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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...
Man, those Germans are worse than Nazis.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
https://www.opendns.com/
http://www.dnsserverlist.org/
MilkMiruku
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.
Not that easy circumvention of a bad law makes it okay, but as a practical measure wouldn't it be easy to just use a DNS server in a different country? Or is Germany planning on firewalling all DNS queries except those from 'official' servers?
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
Remember back a year or so, when the .alt newsgroup was taken down because something like 1% of the newsgroups in that domain had child pornography on them? You might as well have gotten rid of the whole internet because people could have found child porn there. It doesn't make sense.
I would have expected something like this "DNS blacklist" in Iran or China. But Germany??
This sounds like censorship for the sake of censorship
Are gonna start tagging "children" with gps locator tag subcutaneous inserts?
Then we start with those older folks suffering from dementia?
Then we go on next to those who committed felonies?
Finally, making it a requirement for all people who want to work, buy groceries, etc?
What's next?
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
Godwin's law on the first post? Come on give us a chance at least!
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.
All in all it's just another brick in the wall.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
The law demands no specific way of intercepting the traffic, just one that works. If DNS spoofing proves to be unable to satisfy the law, then we will see more drastic measures, like blocking or rerouting access to alternative DNS servers and transparent proxies.
Officially the proposal is pushed as a means to combat child pornography, but politicians from all involved parties have already hinted at other possible uses for the filtering infrastructure which will be installed. The parties are quick to deny any intent to allow such an extension, but there are even official press releases clearly hinting at a not-so-hidden agenda.
This thread is Godwin-proof!
Think about it:
1. it's a story about government censorship (with all the usual iron-fisted delicacy wielded by big-government)
2. it's a process that is completely non-transparent, and creates a sort of internet-secret-police
3. it's happening in Germany
It's the perfect storm of internet flamewars, completely immune to Godwin's Lawn!
In Soviet Russia jokes are formulaic and decidedly non-humorous.
We've had this in Finland for a while now, too. See http://lapsiporno.info/english-2008-02-15.html for internet activist Matti Nikki's fight against the debated censorship. OpenDNS is the de facto way to circumvent this censor list. Ironically, his site is blocked by the child porn list by our Keskusrikospoliisi (federal police).
I am convinced that I can always be convinced otherwise.
Read TFA. This is not a 'police state' in the forming. This is a decision by the government, that apparently is backed by a majority of their citizens. We tend to forget here on /. that not everyone values freedom of the net like we do. We netizens are outnumbered by well-mannered, law-abiding individuals who aren't particularly net-savvy, don't understand the social dynamics of the net, and frankly don't want to. These people hear the stories about child porn websites, they read about "HACKERS!!!" (aka black hats) conducting cyber warfare in Estonia and other government institutions, and they see the power of porn in general on the net, and they are frightened by it. To them, having government institute censorship under 'reasonable' guidelines is the norm and should be enforced because that is the system they live in. They're sheeple. They don't want to take the time to understand the true nature of the issues at stake because to them, there is no need to. They live safe, secure lives. They perceive the internet to be an unregulated, dangerous place where their children could be psychologically damaged, their finances plundered, their identities stolen, and above all else, a world that is completely outside their own. Yes, politicians are going to take this to the limit. Yes, this is a dangerous trend. In order to fight this, we have to understand the basis of this, and the basis is that we are outnumbered by people who do value security and comfort above freedom, because that is how they choose to live their lives.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
The net community did not only oppose the governments plans, but also made constructive suggestions how to deal with the problem of child pornography without introducing a censorship architecture and circumcising constitutional freedoms.
There was censorship on both sides of the wall. This is just more of the same.
http://www.dnsserverlist.org/ This site takes into account round trip time, not just the time it takes to ping a DNS server.
Wait, what? Legal brothels are okay but internet smut is a bridge too far?
People don't get it, if content needs to be delivered. It should be delivered using some other method than traditional web, which is easy to block. How about using Freenet, they just released new version. It's much much harder to block than traditional http/https. Freenet: http://freenetproject.org/ For Filesharers there is GnuNET. GnuNET: http://gnunet.org/
On German Interwebs, Government Censor You!
It makes me wonder every time I hear people are protesting by putting together a petition.
"I'm so furious... I'm going to sign my name!".
Do these things really have any effect? I picture myself being in power and being handed a stack of papers with names on them, I'd think I'd see it as trivializing the matter more than anything.
Especially considering how a lot of petitions are put together by running around in public places and grabbing random people with
"hey, you! sign your name!" "... ok, why not."
Was there a time when petitions truly were effective? Is it just the world we live in now, or have they always been this silly?
Just my two cents I guess.
What's next?
I dunno, they will probably start tagging animals once they run out of people...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
... let's see, If it were a child pornography site, then yes, I would agree with censorship. Why is it that people always assume that governments are meddling with their privacy, freedom of speech and freedom of choice when it's the same governments provide a blanket of protection? I am a 'lefty' on many issues, but when I see blind reactions against government against censorship, I tend to do some research, why not create a 'whitelist' of website, test it and see of you get blocked and believe you shouldn't, if you do, file a legal action against the government agency. If that site really shouldn't be blocked and was, then I'm pretty sure the whole legislation would eventually be scrapped.
