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Germany Legislates For Mandatory Web Filters

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the i-got-a-finger-you-can-filter dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Germany's Minister for Families has announced a legislative initiative to force ISPs to implement a government-mandated block list (in English), which will be updated daily. The BKA (Germany's equivalent of the FBI) will be in charge of generating and maintaining the list. As usual, this is being brought in under the 'fight child porn' guise. The minister is quoted as saying: 'We must not water down the problem' in reply to being challenged that this law and technology could be used to censor other content. She then went on to say: 'I can't know what wishes and plans future governments will develop.' She has agreed the principle of the legislation with the interior minister and the technology minister, which in German coalition government terms means it's pretty much a done deal."

4 of 309 comments (clear)

  1. Re:The world had its taste of freedom... by HungryHobo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It really is depressing, so many states are bringing in their own petty versions of the chinese firewall that it's getting close to critical mass where in any country where it isn't done the call will become "well they're doing it in all these other countries!They care about the children there! Protect the children!"

  2. Re:In other words... by mraudigy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Censorship for "the good of the people" will inevitably lead to "whats good for the govenment". And whats good for the government is hardly ever good for the people.

  3. Useless by scwizard · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Most chlid porn isn't distributed over http, this is a complete waste.

    --
    ~= scwizard =~
  4. *evil laughter* indeed. by Valdrax · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What's most worrisome is that the excuse is so, so bad.

    Child porn? On the open web? Really?

    I'm pretty sure at this point, anyone peddling child porn is entirely doing it through encrypted networks and through isolated darknets even. All the low-hanging fruit of publicly available actual child porn has either been dealt with or can be dealt with in a manner far, far less heavy handed than web filtering. What good does filtering the general web do?

    Crying "child porn" is just the sugar to make the poison go down.

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    If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").