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."
What's stopping someone in Germany from just going to Google.com instead of Google.de? Would they not then get uncensored results?
Who doesn't like free music?
...where you can get fined for saying "fuck" on public radio. Was your post irony or hypocrisy?
One thing listed was " glorification of violence".
Wouldn't that mean web sites and game servers for half the games out there could be considered illegal?
Reasonable laws quickly become unreasonable when they're written too vaguely.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
MSN already banned searches for "Adolf Hitler" from it's German search engine, which does of course make a lot of sense, as only Neo-Nazi scum would search for something like this.
People like me who are interested in history would never entertain even the thought to search for "Adolf Hitler" or "Holocaust" on the web.
After all we might stumble on sites like this:
http://www.holocaust-history.org/
Now wouldn't that be terrible...
Non restrictive? 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.
Mod me down if you want, but I never got how a progressive society in any form could censor content. Now, I understand the historical contexts here, and I understand how the good 'ol USA has in some senses (or at least, in some peoples' eyes) has become a stomping ground for hate groups since nobody else will take them.. but I never got the point of "you can't post that opinion" or "that image, hurting nobody, is banned". I also understand that here in the US we have plenty of laws outlawing things which hurt nobody.. but HTML and GIFs?
Perhaps somebody from the European states could enlighten me.
Read the headline. Self-Regulating. This is no different from how the U.S. media operates. Self regulation to avoid content deemed objectionable is the norm in the States.
Guess how many times the GoDaddy commercial was supposed to play during the SuperBowl?
so, the search engine folks have the choice of self-censoring, or getting slapped for breaking German law... in other words, they're already responsible for the things they link to, at least as far as "offensive speech" is concerned...
mmm... yeah... You see, we're putting the cover sheets on all TPS reports now before they go out...
The United States is not non restrictive. There are certainly restrictions. In some states, you are not allowed to view certain pornography. Even cryptography is restricted by the government, making the European version of putty.exe (SSH client) illegal in the United States.
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Seems fair to me. I'm all for free speech, but not when it entices crime.
Define "crime."
Speeding is a crime. In many parts of the United States, for example, exceeding 65 MPH is a crime, and on most urban expressways, exceeding 55 MPH is a crime.
The song "I can't drive 55" (1980s crapola music, but nevertheless) arguably incites one to commit a crime. Under the law you just cited, that would be censorable material.
As would many discussions here on slashdot in opposition to existing copyright law, patent law, and in support of many peer-to-peer networking technologies.
I can understand why Germany finnds such speech annoying and offensive, but censorship isn't the answer, and I'm afraid Europe (and perhaps most of the western world) is about to get a lesson in just how bad an idea censorship, even of offensive material, really is, and exactly how much worse such a cure is than the disease it's intended to address.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
What's the difference between PC users and a newborn baby? PC users don't smile when you spoon-feed them. WTF is wrong with the governments today? Do they need to have "we know better" written on everything they do? Matter of fact I'm pretty sure they don't. Or do they think I'd be happy to see Bamby rabbits when searching for "Hitlerjugend"? BTW - does searching for such a thing automatically make me a pro-nazi?
Just use an anonymous web proxy....
Seems like yet another foiled attempt to legislate the Internet!
http://www.reeb.freeserve.co.uk
Forbidden in Germany and restricting the freedom of speech are..., glorification of violence, ...
They don't have video games or action movies in Germany?
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
Ah, so you filter content without a chance to really test to see if the content is illegal (like in court), and the decisions as to what is legal and illegal content is done by someone other than a judge.
I like this new model. With the AU law requiring ISPs to report instances of child pornography (and no mention of liability if the ISP happens to be mistaken), the trend seems to be making everyone an unpaid law enforcement officer, especially when they are not accountable in any way whatsoever.
Gosh, when companies take the law into their own hands... what do you call that?
The issue of what content is illegal, and whether it should be or not, is a separate one. The government is the one that's making the content rules, the search providers are just responding -- and doing so by forming a group because it probably makes technical and economic sense. The fact that they are forming a group has no real news in itself: presumably they were already having to supress the content, now they are just working together to lower their pain levels.
I tried to think of any negative consequences, and only that the group could get into trouble if they acted as a cartel and exchanged price or operating sensitive information, or worked together to filter out foreign competitors or foreign content. Cartel behaviour is a well known phenomena, and easily possibly in the realm of search and information rather than products and prices.
If the content filtered out from the search results is really illegal, the authorities should go after those who put the contents online.
And if the german authorities cannot stop the contents because it is located in other contries, this kind of censorship is no better than the censorship done by countries like Iran and China. The only difference is that it is called "voluntary". Please note that Germany has a history of banning both extreme rigth-wing and extreme left-wing political speech.
The internet isn't censored in America, nor is satalite based radio.
Two words: child pornography.
People should be free to say and do what they want as long as they are not infringing on the rights of others.
Denying the holocaust is considered infringing on the right of the remaining jewish community.
...where you can get fined for saying "fuck" on public radio. Was your post irony or hypocrisy?
