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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."

12 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 Cally · · Score: 4, Funny

      China has a police force. My country has a police force. ZOMG!!!! fascist communistic dictatorship prepares to seize power and enslave us in their siberian lard mines!!!

      And anyway, when climate change kicks in and the world descends into every-nation-for-itself anarchy, we're gonna need some form of authoritarian state power to enforce conscription into the armies needed to fight off the starving hordes massing on various national borders.

      --
      "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
  2. Re:RickRoll Germany by EdIII · · Score: 5, Funny

    huge percentage of Germans will be found out as perverts.

    huge percentage of German will be confirmed to be perverts.

    There fixed it for you.

    I'm not trolling here either :) German porn is legendary . Can make you hard and sick at the same time :)

  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. Re:STOP (Your IP has just been logged) by dafdaf · · Score: 4, Informative

    Which is plain wrong. - As the current law even states that of course the IP will be logged ! (The initial proposition of ~1 week ago didn't include that. They quickly 'fixed' that one. ;-)

    --
    To error is human, to forgive, beyond the scope of the OS.
  5. Miserable failure in Finland by grimJester · · Score: 5, Informative

    Assuming the site still exists, here's a site explaining what's wrong with the finnish version of this list. I can't check the link for reasons that should be obvious.

    Short list of problems:
    - 98+% false positives, including the top 7 or 8 google hits for "gay porn"
    - Majority of sites are in the EU or US, yet the sites are still up
    - The law only allows non-finnish sites to be on that list, yet a finnish site critical of the list is blocked.

  6. massive criticism by Tom · · Score: 4, Informative

    There is massive criticism against this within Germany.

    Pretty much everyone who knows anything is against it, this includes both the people who know something about the technical details (i.e. IT people) as well as those who know something about child pornography, and even people who were abused as kids.

    The summary of the criticism is:

    • This will do nothing to stop child porn
    • It is extremely easy to avoid (it's just a DNS block, use a different DNS and you're good)
    • They block site instead of prosecuting them, including sites that are known to be in Germany
    • It's just a cheap show in election year
    • Sites linking to blocked sites will be blocked as well, which means sites like wikileaks. Since the blocklist is secret, you'll never know when you just put yourself on the list.
    --
    Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
  7. Re:RickRoll Germany by dunkelfalke · · Score: 4, Funny

    it is also known for great dialogues:

    - So that's the power box that we've been having problems with, if you could take a look...
    - Sure, but why is this straw lying around here?"
    - Hm, and why are you wearing a mask?
    - Hmmm... well, give me a blowjob then.

    --
    "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
  8. 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.