content as well.

If you read the acticle, you'll find that this suggestion is called everything from silly to unpractical to ridiculous from pretty much everyone else: (more clued) members of the government, the opposition, the businesses, etc.

The short of it is: some people had a stupid idea, it's not gonna happen, have your good laught at it and move on with life.

30 minutes later in Newfoundland

[AndroidCat]

There are also the places that are on 30 minute or even 15 minute boundaries. As well as a few places in the Pacific that shifted their time-zone ahead 23 hours or so to be "first into the new millenium" as a tourist gimick. (Probably ignored at the time, and long forgotten now.) Time zones are good. Railroads used to keep their own time standards for each company -- which meant making a tight connection in Chicago .. interesting.

But to get back on topic, I think the German government needs to hire a child of five to explain the Internet and the concept of "global communications" to them. They've obviously missed their connection with the Clue Train.

How would this work?

[theKiyote]

If you think about it, time wouldnt really matter. A porn company from germany would be making the service available for people all around the world, the Internet isn't just located in Germany, and at one point or another it will BE 11:00pm - 6:00am somewhere in the world. It would be kind of narrow minded to think that the only people who look at German porn live in Germany. --theKiyote

Ughhh

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn Nazi's. At it again. So what else is new.

Illegal

[paugq]

I think Germany won't be able to limit how much time can porn sites be available.

Doing a simple analysis:

• a porn site is not as TV. There are "few" TV channels (here in Spain, including digital channels, we have some 100 channels). Besides this, if you are in a country, it's difficult for your TV to receive channels from another country. Almost impossible.
• On the other hand, there are millions of porn sites in Internet. A lot of this sites are in countries different than Germany and every site in Internet is accessible from everywhere

So, for me it's clear and simple that the same (or similar)law it's not applicable.

Still more: limiting which time a porn site can operate is like limiting which time could I reproduce a porn VHS/DVD movie in my home. It's private!

I'm glad I'm not going to those German porn sites.

[optize]

.... 8PM is my bedtime, that would suck, life without porn ;(

how can they police it?

[Anonymous Coward]

that's easy. we'll make the entire internet go through my house and i'll watch all the porn to "make sure nothing slips through"

sure i'd be fired within 3 days when they see that im not doing a good job. but terabytes of porn would do me for at LEAST a week. it's a great deal on my end!

ATTN: Slashdot Management

[Jucius Maximus]

Hello. I noticed a small, probably typographical error when browsing the site today. Could you please correct this by reposting the current article under the section 'It's Funny. Laugh." ? Thank you.

Is this a good idea?

[RedWolves2]

I am still debating if this would have been good will I was in college. Would I have gotten more studying done and gotten better grades or would I have stayed up all night and skipped all my classes during the day.

Let the debate rage.

For me I was able to balance the two during the day just fine. Of course when I was in college porn was still genereally free.

If that's the case...

[ColGraff]

...then what are you doing posting to slashdot?

This is outrageous!

[SpinyNorman]

If I don't have 24x7 access to top quality German porn, then the terrorists have won!

Isn't it odd so many people get upset about porn

[ColGraff]

But people don't mind TV shows on cable, or movies, or web sites, which have some sort of violent content? (Or at least, they don't seem to mind it as much.) Any time during the day, I can turn on the TV and see a man get shot. I can go on the Internet to a mainstream site (like download.com, for example) and download a violent video game. But god forbid my kids get access to porn.

Uh, am I on the only person on the face of the Earth who would rather get laid than shot?

Misunderstanding

[bow]

There seems to be some kind of misunderstanding here.

The article mentioned talks about a proposal to require large german portals (like t-online or freenet) to only link to pr0n sites during the hours specified.
It is not about requiring those sites to only open during these hours.

German politicians (at least most of them) understand quite well that the internet is a international medium that can not be controlled by a single country.


Do not push the red button !

Can't be a coincidence ...

[shaunak]

This landed in my mailbox today.

"People seem to enjoy things more when they know a lot of other people have been left out of the pleasure.
-- Russell Baker"
So, umm, the German polits want to enjoy things more? ;)

German idiocy: an example

[Anonymous Coward]

An American friend was living in Germany. He decided to wash his car on Sunday. The neighbors called the cops and he was given a ticket.