Restricting public radio is different than restricting the internet. If you want to hear a show with the word 'fuck' there are privatly owned radio solutions. What value does the word 'fuck' add to anything anyway?
Lets take a look at what Germany is censoring. From the Article:
child pornography,
Good
right wing extremist "hate" sites,
Why not censor left wing extremist "hate" sites? Then again, we don't want Germany to ban Slashdot.
incitement to commit crimes,
That is fine in theory, but sometimes civil disobedence is needed to protest an unjust law.
race discrimination,
Fine, but I'd rather these views be made in public than secretly.
treasonable conduct as an agent for sabotage purposes
Fine. But what exactly is considered treason?
glorification of violence, or offence against the law for the protection of the youth.
Glorification of violence? They will have to ban half the stuff on the net, and most of the games.
What's going to happen? How's the censorship boogeyman going to bite us in the ass?
... though hopefully not.
You sound remarkably like a troll, or a young teenager still so wrapped up in your own cultural bigotry and ethnocentrism that you believe yourself and your society to be above learning from anyone else in the world. As a citizen of a country whose president has the latter character trait, such characteristics are rather easy to identify.
To address your point, lest someone innocent reading this actually buy into your "nothing can happen, prove otherwise! Failure to prove otherwise proves it will never happen and anyone who suggests otherwise is an ass!" tripe:
Define A as illegal (may be a misdemeaner, may be a felony, or EU equivelent) (e.g. copyright violation).
Define B is inciting A. E.g. Criticizing copyright is an implicit incitement to commit copyright violation, which is a crime.
Apply law banning "incitement to commit a crime." E.g. "You may not critizie copyright, because to do so incites people to violate copyright, which is a crime."
No reform is possible, as no one may speak out against the existing law.
Apply this to pretty much any law the current powerholders have a vested interest in maintaining, irrespective of the public interests. Software patents might be a good example in another couple of years
Frankly, if Germans in particular, and Europeans in general, are unable to grasp this, you have a whole world of political hurt coming your way.
This ins't to defend the American idiocy of the last half decade in any respect. We have plenty of hurt coming our way, as a natural consiquence of our own stupidity. That, however, doesn't immunize Europe against the consiquences of its own failings as well, or legitimize the bigoted notion that because a non-European made an observation about the implications of a European law, it has no value.
How? What's the lesson we're going to learn, and who's going to teach it to us?
You're going to teach it to yourselves. Just as you did the lessons of world war II. Like any society, you'll probably come out of it in the end in one of two states: 1) with an extended period of darkness (e.g. the "dark ages", where it took more than a millenium to learn the lessons of dictatorship vs. democracy that the fall of the Roman Empire [shouhd have] taught) or 2) with a potent, unforgettable lesson in the crippling effects censorship almost invariably has on the democratic process.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
One of the great benefits to society of free speech is it makes it easy to spot the idiots.
If someone's a racist asshole, better for all involved for him to be openly proclaiming his assholishness on a street corner for all to hear than for him to be keeping it to himself in his basement. In either case, his actions will be informed by his racism, but in the former case, that fact is obvious.
Denying the holocaust is considered infringing on the right of the remaining jewish community.
Why? It's a crackpot opinion and I'd rather have those denying it stating it in public than in the shadows. It's simply a free speech issue, let people deny the holocaust it's the same as people who come online and try to say 2+2 = 5 or that Planet X is coming to kill us.
Denying the holocaust isn't hurting anyone, it's just like the moron professor who is running around saying that the people in the twin towers got what they deserved. It's insenitive, stupid, and detached from reality. But by giving these people freedom of speech you are giving them the rope to hang themselves with.
Why you can still argue if the German law is a good or a bad thing in that case, most ranting slashdotters should think about the reason why the founding fathers&mothers of the Federal Republic of Germany installed this law in 1948/49.
It was because they were still under the impression of the horrifing death the Weimar Republic experienced in the late 1920 and early 1930, leading to the birth of the 3. Reich.
Nazis came to power because of their demagogic methods, what is called "Volksverhetzung" (special form of sedition) today and the Communists paroles of that time werent much better only on the opposite side of the political spectrum.
Critical, sensitive, rational thinking didnt reach the masses (voters) at that time. And the founding fathers feared that the masses could be blinded again.
So like USA citizens see it as an important right to own weapons because of their history and people of other nations might think it is strange, Germans might see it as important to censor Volksverhetzung in any kind because of their own history.
Keep that in mind.
For all who want to know more about the background of the dying Weimar Republic this book is perhaps the best:
Sebastian Haffner -- Defying Hitler: A Memoir
--- censored
Knowledge should never ever be censored.
Never.
Bending over for absurd rules only perpetuates them, and the tyrants that make them..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Searching is not a crime. Period.
Hosting and posting illegal content is (at least in some countries)
Trimming search input in the hopes of curbing "hate crimes" and pr0n is a dangerous precedent. I'd wager that policies like this make it easier to propagate 'revisionist' history.
one better than mcleodeight
> right wing extremist "hate" sites
>Why not censor left wing extremist "hate" sites?
Remember that whole deal Germany had with that, far-right government that um, sort of tried to take over the world and eliminate non-Germanic peoples from the face of the Earth?
