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."
"a user's search results are stripped from such items"
So... it only returns the illegal matches?
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
I love the non-restrictive US.
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?
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?
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?
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...
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.
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...
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
Just use an anonymous web proxy....
Seems like yet another foiled attempt to legislate the Internet!
http://www.reeb.freeserve.co.uk
Brian: Yeah, uh, about your pamphlet, uh, I'm not seeing anything about German history between 1939 and 1945. There's just a big gap.
German Tour Guide: Everyone was on vacation! On your left is Munich's first city hall erected in 15--
Brian: Wait, wait. What are you talking about? Germany invaded Poland in 1939 and--
German Tour Guide: We were invited! Punch was served!
Brian: You can't just ignore those years. Thomas Mann fled to America because of Nazism's stranglehold on Germany.
German Tour Guide: Nope. Nope. He left to manage a Dairy Queen.
Brian: A Dairy Queen? That's preposterous.
German Tour Guide: I will hear no more insinuations about the German people! Nothing bad happened!
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.
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.
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
Tell me, has censorship of child pornography in America have a crippling effect of the democratic process? If not, why not? And why is this different?
... he hadn't been trafficking in childpr0n, nor had he been actively browsing it.
It actually is, though the effect is more subtle. Pretty much anyone browsing pr0n, of any kind, will occasionally stumble across child pr0n. Many people receive offensive SPAM, some of it containing childpr0n. Technically, as long as the browser cache or mailspool retains these images, a person is guilty of possessing child pornography. They usually don't even know it, not knowing how browser caches work, or perhaps not having read their email or deleted their SPAM yet.
The FBI uses this to selectively destroy people's lives, including in one case a pornographer who had absolutely nothing to do with child pornography, but who did traffic in legal pornography within his rights (as reaffirmed by the US supreme court in Flynt). In his case, there was one image of a girl under 17 in his browser cache
Nevertheless, he was arrested, convicted, and had his life destroyed.
There are better ways of dealing with child pr0n. One example: define it as "evidence of a crime" (it is, after all, pictorial evidence that a child has been harmed), confiscate it as such (and even include fines/jailtime for failing to inform the authorities of said crime). You get the same effect as banning it outright, without the need to begin creating an entire class of "illegal" data the mere possession of which leads to ruination, whether or not you knew you had it.
I won't bother to go into cases where the police or third parties have planeted "evidence," including one case where the Church of Scientology did so in order to shutdown funet.fi's anonymous service and destroy those who exposed some of that cult's internal documents, but suffice it to say they abound.
Banning speech, even terrible speech, not only doesn't work, it generally has much worse, often unintended consiquences. Furthermore, a little creative thought will generally reveal a more effective approach to dealing with the probel that doesn't require an erosion of civil liberties or fundamental rights (depending on which your particular society defines "freedom of speech" defines it to be).
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
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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