Slashdot Mirror
A Black Day For Internet Freedom In Germany
Several readers including erlehmann and tmk wrote to inform us about the dawning of Internet censorship in Germany under the usual guise of protecting the children. "This week, the two big political parties ruling Germany in a coalition held the final talks on their proposed Internet censorship scheme. DNS queries for sites on a list will be given fake answers that lead to a page with a stop sign. The list itself is maintained by the German federal police (Bundeskriminalamt). A protest movement has formed over the course of the last several months, and over 130K citizens have signed a petition protesting the law. Despite this, and despite criticism from all sides, the two parties sped up the process for the law to be signed on Thursday, June 18, 2009."
We've had that in Denmark for years now. OpenDNS should be the solution to all of your problems...
Looks like it's time for Germans to learn how to browse like the Chinese; Encryption, proxies, darknets, deep web crawling, and leaving as few traces behind as possible.
For whatever naive reason I allowed myself to assume that Western Europe had finally begun to understand that police states are regressive and undesirable. Each passing day, it becomes clearer and clearer that realization has still yet to be made.
Before you get on ze net, ve neet to zee your papers. Your papers, bitte.
First, switch to Open DNS, second, vote the bastards out. Keep voting the bastards out until you get your bastards in there.
Censorship is *always* backed by the majority. Doesn't keep it from being a violation of human rights.
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
Yeah, that is exactly what Alexis de Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill warned about when they talked about the "Tyranny of the majority."
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Read TFA. This is not a 'police state' in the forming.
Indeed not. When the police can decide what you are and aren't allowed to access on the Internet, the police state is already here.
The real discouraging thing here isn't the law itself (though that'd be enough in and of itself), it's the fact that despite criticism from all sides, a huge petition, thousands of people writing their elected officials and several protests outside government buildings the law is still being passed. Hell I've even seen stickers protesting the proposed law at bus stops and train stations. The "Zensursula" stickers are everywhere around here. When your government flat out ignores these things what's left to do? Wait for the next election, elect some other party into the majority and hope they actually behave differently? Just seems like every year things get worse, no matter who's in office.
One other fun fact, the ruling parties (the CDU and SPD) have already mentioned using this blacklist for other things too, mainly gambling sites, Islamic sites and "Killerspiele" (sites that contain or promote violent games).
It all brings to mind that South Park baseball episode where Randy gets arrested, with one small difference, "Oh I'm sorry I thought this was a democracy".
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.