Slashdot Mirror
German Search Engines Self-Regulating
Philipp Lenssen writes "Heise reports the German search engines Google.de, Lycos Europe, MSN Germany, AOL Germany, Yahoo.de, T-Online and T-Info today in Berlin announced the forming of a self-regulating organization (Babelfish version) under the hood of the German FSM (the "Voluntary Self-Control for Multimedia Service Providers"). Their combined goal is to streamline the process of censoring content ruled illegal under German law, so that a user's search results are stripped from such items."
FSM (the "Voluntary Self-Control for Multimedia Service Providers")
Worst acronym ever.
You'd think Germans would be better at that sort of thing...
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I saved Latin. What did you ever do?
Just use google.li, they provide the same results but without any censorship. Google.de appears to filter at least some radical Nazi sites an other forbidden conten for some time now.
Whenever I access google.com in another country, I'm always forwarded to that country's google site. google.ru, google.jp, etc. I'm not sure if this is true of Germany, but it seems likely.
Google was caught filtering out neo-Nazi sites back in 2002 so MSN is just following common practice.
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
last i heard cryptography was illegal to export from the US not that you can't use it.
Stephan
Yes, we end up at google.de
But since they determine the loacation by IP address it's not really hard to circumvent it. So it won't make a difference for those trying to find such content, but it will at least help google and others to avoid lawsuits in Germany.
I don't read replies by ACs.
How about decency laws censoring your entertainment industry? Germany censors nazi stuff, cant argue with that i guess, they are pretty sensitive to that stuff for a good reason.
Decency laws only censor entertainment that goes out over public airwaves. You can pretty much show anything you want on cable/pay per view. The internet isn't censored in America, nor is satalite based radio.
Considering Germany's past, I can understand the push to censor Nazi material. I still think it's a bad idea. People should be free to say and do what they want as long as they are not infringing on the rights of others.
This is complete bullshit. These restrictions went away years ago. At some point, the NSA realized that breaking into your house and installing a secret keylogger was much easier than trying to prevent you from downloading encryption software.
Heck, go here and download Microsoft's .NET common runtime for free. In case you aren't a programmer, this package contains implementaions of DES, TripleDES, Rijndael (AES), Public Key Encryption, Cryptographic Hashes like MD5 and SHA-1 (now 1000 times weaker!!), Digital Signatures, etc.
FSM = Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle Multimedia
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
So why self-censor?
because they are breaking german law if they don't
The situation is kind of reversed. While there is no problem with nudity (even full frontal nudity in prime-time television), violence is frowned upon and you won't see as much of it as you can on US TV. Movies with scenes of violence get more restrictive ratings. Check out akas.imdb.com and compare the "Certification" part of movies with violence or horror.
Actually, lots of things like that are regulated.
Nazi references are but only one. The german government also censors religion (Scientology is actually forbidden by federal law), "hobbies" (references to bomb-making or other overtly 'terrorist' activites are forbidden), etc.
The German government has a general policy of "we give the people as much freedom as they show they are mature enough to handle." And, if things go awry on any front where it seems that the people are not mature enough to handle freedom, the government steps in and regulates things.
Incidentally, this same principle is how they handle antitrust cases. Go back and look at the history of T-Mobile(T-Online) and see how it was federally regulated to control its actions to prevent destructive monopoly.
So, no, the OP was wrong -- Nazi symbols in and of themselves are *not* perfectly legal, even for purely educational purposes. The only place where students could get their hands on the appropriate materials in order to write a school paper or such would be in specially regulated and protected collections inside libraries.
[move
In some states, you are not allowed to view certain pornography.
Um, no. In certain states you can't purchase or sell certain pornography. You are allowed to own and view it though.
Even cryptography is restricted by the government, making the European version of putty.exe (SSH client) illegal in the United States.
Err, wrong again. Its the export of strong crypto that is restricted. You can use strong crypto without exporting it all you want.
Only on slashdot could the parent be modded insightful with clearly incorrect information.
I don't know if annotated copies for scholary use were an exception or if they were produced under fair use.
Stephan
Google does that based on your IP, yes. However, there is a link to the english version at the bottom of the page, and going to http://www.google.com/intl/en/ will always get you the english version, too.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
http://google.com/ncr is what you need.