Yup - you can't wash your friggin' car on Saturday in Germany.

Fighting hard not to use the N word.

Re:German idiocy: an example

[Anonymous Coward]

i think that is not right....
becouse you arent allowed to wash them on street....
becourse of the nature, you aren't allowed to use chemical washers....
you have to go to a washing park for example at your next petrol station

Re:German idiocy: an example

[Bobo the Space Chimp]

> He decided to wash his car on Sunday. The
> neighbors called the cops and he was given a
> ticket.
>
> Yup - you can't wash your friggin' car on Saturday
> in Germany.

So his problem was...?

The tradition lives!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Bless your heart for getting a Goatsex link through! That made my day, now I'm finally part of the /. tradition.

Once again, bless you!!!
-ac

Re:It's guarateed incompatibility with rest of wor

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the article says : except a site has
a block (like do not enter if you're under 18),
still the proposal offers you a great possibility
to enjoy the way of our socialistic government.

Black Numbers

[rbruels]

Erotik providers are the only on-line industry, which writes black numbers.

Heh, heh. I love the Babelfish. ;)

Maybe they are trying to set an example?

[Dog and Pony]

I agree it is futile trying to "block" porn on certain hours, by "outlawing", or rather regulating it in your own country.

But if they really, really want this, they would have to start first, and hope that other follows. That is the only explanation I can think of.

On the other hand, time zones would stop that. Porno surfers would ultimately just learn what coutry has sites up at any given hour...

Lets not get stupid about this

[zenyu]

So there is someone in Germany who's an idiot.

So?

Has this thing passed? No

Will it pass? Not likely

The world has changed since the US Senate passed the internet censorship bill 99-1. Many legislators have touched a computer and many more have been told about them by their interns. Now while legislative interns are usually the prisiest section of our world's populace, they aren't the stupidest.

flawed analogies

[Preposterous Coward]

Um, let's think for a moment about why the Internet is different from TV:

TV is a broadcast medium, meaning that if you have a receiver, it comes into your home whether you want it to or not. The Internet (Web, more precisely) is a client-server mechanism where you have to request content.

TV is basically local (though there's some spillage across a country's borders, of course), so it's reasonable to expect local laws to apply. The Internet is fundamentally international.

Think about it: Should a guy browsing a German Web site from Japan be blocked because it's not after 11pm? Is that client time or server time? What about the reverse, a German guy browsing a Japanese Web site? This whole idea is not internally consistent.

Re:flawed analogies

[macpeep]

"Think about it: Should a guy browsing a German Web site from Japan be blocked because it's not after 11pm? Is that client time or server time? What about the reverse, a German guy browsing a Japanese Web site? This whole idea is not internally consistent"

Just beacause it's hard doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. Note that I'm not for blocking. I'm just saying that just because something (say, fighting drugs) is hard doesn't mean you should just let it happen.

Obviously, it would be German time and client time. And for the case of the German guy browsing a Japanese web site, it would be no different than a German guy ordering drugs from Japan over the phone. Yes, it's very very tricky and technically just about impossible to control, but you can always make the law and then just leave it up to the companies with the servers to come up with a way to implement it so that they are within the law. You could have pages that ask what country you come from, just like there are these "You have to be above 18 to enter." type disclaimers. Of course you can get around it. You can also speed with your car and get away with it but that's not an excuse not to make a law like that.

except there's no way of determining local time!

[Preposterous Coward]

...calls out to an external time server to grab the correct time. If it's not 11-6 wherever the person is they cannot view the X-rated sites.

And how do you know what the local time is? An external time server will tell you what UTC (Universal Coordinated Time, basically Greenwich Mean Time) is, but it can't tell where you physically *are*, so it can't know the offset to compute your local time. Oh, it's not past 11pm? I'll just temporarily reset the time zone on my computer so it says I'm in Japan.

Re:Isn't it odd so many people get upset about por

[Saeger]

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand why violience is more socially acceptable than porn (the world over, but especially in the puritanical US).

BOTH serve to ensure our survival: Violence "prepares" our warriors, and Sex propogates the genes of the warriors who survived. BOTH are pleasurable, but the former in groups, and the latter privately (for reasons of feared inadequacy and religious indoctrination).