That might have something to do with their singling out of the extreme right.
I dunno. I'm not for nazi ideals nor what they stood for, however, they ARE a part of history, a big part of Germany's history. Isn't it often said, those that don't learn from the past are destined to repeat it? Well, if you try to completely eradicate parts of the past, and censor it into oblivion, then how can future generations learn from it to avoid it?
Same with racial topics....even in the US we deal with this (though not governmentally regulated yet). Movies like Song of the South, by Disney never see the light of day. Sure, they have racial stereotypes from the past, that are not the norm today, however, it IS a picture of history of many ideals held in the past not only when the movie was made, but, of the time period it portrayed. People need to see this, to understand where and why things are the way they are today. The old Disney and Bugs Bunny cartoons of the WWII era...mostly propaganda, with caricatures of Japanese and Germans in them...totally gone from TV (I remember seeing them in the afternoons after school, and I'm not THAT old)...this is history.
While you may not agree with the way people thought and acted in the past, it is important NOT to whitewash history, and re-write it, less it be forgotten, and have a future generation hit upon these old ideas as new ones...and have them possibly start up anew in ways to destroy any progress we have made over the years.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Yeah. It's much better to live in a country where exposed nipples cause national scandals and where cartoon characters like Spongebob are accused of promoting the "gay agenda" (whatever *that* is).
Not to mention a country where people get interrogated by the Secret Service for saying (quote) "Bush is out of control" in Internet chatrooms (look it up, it happened!) and similar things...
I don't want to defend what's happening there in Germany, really, but sometimes, it's good to remember that nobody's perfect, and that just because a country's constitution talks about free speech, it doesn't actually mean that everything's fine and dandy.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Remember that whole deal Germany had with that, far-right government that um, sort of tried to take over the world and eliminate non-Germanic peoples from the face of the Earth?
Remember that whole deal Russia had around the same time, with that far-left government run by Stalin who killed more people than Hitler did?
As for Hitler being to the 'far right' and people comparing him to people on the Right today, he had many views that are embraced by the left. It wasn't called 'National socialism for no reason. Hitler was for Abortion, censorship, euthanasia, gun control, and vegetarianism. He also hated capitalism and free markets. Sounds more left than right to me.
Despite his stances on issues, it is a bit silly to try to associate hitler with the left or the right. He was simply a nutjob.
Not that I'm arguing in favour of it, but try owning and viewing child pornography.
Also, the export limitation died years ago.
The political compass actually does a much better job of categorising politicians than than left/right can possibly manage.
But, as I've read about it...it is difficult to find a book store freely selling copies of Mein Kampf....wouldn't it be better to be able to buy and read the whole thing on your own and make your own judgement based on that, rather than possibly carefully selected passages?
"You can discuss history quite freely, provided that you don't promote Nazi ideals, or claim that there was no mass-murder on Jews, etc."
And just for the sake of argument...why is it against the law to claim there was no holocaust? I think most any reasonable person can look at the evidence, and see there was one, but, why stifle the 'nut-jobs' of today...let them speak and see them for what they are...much like you saw what a nut job Hitler was from reading parts of his book?
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.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Sorry to burst your bubble, but over here in Europe Slashdot most certainly falls pretty far to the right.. bordering right wing extremist in fact.
Right/Left wing are relative measures, and not set in the ground.. Kerry would most certainly have been to extreme for our primary right-wing party here in Norway atleast (høyre).
"" How about taking the safety labels off everything, and let the stupidity-problem solve itself? """
In Soviet America, Google strips illegal content.
Lets take a look at what Germany is censoring. From the Article:
child pornography,
Good...
fine...
fine...
fine...
So you're apparently just "fine" with all sorts of censorship... why even bother to post? You said nothing at all, contributed no "insight" at all. How the fuck does this get modded "insightful?"
If you're about freedom of speech none of it is "fine" including that ever so easily demonized first entry.
Cowardice and hypocrisy.
I'd say abortion is a poor litmus test of if someone wants to control your life of not. You see, people who are pro-life believe that they are saving a life, not controling someones life. Surely, many people who are against government controls don't mind them if they directly save lives (IE: No "Yelling Fire" in a movie theater")
The other things you mentioned such as anti-meat eating, and anti-gay are much better measures of who wants to control you....and you are right both sides do (in the US).
Maybe they could make hate criminals wear some distinctive badge so everyone knows who they are, or have 're-education centers' for them. The haters could redeem themselves through work.
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SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
Absolute freedom is an illogical myth. Some freedoms must be precluded to preserve more important ones. That's why my freedom to swing my fist must end at the tip of your nose. Everybody (aside from anarchists) knows this intuitively.
Anarchists know this intuitively. Unless you're talking about "chaos and bombs" anarchists, which aren't really anarchists at all.
Anarchists are non-violent by nature because violence is an authoritave act. Any successful act of authority creates a hierarchy.
It is a commone misconception that anarchy means "do whatever the fuck you want to." It doesn't. It's not no rules, it's no authority. There would be rules in an anarchist society, the difference would be in how the rules were made, and how they were enforced.
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