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Germany Institutes Censorship Infrastructure

Posted by samzenpus on from the not-for-your-eyes dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Germany's government has passed a draft law for censorship of domains hosting content related to child pornography. A secret list of IPs will be created by the BKA, Germany's federal police; any attempted access to addresses on this list is blocked, logged (the draft seems to contradict press reports on this point) and redirected to a government page featuring a large stop sign. The law has not yet passed the assembly, however five of the largest ISPs have already agreed to voluntarily submit to the process even without a law in place. Critics argue that with the censorship infrastructure in place, the barrier for blocking access for various other reasons is very low. The fact that the current block can easily be circumvented may lead to more effective technologies to be used in the future. There are general elections as well as elections in several of the states later this year."

9 of 235 comments (clear)

  1. Inc. China by Manip · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Step 1) Child Porn
    2) Other "Offensive" Material (e.g. Nazi Material)
    3) ???
    4) Welcome to the great firewall

    1. Re:Inc. China by Manip · · Score: 4, Insightful

      In other countries it has led to exactly that.

    2. Re:Inc. China by spankyofoz · · Score: 5, Insightful

      But look at what ended up on our blacklist here in Australia (it's also on wikileaks). It too was set up to counter the scourge of child porn.

      But we ended up with blocked sites containing
      euthanasia
      abortion
      malware
      online gambling

      It's not much of a stretch to see other politically sensitive topics being blocked.

      --

      - There is no point, it's like a sphere -
    3. Re:Inc. China by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      it hasn't been extended in any degree to include anything other than what has been deemed as child porn.

      It's impossible to know that.

    4. Re:Inc. China by tommyhj · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Problem is that the list is SECRET, and the selecting of offensive sites isn't up for discussion. You have no way of controlling the censorship.

  2. Re:/facepalm by rolfwind · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Whats with all the governments jumping on the censorship bandwagon? I for one do not welcome our new censoring overlords

    Governments always want to subdue and control. They see lack of control as the problem. Citing childporn/hatespeech/_______ is but a means to an end.

  3. Don't worry by El_Muerte_TDS · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It will only be used to block sites with child porn

    and terrorism sites

    and sites with info on building bombs

    and "pro-ana" sites

    and bestiality sites

    and sites critical of the government

    and copyright violating sites

    and sites with violent images

    and sites with malware

    and porn sites

    and sites with content that is considered to be offensive by some

    and ...
    ok, maybe you should worry

  4. What is it they say about systems and entropy? by msimm · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Systems (political systems), because they're created by man are inherently corruptible (thanks to that man is not perfect dictum). Which is why in the US for instance the old conservatives used to argue for small government, and the founders tried to limit the federal government.

    --
    Quack, quack.
  5. Re:Hiccup in logic. by MrMista_B · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This has as much to do with child porn as WMD's had to do with the American invasion of Iraq.

    I'd say that's a pretty damn accurate way to put it.