Anyway, the "scientific" reason why porn takes a backseat to violence is because of "Bigger Dick Theory (BDT)." It states that porn embarrasses chicks and pencil dicks, but that violience (and cars!) increases dick length (gun!). :-)

NOT, was Re:Misunderstanding

[jopet]

please read the article carefully: it states that pornographic material is linked from portals, and it states in the next paragraph, that the proposal is to restrict the access to pornographic content to the aforementioned hours unless it is protected by some "locking mechanisms".

Re:NOT, was Re:Misunderstanding

[bow]

it says there should be more pressure put on the content providers, which in this case means the portal, not the pr0n site !
Like I said, it's all about putting links to unprotected pr0n sites on portals, not about restricting the pr0n sites themselves.

It makes a lot of sense to me.

[t0qer]

This is gonna sound sick, but I think most of the male population of /. have been through this or they're lying.

When I was uhhm, 14 or so. I discovered masturbation (yeah late bloomer so sue me) Man what a thrill, I could not get enough, everyday sometimes 5 times a day. Then one day before school I was in the bath at about 7:45, "Just another minute mom" I desperatly tried to finish it off, then more knocking at the bathroom door, "I said just another minute" Then I heard my uncle's voice, "Johnny (not my rl name) what are you doing in there?" my reply, "Nothing!" Then he started kicking the door, and knocking really loud. "Johnny are you playing with yourself in there?" I yelled back that I was taking a bath but by that time I knew the gig was up. I jumped out of the bath and had blue balls for the rest of the day.

Needless to say a 11pm to 6am "it's OK to masturbate to pr0n law" probably would have helped me avoid that embarassing situation.

Re:It makes a lot of sense to me.

[Anonymous Coward]

> I was in the bath at about 7:45, "Just another minute mom"

Too bad your mom wasn't banging outside my door.

Me: "Come on in."

Your mom: "Hey, whoa!"

Me: "I'm sad, so sad."

Your mom: "Why?"

Me: "I'm not sure I'm doing this right. Something is supposed to happen, but I don't know what."

Your mom: "You just keep doing that and you'll figure it out."

Me: "I'm so embarassed. Please don't hate me."

Your mom: "I don't hate you. It's perfectly normal."

Me: "Can you tell me if I'm doing it right?"

Your mom: "Uhhh, sure."

Me: "When I go like this...am I doing...can you show me how to hold it?"

Your mom: "Sure, just a sec"

Me: "Maybe you should take off your clothes, too, so you don't get wet."

Your mom: (does so) Ok, now...

Me: Well, you might as well get in now.

Your mom: Ok, move over, now let's put our legs around each other and lean back. Ok, then...

And the rest was history. I'd let you know what Your mom did next, but a gentleman never tells.

Re:Isn't it odd so many people get upset about por

[Anonymous Coward]

that theory doesn't seem to take into account THE CHILDREN

Re:Isn't it odd so many people get hot about porn

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, porn makes a lot of people pretty hot...yeah, baby...

"I'm s typical slashdot reader...

[T-Punkt]

... and I think those damn nazi-krauts are wrong."

Now that I've read so many incredible stupid comments (many of them modded up) I really can't take it any more.

It's interesting to see in all those articles and moderations here how many slashdot users have absolutely no clue what the story and the article it links to is about and that doesn't stop them taking their vague assumptions or the wrong summary as facts.

