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."

Comments

Re:Before we use the 'police state' meme again...

[sesshomaru]

We tend to forget here on /. that not everyone values freedom of the net like we do.

Indeed, Germany is famous for not valuing freedom like we do. Of course, the last time they "didn't value freedom like we do" well that didn't work out so well for us, or France, or Belgium, or England, or Poland....

I'm just saying...

I'm sure back in Weimar Germany, no one thought that censoring the ending of Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was a precursor to the Third Reich but that's the way things turned out...

Look, if I were a German citizen, I'd probably be extra-hyper-vigilant about authoritarian tendencies.. you know, what with two world wars and the lovely example of The Third Reich and later East Germany before me. But that's just me.

I'll say it's none of my business until they move into the Sudetenland, however.