(NoCountryRedirect) - takes you to 'real' google.com
http://milkshake.dexy.org
The german government also censors religion (Scientology is actually forbidden by federal law)
Just 2 weeks ago I had a scientology flyer in my mailbox (the 'real' one, not the 'virtual' one) inviting me to come to the local scientology center and see a scientology movie. Would be pretty bold if they actually would be forbidden. There are partys who want that, but it hasn't happened yet, apparently.
Scientology is not recognized as a religion/church in Germany, which means they don't fall under the special tax regulations like other churches. Also, AFAIK the German state does not employ people who are member of Scientology, claiming that it is part of Scientologies strategy to infiltrate society.
Nazi symbols in and of themselves are *not* perfectly legal, even for purely educational purposes.
I bet you can go in any reasonably sized book shop in Germany and you will find plenty of books containing all the Nazi symbols you want. Your assertion that you have to go to "specially regulated and protected collections" in libraries to get books about national socialism is wrong.
Google still knows where you are and applies all local restrictions. German users do not get adsense ads with searches for certain porn related keywords, for example.
Since I see a lot of misunderstanding in your and many other comments further down: It has to be made clear that the german law forbids the glorification of the third reich and/or the denial of its crimes. This is not the same as informing about the true history. In fact, every german pupil has to study german history between 1933 and 45 at the very least once in his school life (if you're on A-levels, it's at at least three different times). There's no single day of the year and no single newspaper without some (minor or major) article related to this period of our history, nearly every village has some sort of memorial for the victims of racism and fascism in among its community and everybody has to deal with his or her own personal story under the dictatorship (i.e. the one of his ancestors, most people are to young nowadays to have lived back then, of course). It is wrong to assume that Germans just don't talk about history or that the german state would try to hide it (like, e.g., the spanish government does with the history of the Franco dictatorship or the US Government does with the history of the native americans).
The search engines are just going to block contents from extremist sites. What happens to you in the states, if you try to read an Al-Quaida Site from within a public library?
Regarding the forced Prostitute thing, I invite you to check out snopes: http://www.snopes.com/media/notnews/brothel.asp It's BS.
The "founding fathers&mothers" did not install the Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Schriften. Neither did they install the Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle Multimedia-Diensteanbieter. Instead, they wrote a constitution which in article 5 plainly says "(1) Everybody has the right to [...] unhindered access to information from commonly available sources [...] Censorship does not happen". These are the actual words of the German constitution (modulo my rough translation)
Much like in the USA (where there are numerous Supreme Court decisions on the subject), the government may restrict this right under very specific circumstances. Again, article 5: "(2) These rights are limited by the general legislation, the laws for protection of the youth and the right of personal honor."
The personal honor provision allows the government to outlaw libel, the youth protection clause allows it to restrict access to adult material. Note that there is no Nazi speech clause there (as would be expected if your statements were true). In fact, i doubt that the ominous "general legislation" clause in paragraph (2) covers the banning of swastikas and such, but since no Nazi has ever tried to challenge this at Germany's Bundesverfassungsgericht, we have yet to find out.
The disturbing trend behind the recent attempts to declare unwanted information illegal is that we seem to think that bad things will go away if we don't talk about them. They won't.
And the Weimar Republic did not die because Nazis were allowed to speak. It died because there weren't enough Democrats around to answer them.
People are wrong, are idiots, and ignore facts all the time...why is this form of idiocy that harms no one, against the law? Just being offensive to someone, doesn't mean they are being harmed.
I can understand that the German take on 'free speech', or rather the limitations of it, is debatable (although in Germany it is seldom a matter of debate, and this is surely not due to lack of freedom of speech...).
I think to understand the German position one really has to see where we are coming from. The laws were introduced after WWII in Germany when the feeling was that democracy has to be defended, and that counting on the intelligence of the majority alone probably does not work. After all the "idiots" just brainwashed a lot of people (enough to establish a "stable dictatorship", anyway), and this caused a lot of harm. Of course, the society in the Weimar Republic was quite different from what it is today. Democratic traditions were quite weak, and there were some gripes that just asked to be exploited (Versailles treaty...).
In any case, I think given that experience it was seen as worth the sacrifice to render racist and anti-democratic propaganda illegal. I know that many people especially in the US don't agree with that view, but in Germany the general public agrees. Right now there is discussion about more restrictions on having to allow right wing extremists demonstrate close to "sensitive" areas like holocaust memorials, Jewish facilities or national monuments. Many Germans rather want more power to the state against extremist organisations than having images of neonazis demonstrating in front of the national holocaust memorial in Berlin being broadcasted around the world.