1. It's the conclusion of a discussion of some people - no law or something even close to a law.
2. The article itself says that this is purely theoretical and that's not possible to "censor" the internet (that idea is called "schwachsinn" in the article, please look up what that means), everybody knows that's not possible to block certain content on the internet so please don't tell us again what we all already know. (Hello Moderators? Let's not forget there's a "redundant" option!)
3. The definition of "porn" in Germany (and in the linked article) is very likely not the same as the definition of "porn" in your country. Pictures of nude people is not porn there, even movies showing people making love may not be rated as porn.
4. Porn sites that already have some kind of access restriction or age verification are not affected by this.
5. The whole thing is a idea to protect children from seeing content which very likely is not that good for them (if this is true or not - I don't know), e.g. a woman giving a man a blowjob - What the hell do you think is wrong with that?
6. It's very likely that in your country things are already in place to "protect the children" that are in the order of multiple magnitudes more stupid than this idea. E.g. censoring words of common language like "shit" in public media (ever noticed that "beep" in US-talkshows?, "Parental guidance" on the cover of some CDs?). As we all know who still remember what it was being children or who have children or who work with children those are words that most children nearly everywhere on this planet use on a daily basis (at least in the communication amongst themselves, think of "southpark")
7. The access restrictions for "free porn" to certain hours is just one point of the paper. The idea for a "positive ranking" is completely ignored by most commentators here.
8. German politicans of a leading (SPD) and a opposing party (FDP) already rejected the idea.

Re:Here's the reason: Commercials!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

That is the first post with a goatse.cx listing I've ever seen at +5

wow

slashdot just isn't the same anymore

Stop worrying so much

[Peaker]

Information theory proves that two sides that can transmit data to each other can transmit any information they want with any tunneling they want.

As for shutting down servers... A gnutella-type network may replace the www for typical restricted things. Outlawing the use of software is quite a difficult problem, and 'solutions' will always be found.

These two things above combined, mean that the Internet may never lose its information freedom, no matter how powerful or how badly some government wants.

Information theory is on our side, stop worrying so much :)

Re:Here's the reason: Commercials!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wanted to see if "don't click this one" is part of slashdot added text.

test

get laid but you cant watch

[Aaron39]

so you can go to a whorehouse, go get plastered at age 12 in the local bar, but you cant look at an image of a naked woman during the day?

*Blush*?

[O2n]

it is usally easy to find a channel that you can watch with your 16-year old daughter without blushing (The kids can stay up late at weekends).

I think you exaggerate here. C'mon, *blush*... with a 16-year old daughter... that's not a kid, it's a young adult. Where do you live, for chrissake?

This reminds me of this (rather old) joke:
Mother to 12-years-old daughter: 'Dear, it's time to have a talk about sex.'
'Yea, mom, what do you wanna know?'

:)

Re:*Blush*?

[hughk]

Um, only young beautiful people are allowed to have sex. Us older folk have no sex life at all, at least that is what they think. They get embarrassed and that makes us embarrassed.

No, German tv always likes to show a gratuitous flash of boob for shower gel etc., but it is the telephone sex ads that really do it, especially the voice-overs.

The standard stuff in say "Sex in the City" causes no problems. It is in context and little gets seen.

What about shift workers?

[TomDLux]

If you work the night shift and enjoy certain, late-night, adult television programs, there is a well-established technology known as a VCR to enable you to watch your favourite programs when you get home from work.

If that same night shift worker enjoys accessing adult materials on the internet ..... ?

OK, I'll do it!!!

[sconeu]

Let's see... Germany is time zone +1, and CA is zone -8... So, if I run my pr0n server from 11PM to 6AM PST, that'll give me 8AM to 3PM German Time.

Perfect for catching those Germans who surf for pr0n at work!

Timeshifting made the law obsolete anyway

[Sloppy]

Tivo's here. I don't know or care when a TV program is on. And if that applies to me, it also applies to kids too. They're growing up with all this tech, and they know how to take advantage of it.

Internet is no different. cron your wget.

Instead of extending their TV rules to the Internet, they need to realize the futility of the original rules. Time-of-day isn't useful for determining when something should be available.

Interesting wording....

[coyote-san]

I know you're probably not a native English speaker, but I had to laugh at your phrasing. "Proposal to require portals to only link to pr0n sites during the hours specified" means the opposite of what you intended.

"Only" modifies what follows it. So "only link" implies that portals can do something besides providing hyperlinks, e.g., providing the pr0n directly on their pages. Only now they have clean up the pages from 11-6, replacing the images with hyperlinks to the images!

If we move the "only" to the first place it really makes sense, "require portals to link to only pr0n sites during the hours specified," the results are even more bizarre. "It is 11pm, now we will look at pr0n!"

Ditto "... link to pr0n-only sites...."

What you undoubtably meant was "require portals to link to pr0n sites only during the hours specified."

