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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."
So that means no more Hitler...or anything remotely linked to WWII...i feel bad for the German student writing the book report about WWII's causes...that's gonna be pretty odd...
Have you seen the arrow?
Isn't part of the EU constitution a bit about free speech?
How does that affect these national laws which prevent us from expressing hate openly?
While this is only my first post here, I still happen to think that it's smart of them to regulate themselves instead of having the government come in and do it. Censorship (self-imposted or otherwise) sucks any way you slice it, true, but at least if it's self-imposed they will be able to ease or lift it entirely once the political climate improves. Much the same way that the comic book industry censored themselves, and then eased the the enforcement of their standards when adult comics such as the vertigo line became popular.
"Your admirers in the street
Got to hoot and stamp their feet
in the heat from your physique" -King Crimson
Yes...but .de is in a language they know. .com may not be...and, for those who don't know how to use preferences to switch Google to l33t/german, aka the common man, .de would just be more convenient...and would show results in German
Have you seen the arrow?
When I was in Canada last, I noticed google automatically redirected you to Google.ca, presumably based on my ISP. That being said, I didn't care enough at the time to try to get around it, so google.com may have been perfectly available.
OK, I'm replying to my own post, but:
:)
"Forbidden in Germany and restricting the freedom of speech are child pornography,
Agreed.
right wing extremist "hate" sites
Not so much. Not a big fan of the state deciding what's hate and what isn't.
incitement to commit crimes
But crimes are fun.
race discrimination
I might not like it, but..
treasonable conduct as an agent for sabotage purposes
Do they have that many websites advocating the theft of German state secrets?
glorification of violence
NFL.com: outlawed.
or offence against the law for the protection of the youth.
Protect your own kids. You don't need to ban content, you just need to CHOOSE NOT TO VIEW IT.
How about "Self-censoring"?
Propaganda and hate speech are kind of like the flu -- if you are exposed to different forms of it (and assuming it doesn't kill you) your immune system becomes stronger. This is the equivalent of putting a baby in a bubble and expecting them to grow up healthy.
That's why the answer to free speech is always more free speech, not censorship.
- I am a german, but I am not a nazi. I belive in a democracy and don't want to change that.
I am not for censorship
The neonazis say "Die Nazis haben nie Gaskammern gebaut, alles eine Lüge" (Translation: "The nazis never built gas chambers, that's a lie!"
If you use google.de, you will get the "censored" results. For example links to informations/documetation websites that explain why this was a bad period in german history....
I think there will be no links to any websites of Garry Lauck"
If you use google.com you will get "the american version" of the results.
My opinion is that you can not surpress other "beliefs" but you can inform that these beliefs are bad or caused people to behave barbarous against other people.
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
Sigh. Here we go again: stuff is banned in Germany! How horrible, censorship etc.
Good ole' U.S. of A., where there is no censorship whatsoever, yada yada
Ok, here is a newsflash:
There is far more censorship in the USA than in Germany. You call it differently, and nobody minds if a corporation does it, but it is far, far worse than what I have ever seen in Germany.
In Germany, there is a federal agency that determines if certain media is inappropriate for children and youths. It compiles an index, and media on that index cannot be advertised for, or the sale in stores is forbidden.
That doesn't make that material "illegal". Nobody sends SWAT teams after your original copy of "Mein Kampf", you can even trade it, as well as pictures of Adolf Hitler, just don't sell it together with a homemade poster "Let's kill all jews!" That would be inciting violence, which is prohibited by different laws.
Putting an item on the "index" list sometimes creates more publicity and demand than it deserves. I remember a song by the punk-rock band "Die Aerzte" about sex with dogs "Claudia hat 'nen Schaeferhund" which was prohibited from being advertised. Because of that it got so much publicity in newspaper articles, that everybody could just go to the store and directly ask for it, which made the advertisement ban moot.
In German TV-shows, you will never hear the classic north American "beep", or edited out scenes like when they removed the literal "shit hitting the fan" from the movie "Airplane".
> 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
That's definitely not what German laws against Nazi propaganda try to do. 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. In fact, even outright Nazi propaganda pieces like the movie "Jud Süß" can be shown if it's done in a proper context, like a history exhibition. My 10th grade history textbook quoted passages from "Mein Kampf"... quite effectively showing what a paranoid nutjob Hitler was.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
I think he tried to eliminate only the Gypsies and the Jews (the other peoples we supposed to live as slaves of 'arian', German people). He killed more Jews than Gypsies only because the Jews happened to be more numerous than the Gypsies in Central Europe.
A strange thing, Gypsies are from North India and Pakistan, most anthropologists and historians agree that they are 'arian'(Jews are semitic, not arian). Then why did Hitler hate the Gypsies?
Yes. According to Riane Eisler, this is because the US has a "blade" culture and Europe has a "Chalice" culture.
What's with abortion being a right-wing thing? Now, I know that because USians only have two real political parties, it's hard for them to understand that they don't necessarily represent two extremes of the political spectrum, but just because the generally more right-wing of the two US parties houses most of the anti-abortionists doesn't make being pro-life a "right wing" idea.
Throwing out economics completely, and just looking at social issues, there are people who want to control my life (anti-abortion, anti-euthanasia, anti-gun, anti-meat eating, anti-gay etc.) and people that want to let me make my own choices (pro-choice, legal euthanasia, pro-2nd amendment, OK about eating meat and pro-gay rights). One thing that you will notice from my list is that about half of the things are things that "right-wing" people want to control, and half are things that "left-wing" people want to control.
Huh? My responses were:
Good
Bad
Bad
Bad
Bad
Bad.
Anytime I used the word 'Fine' (except when it applied to kiddie pron...I followed it up with a reason that it may look fine on the surface but it could be repressing important freedoms. My whole point was on the surface these things are worded to sound ok and many will not oppose them but lead to oppression and may have an effect that the Germans aren't looking for.
If you're about freedom of speech none of it is "fine" including that ever so easily demonized first entry.
Posting pictures of abused children isn't 'speech' or 'freedom of speech'. If someone wants to post a NAMBLA rant that is fine too, let them tell the world how fucked up they are. Like I mentioned in another post, giving wackos freedom of speech is like giving them the rope to hang themselves with.
Cowardice and hypocrisy
Just because you don't agree with my opinions doesn't mean you have to resort to name calling, bitch ass. (Now that was hypocrisy)