Slashdot Mirror
Study on Internet Censorship in Germany
An anonymous reader writes "There is a report on Germany forcing ISPs to censor the Internet by faking DNS entries. ISPs also seem to use this to steal mail and generally screw up the Internet. Next thing they plan is using BGP to break routing to unwanted webservers. Scary."
You vish to send un e-mail? Vere are your papers?
A day without sunshine is like, you know, dark.
Ever since /. published this story, German DNS servers inform that slashdot.org points to the aol server.
They have it all wrong. It must be the US that is doing this. We know the US is the source of all censorship.
</sarcasm>
I love how everytime folks dislike a law (many of them bad) declare that they are going to move to Canada or Europe where freedoms really mean something.
Well, lets see. Strike out Germany, they censor the web. Strike out France, they also prevent auctions on WWII artifacts. England with their video cameras and national ID cards are out.
To tell the truth, I found I was able to get the the stormfront site that one of the links mentioned. Why? I live in the US. While we do have freedom issues here, I don't think they are quite the same as many other countries.
Here, you are allowed to go against popular ideas. You can be a racist if you like. You can hate whites, blacks, anyone you want. You can hate the government or current administration.
In the US you are able to create your own website and report any news you like. Infact, you can go to any website you wish, and you will actually get there (barring internet routing problems). The government isn't going to force ISPs to route around you.
While many of the reactionary laws from 9/11 are causing problems, we have Ashcroft fighting to keep those laws on the books. You know why? Because, they are not permanent, there was a sunset clause put into the law. You know what else? Ashcroft isn't having an easy go at it.
So, next time that you want to throw a temper tantrum that the US is removing your freedoms, keep in mind we could do much worse. We could be making it so you could not go to German sites or French sites or muslim sites or Christian sites.
This isn't to say we should have these PATRIOT acts and such, but here we have the power and ability to fight laws like that. I think our energy is best used in that fashion, not whining how some other country that has a good law here or there but also has some other horrible laws.
Norris/Palin 2012
Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
...But the cause is idiotic as well Censorship never accomplished anything of value except perhaps limiting little boys' access to likenesses of the human body, if you see that as valuable, and stopping reporters from giving out so much information about troops that the enemy starts watching CNN for combat intelligence. Everything else that censorship has done was destructive.
Repeal the DMCA!
this article and research would be MUCH more interesting if the website being blocked where not a bunch of fucking white supremesist nazis!
What are some of these blocked web sites in the US?
Just because you dsagree with them does not mean that you should desire for their site being censored.
How would you like it if the US decided that slashdot was just a bunch of liberal idiots and incited folks to be anti America so they decided to censor it.
Its easy when you are in the majority to say that other people are unreasonable. Heck, 150 years ago in the US these white supremacists would have been able to say you were bing unreasonable and tried to censor you.
A couple hundred years before that Galileo (sp?) was censored by the Church of the time because they were in the majority.
Consider next time you want to mod someone down because you disagree with what they say. Will history laugh at you for being so foolish?
Censorship of ideas is a bad thing (TM). Censoring disidents seems to histoically lead to the oppression of them. Look at China for instance (Maybe Godwin's Law needs to be updated to add China).
Norris/Palin 2012
Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
Were: W-E-R-E.
Supremacist: S-U-P-R-E-M-A-C-I-S-T.
Idiot: I-D-I-O-T.
this article and research would be MUCH more interesting if the website being blocked where not a bunch of fucking white supremesist nazis!
"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all."
H. L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)
At least they don't mess with the Holy Internet.
Oh come on, the fucking web isn't what matters in life.
Perhaps somebody who actually understands how DNS works could convince me this isn't just a black-helicopter urban legend. Until then, I'm inclined to put this with that guy that "proved" that whitehouse.gov was registered in the U.K.!
Why don't we repoint the core DNS servers that server the German IP space to the Hollocaust Center's web site? or maybe www.remember.org (another hollacaust site with graphic photographs)? or maybe http://www.gfh.org.il/? I think that any of those sites would be a fine choice until the German ISP's choose to allow the internet to function properly. Since they seem to be up to their old tricks, perhaps they should be reminded....... My 2 cents, Queen B
HDGary secures my bank
I'm sure i'm going to be slapped down many points for saying this. But in many ways, I don't see this as being much diffrent then the spamhaus project, among other sources of blacklisting spam sites.
Now don't get me wrong, I use spamhaus my self. But make no mistake, it is a form of censorship. I use it specificly to censor sites that have had prior evidence of sending spam.
The only key diffrence here is that Germany seems to be taking a stand on hate groups. In america there are a vast number of ISPs that wouldn't host white power groups. The key diffrence here is it's not a violation of free speech to let some other joe host it.
I don't condone what they are doing. Germany clearly has made a choice as to content they deem unacceptable, that's no excuse for screwing up the with. If they really want to censor groups that promote violance and hate, I would propose they do it on a proxy server instead.
I personaly wouldn't support a sensor stormfront.org. After visiting the site, it made me physicaly ill esp after seeing kids.stormfront.org. "I am only thirteen years old and I really do not need your hateful thoughts in my head." Yep, and providing a nice link to the freal story on marten luther king, with nice info on how somehow jewish run companies are responcible for rap lyrics promoting the killing of white people. [white powder... white powder]. While I hate this crap, it's part of free speech, the inalienable right for people to make total asses out of them selves.
Meanwhile, i'll just censor spam.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
I know about censorship in Germany. I've even ranted about it. My puzzlement comes from this notion that there's some dark conspiracy to censor the German internet, and all we have to prove it are some strange DNS logs.
Hi,
at ODEM.org we provide a lot of stuff to this topic:
ODEM.org Tour (about censorship)
There is a lot of action against this, but most of it is, of course, in german ... :)
... ;-)
At ODEM.org (english) we have a lot of material and infos and so on about this -- but the most are in german.
We have an online petition (Link to the english version) with more then 17000 signers, including the "internet experts" of the big political parties, the "reporters without frontier", Ian Clarke, Richard Stallman and others. You are invited to sign also
But, yes: in the public outside of the net community you hear very rarely about this. The filtering/blocking is -- if you only have a fast look on it -- against nazis! And in germeny, nearly *everyone* is against nazis.
And this is the danger: At first, they choose some Nazis. But later, there will be thousands of web sites blocked, see some quotes and infos, but the text and MP3s/OGGs are only in german.
ODEM.org Tour (about censorship)
Quote " Some german Companies fiddle with a techniqe of using routing protocols to block unwanted web content. "
Hate to break it to you, but using the web within a corporate environnement is a perk, not a right. And they CAN , have the RIGHT, to censor what they deem an abuse like looking for porn, gambling, whatever.
As for the other stuff "blocking stormfront", 1) I dislike to break it to you, but some web site are contrary to german law. I see nothing wrong in blocking them. You are american and dislike it ? Tough luck. We dislike some of the US law but can't do sh*t against that and should not even. 2) The biggest provider in germany block none of those stuff. I wonder how much is due to bad configuration. DID those guy not only test the positive result (blocking stormfront) but ALSO the negative result (blocking of web site on the same dns block or beside) ?? Can't seems to find info on that. 3) The people within germany are perfectly agreeing apparently that some stuff needs to be censored. Racism site/book. And so on. There are specific law on that (try to go in a german city and make a conference about "negationism"... Good luck on your prison time).
Bref, IMO, no news here. Instead of mounting the US-lens and seeing everything through your world, wake up and realise that other countries have other law, other culture, and other history. The PEOPLE of those country should decide if they agreee with their governement practice not the US citizen.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org