I'm not trying to be the grammar police, but laws are one place where everyone really does need to be careful. As these examples show, misplacing a single word (especially "only") can easily reverse the meaning of the sentence! Unfortunately, this is something many legislators overlook... it's almost worth letting them pass the bill (if they made such a mistake) just to see their face when you point out that it is now compulsory to view pr0n in the evening.

Condom instructions?

[coyote-san]

What does that make the drawing on the insert in the package of condoms? Definitely an image (line drawing) of fully aroused male genitals.

(Trying to imagine the insert with a drawing showing how to put a condom on a banana, to avoid violating porn laws when a minor gets lucky, and the pregnancies that result while the hausfrau is trying to figure out the shrinkwrapped fruit in the kitchen....)

Re:Condom instructions?

[arkanes]

I've seen condoms where they used featureless "tubes", unattached to the body for the instructions. Musta been german.

According to "Ask Marilyn"...

[coyote-san]

According to an issue of "Ask Marilyn" that I really wish I had kept, violence is acceptable because "everyone knows it was faked," while sex is not because it's real.

I initially thought she was refering to penetration, which is a bit hard to fake in quality porn, then I remembered that this was a Sunday supplement and she was probably refering to nudity in a mass market movie.

Either way, it begs the question of why anyone would try to equate the reality of violence with sex. Call me crazy, but I actively seek to get laid (the "most extreme" sexual act) most days, but I can't think of the last time I tried to get punched (one of the "least extreme" violent acts). It really makes me wonder about her... yet that's a common perception out in Middle America.

Re:According to "Ask Marilyn"...

[epepke]

According to an issue of "Ask Marilyn" that I really wish I had kept, violence is acceptable because "everyone knows it was faked," while sex is not because it's real.

This is nonsense, of course, because the violence on the popular show "Cops" is not faked, and I have seen no evidence that people object to this show. (I object to it, because it presents violations of civil liberties as just fine, but most people don't see that.) Nor, for that matter, is the violence in boxing matches faked, and the violence in "tough guy" competitions isn't even stylized or controlled. Some people object to boxing, but not many.

But then again, this is the same woman who said that the reason you can't see the wind is that you couldn't see air because air molecules were too small to see, so what do you expect?

(FTR, the reason you can't see wind most of the time is that most of the time the air is visually homogeneous. When it isn't, such as with layers of heat over Florida blacktop during summer, let alone when there's actual condensation, you can see wind just fine.)

Re:According to "Ask Marilyn"...

[Galvatron]

Hmm, boxing isn't fake. Neither is rugby or (american) football. Okay, there's a lot of padding in football, but usually there's at least one injury per game. Why aren't these banned?

It seems more likely to me that this is just a hormonal urge. Children are obviously not ready to procreate, hence we, as well evolved animals, keep them away from anything that we perceive as sexual.

Re:According to "Ask Marilyn"...

[Alsee]

I actively seek to get laid (the "most extreme" sexual act)

Wow, that's even more naive than a time-clock for net-porn! You haven't surfed the web much, have you?

-

Wooha! (OT)

[Anonymous Coward]

This is by far the best machine traslation I've ever seen. I hope you didn't edit it. I'm too lazy to check myself.

lovely translation from dictionary.com

[savini acolyte]

hackneyed, yes. but it's damn funny!

