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."

Comments

From?

[digidave]

"a user's search results are stripped from such items"

So... it only returns the illegal matches?

Re:From?

[mcleodnine]

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.

America

[kjd88]

I love the non-restrictive US.

Re:America

[Anonymous Coward]

...where you can get fined for saying "fuck" on public radio. Was your post irony or hypocrisy?

Re:America

[Ancil]

Even cryptography is restricted by the government, making the European version of putty.exe (SSH client) illegal in the United States.

What a shame -- I have mod points, but there doesn't seem to be a "-1 Completely Wrong" option. I'll just have to reply.

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.

Re:America

[JavaLord]

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.

Re:America

[cayenne8]

" Germany censors nazi stuff, cant argue with that i guess, they are pretty sensitive to that stuff for a good reason. "

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.

.de

[MP3Chuck]

What's stopping someone in Germany from just going to Google.com instead of Google.de? Would they not then get uncensored results?

Re:.de

[Captain Scurvy]

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.

Re:.de

[fiddlesticks]

http://google.com/ncr is what you need.

(NoCountryRedirect) - takes you to 'real' google.com

Illegal in Germany

[Strange Ranger]

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.

And as always msn is a shining example

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

Re:Bad move

[Corporate Drone]

But the deal is, the search results are already illegal, so returning them to the user is itself illegal!

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...

Define "crime"

[FreeUser]

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.

Re:EU Constitution and Free Speech?

[Elektroschock]

The EU constitution DRAFT is a piece of crap and a real danger to democracy. It even specifies the goals of state policy as in cuba and regulates what European Parties have to stand for. Most European politicians support it because it provides an improvement of the state of the Union. However this draft is not meant for eternity and I reject it as there are so many flaws. In the European Union currently a "Safer Internet" program is run by DG InfoSoc. In Italy politicians put forward a "self-regulatory" framework as a hosted in the national administration with a government majority.

See: http://www.eifonline.org/site_16/fil/fil_35.doc

four members representing the Adherents designated by the Associations that have signed the current Code;

- two members, one of whom will act as President and represent the Ministry of Communications, and two representing the Presidency of the Council of the Ministers, and specifically the Department for Innovation and Technology;

- three members designated by Associations for the safeguarding of minors and by the National Council for Users.

These will be chosen from the participants in the working-group Internet@minori, which has been set up at the Ministry of Communications.

The Ministry of Communications provides the Secretariat to support the activities of the Committee.

Italian Parliament is not in charge, it is a private law agreement between Italy and the Internet providers and enforced via private law.

Re:Sorry

[fforw]

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.

First of all .. what about things like Janet Jacksons Nipple "accident"? Why was there such an outrage over the display of a body part common to half of the population? Where was any harm done? Why did the broadcasting station have to pay a fine? How is that different from banning certain HTML and GIFs?

There's a different view on what is acceptable in Europe and the USA. Europeans ban violence, the USA ban nudity and sex.

In Germany there's also an historical aspect to this. After the horrible things which were done by germans from 1933-1945 I find it very understandable that we have laws banning anyone to say it was cool murdering all those people or that it never happened. And somehow it is even expected from Germany to act this way. Every nation has it's radicals and idiots. But when our local idiots march again there's an outcry in the press in e.g. France or Israel : "Look, it's happening again!".

Reminds me of Family Guy

[hsmith]

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!

This is a bad thing.

[Husgaard]

Censorship is never good, and this looks to be nothing than "voluntary" censorship.

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.

Violence is in Germany what nudity is to the US

[harmonica]

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.

Learning from the Weimar Republic

[eMago]

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

Re:Darn...no more Hitler pics

[Stephan Schulz]

Like Mein Kampf -- you will have problems googling the full text of this.

That is a quite different issue. Mein Kampf is still under copyright. The copyright was seized by the Allies after the war, and transferred (with other seized assets) to the state of Bavaria when the Federal Republic of Germany was founded (Hitler was legally registered in Munich, the capital of Bavaria). Bavaria, as the copyright holder, does not allow the production of new copies. It is a matter of civil, not criminal law. As soon as the copyright expires (should be 2015, unless we get a new extension), it will be possible to reprint the book - or publish it online.

I don't know if annotated copies for scholary use were an exception or if they were produced under fair use.