Agreement with protection of children and young people in the InterNet federation and countries agreed after one year's negotiation on principles for the protection of children and young people in the InterNet. The measures to temporal limitations for youth-endangering contents encounter criticism. On the corner points the bosses of the state and Senatskanzleien of the countries and the boss of the Office of the Federal Chancellor, franc walter stone Meier agreed, on Thursday in Berlin. The paper is present the Financial Times Germany. Basically the countries are to be responsible for the protection of children and young people in the media. The federation reserves itself rights of codetermination. The introduction of a " positive Ratings for harmless supplies " is suggested, which rejects the economy as " vorzensur ". The paper is to become basis for a youth medium protectorate contract (JMStV). On portals such as T-Online on Erotik pages without sufficient acces protection one link, says peace man Schindler of the Mainzer authority Jugendschutz.net. It expects now a stronger printing on the contents contents of to banish references to Sex supplies in the virtual Hinterzimmer. Youth-free contents only in certain times according to the paper might not be made common " or accessible not youth-free contents " only between 23 o'clock and 6 o'clock, if no " pre and free check techniques " are installed. Such demands were not practicably called of experts so far. " we can check not all contents in the network ", said Arthur Waldenberger, Vorstand of the freiwilligen self-check Multimedia (FSM). That is in view of billions on the part of " imbecility ". The fact that the self-check is to be subject to a " sovereign certifying " by a " commission for the youth medium protection " is not acceptable " ". Experts lean sections off also InterNet experts of the Bundestag factions reject sections of the arrangement. " the youth medium protection is already monastery suited compared with other countries almost in Germany ", says the medium-political speaker of the FDP, Hans Joachim petrol. It is too simply, itself after land woman manners " bigott over the dirt " consumed by million Germans too ereifern. Erotik providers are the only on-line industry, which writes black numbers. Also the SPD wants to put " dinosaur discussions forward over transmitting time delimitations and license obligations " for the InterNet a latch plate, said Joerg Tauss, representative for new media of the SPD. The corner points are not consentable.

Uhhhh.......

[Sarcasmooo!]

Yeah, I'm sure this'll accomplish a lot. Assuming that, unlike when I was their age, kids these days prefer to look at porn while their parents are still awake.

Re:Isn't it odd so many people get upset about por

[benb]

Actually, it is exactly the other way around. I have noted many times that nudity is frowned upon much more than violence (from my POV) in the US, while in Germany, the tolerace barriers are exactly the opposite.

This is most obvious in games: Many violent games that are freely sold in the US are fodbidden for teens here (which means that advertizing isn't allowed either). OTOH, almost all major TV stations send soft porn during the night.

Why in this case the German regulators picked porn in particular for censoring the net is bejond me. I find the proposal ridiculous, too.

P.S. I am German.

Phew !

[IroygbivU]

At last, another government equalling in Internet idiocy to Australia's.

Still comes back to the question...

[hitzroth]

what exactly is porn?

In fact, it makes it even more difficult because we need a definition that is acceptable everywhere the .xxx TLD would be used -- i.e. worldwide.

Re:Still comes back to the question...

[Anonymous Coward]

> what exactly is porn?

Exactly! A good portrait of Nicole Kidman on the cover of a major magazine has more value (and re-use value) than "normal" pr0n.

Fuck the children.

[Anonymous Coward]

They're going to have to grow up sometime. Keeping them in ignorance of the big bad world ain't gonna make the big bad world any nicer.
All the covering of the eyes is gonna do is make it impossible for them to deal with reality. What we'll end up with is a slew of whiny brats that are fit for nothing better than flipping burgers and delivering mail.

There ain't no magic serum to keep puppies cute, playful, and innocent forever.

DO THEY NOT HAVE FREEDOM OF SPEECH?

[lazy8fx]

they have freedom of speech in germany dont they? then why does it matter when the sites are open. This will not stop the spread of porn, it will encourage it. kids want what they cannot have.

They should look elsewhere first

[billcopc]

If germany wants to filter pr0n, they should start looking in their immediate vicinity before making fools of themselves on the net. Their close neighbor, France, is quite lenient as far as nudity/lewdness are concerned.

Their daytime TV would be quickly classified as "softcore porn" in any other country. There's something about bottled water and naked women splashing it all over their bodies that just wouldn't seem so 'pure and clean' here in America. Sure, it's not full-blown hardcore, but for an underage kid who's been blinded by his parents/gov't sine birth, it's going to have a similar effect, which is probably what the german gov't is trying to avoid.

As usual, these cultural differences will never see an end, because everyone thinks theirs is the best and everything else is evil. So we end up with hypocrisy, such as when Britney prances around in a skin-tone cleavage-enhancing bikini on national television, and people call it 'shocking'. I'd rather see people come clean and be honest about it all, like those kooky french, rather than testing the limits of "what's appropriate", as defined by a bunch of squeamish fools.

Bashing Germany

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, I'm really tired of y'all bashing Germany here. I mean, the rumors and lies being stated...it's really getting to me. I mean, the things that are shown (late at night) on German television would never be allowed here in the much more restricted US. Germany tends to be much more accepting in general, and it just seems as if too many people on here are making assumptions about a nation they have neither studied nor traveled to.

While I disagree with the policies represented here, I personally feel that US citizens don't have a great deal of right to accuse other countries (especially Western European ones) of being 'restrictive.' Both in law and in general, we are far beyond these nations in restrictive practices.

To use an example which you people may not care for or agree with, I am going to state that a band like Rammstein would never be accepted into popular culture here the way it has been in Germany. The band has more than one song about incest ("Tier" and "Spiel Mit Mir" being two examples from one album), sexual degradation ("Buck Dich"), and other less than accepted practices. Alongside that, much of their work rivals Marilyn Manson in heresy, so to speak.

Personally, I would much rather live in a nation where gay marriage has been legalized and be unable to read works such as Mein Kampf. But that's just me....

Actually my gov teacher in HS said it best...

[mickeyreznor]

But people don't mind TV shows on cable, or movies, or web sites, which have some sort of violent content?

"It has come to my attention that some students were complaining about the movie "Amistad" that I had you see for extra credit, saying that they were offended by the display of breasts. Well I don't know what they're complaing about. Just turn on the TV and there they are: breasts. Bouncing around all over the place."

economic reasons

[ddent]

And I'm dead serious about this one. A potential reason they may want this is to increase productivity of people at work. Don't laugh, I'm not joking. Now, as to the implementation or whether it should be implemented... that's a different story.

New business idea in effect

[drx]

Because of this and other efforts to block access to information on the net, me and a friend of mine have set up a commercial info telephone.

For just some a minute we will read to you live on the phone all porn sites you ever want. We also describe pictures. No problem coz we make sure our internet connection is unfiltered!

For details check this site: TeleTrust.Info or use the babelfished English version.

Nobody will be able to stop the flow of information!

natural reaction

[Magius_AR]

it's considering requiring that porn sites restrict their hours to 11pm to 6am

...7 hours of porn...24 hour day...~2/3 of the day without porn?

Noooooooooooooooooooooo!

Magius_AR

well its always between 6- 11 somewhere

[kel-tor]

on the the flip side, it's always after midnight somewhere too

Or to put it another way...

[gdyas]

It's sad how blase we are about our kids watching people get shot, hacked up, beaten & abused on various TV programs, yet let two naked people make love on a television and OH MY GOD WHAT WILL THE CHILDREN THINK!

It's just like everyone shitting themselves over a handful of anthrax deaths when thousands die in their cars on the way to work each morning. Like much else a matter of misplaced priorities and media-hyped threats to our society.

Re:Flatten the Earth

[jandrese]

There are some people who still believe that you won't have to go to any trouble to get a flat Earth.

That's a very good point

[Galvatron]

I never thought about that. The whole debate makes a lot more sense now, thanks. America has never tried criminal cases without a jury (except court martial, and that only applies to military personnel), so it makes a lot of sense that America tends to trust the government with capital punishment, whereas Europe doesn't.

Re:That's a very good point

[Bobo the Space Chimp]

The reverse is true on other issues. We're much more sensitive about racial issues over here because of past slavery and discrimination, and a heterogenous society. Europe, on the other hand, although there's much migration lately, still has a per-country homogenous culture. Thus people in one country can talk about "those Turks" or "those French" without batting an eye, yet an American's ears would burn to hear that.

Sexual standards are like that, too. I was in Europe during the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill thing and none of the women at work understood why what he did was a big deal. They take it in stride; the US trains its people to be "exquisitely sensitive".

Hum... Peeling an apple ?

[^BR]

Or an orange that is...

Or we free European supposed to eat those pesticid infested fruit skins..

Most people have dozen of knives in their house that they don't consider a weapon, why being in the street would make the same object different ?

Re:Hum... Peeling an apple ?

[t_allardyce]

Because there are all those criminals who would use them to hurt people. If we would just shoot all the stupid pe.. oh yeah. oooops. We used to be able to ship them all off to Austrailia - what happened to that?

Ban the Goddam kids!

[letchhausen]

We obviously need to ban those under 18 from the internet since they obviously are too impressionable to view it's contents.