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This sounds like censorship for the sake of censorship
You mean there is another kind?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Yeah. The last time the Germans had a government that exercised control over the press worked out so well for them.
It's the perfect storm of internet flamewars, completely immune to Godwin's Lawn!
Ignoring the other points you raised, didn't you just make it immune to Godwin's by mentioning Godwins? In effect isn't Godwin's just a case of Schodinger's cat, because you can't really discuss a thread's Godwin status in the thread without mentioning Godwin's, thus invoking the exception to the law?
Thanks for 'killing Godwin's cat', you nazi.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Without open publication of the banned lists, it is all too easy for a government or police force to blanket ban whatever it decides too, regardless of the legality.
It's easy to argue that child porn websites should be blocked, but these systems have a habit of insidious creeping scope. Next it's websites about guns. Then it is opposition party websites. Then it is foreign websites that suggest that people should have freedom and rights and liberty and power over the state.
Without checks and balances, or due process (a site can only go onto the list with judicial overview, and with specific reasons. Accidentally linking to a site that was hijacked with banned material should not count) this is a horrendously one-sided system.
...to block Internet sites in order to fight child pornography ... enabling the government to block content containing child pornography.
I don't get the outrage. Is it just because it is Germany, and stirs up memories of, "Die Papieren, bitte"? Otherwise, I don't see how this is any different than shutting down ANY illegitimate business (regardless if it is online or brick-and-mortar).
Always hope it works, but I'll be really impressed when that energy is converted into actual votes.
Todos mis movimientos están friamente calculados
... Way to take a page out of *China & Iran's* playbook there Germany!!
The second thing is, "Isn't this exactly what Hitler would have done if they had the internet in the 40's?"
There is a war going on for your mind.
Check the UK's digital Britain report released today. Under their plans to tackle file sharing they will start by sending letters.
If file sharing hasn't dropped by 70%, they're going to start blocking sites, packet shaping, etc.
It doesn't make for pleasant reading, there is absolutely no way they'll get a 70% drop in file sharing, especially not in 6 months so effectively it sounds like the government is using citizens not stopping file sharing as an excuse for a much greater censorship program by setting unrealistic targets on file sharing.
It's nice to know the Labour government is finished, but it's disturbing to know that the Tories will almost certainly follow through with this legislation and that even some of the Lib Dems support it.
Does that mean us Americans can be Smug and Snotty to Europeans again?
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I like how you're thinking...
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Please note that the e-Petition can also be signed by non-Germans. Here's a quick explanation (including Video) by the Pirate Party of Germany: http://www.piratenpartei-bayern.de/Signing_the_e-petition_for_Non-Germans As the Government's server for the petition really sucks it will most likely turn into a pile of crap, but feel free to sign as long as it's online.
By the time your laundry list would be complete, you wouldn't be able to leave. There are already internal checkpoints--flown lately? Or driven within 100 miles of the border?
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
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.
...your Democratic Republic of Germany; move along, nothing to see here.
So you're saying Internet Nazi's are becoming a REALITY?! God save the intarwebz. 0o
"I hope you know how very lucky you are to know me, because I am so incredibly incredible."
the Green Dam folks to write the DNS firewall.
Really, I don't see how this is going to work unless you firewall DNS. Then your official DNS servers are going to have to do a lot of work. Eventually businesses are going to revolt if this is causing downtime....
... no one has the intention to erect a firewall
(+1, Disagree)
in the hypothetical
its another thing to live in a country where an ideological extreme rose to power, and consumed the country (as well as kill many millions in surrounding countries)
in other words, i can completely understand germany's desire to censor naziism. it isn't some hypothetical nasty kind of speech that is forever on the periphery, like westboro baptist church. it is an ideological school of thought that rose to power and consumed the country. in other words, something genuinely threatening
not that modern germany is going to succumb to naziism again. but i can understand why a german finds some types of speech especially noxious and ripe for censorship. to them, its not just some sort of hypothetical concept, its a genuine monster that actually did horrible damage
in other words, we can all agree why westboro baptist church is evil. but we can also agree why westboro church should be allowed free speech. because its all very hypothetical and distantly removed and not threatening
but what if fred phelps rose to power and took over the country and consumed millions of lives in some retarded hate campaign? then its not so hypothetical anymore. then you might want to suppress the form of speech that allowed such a horrible tragedy to befall your country
its very easy to talk abotu this hypothetically. its not so easy when you are talking about an ideology which has drawn blood from your country
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
We just have to wait until they begin blocking anticonstitutional sites.
(+1, Disagree)
As I understand it another point for concern is a possible violation of the separation of powers.
Entries on the list are chosen and maintained by the federal police (BKA). The executive can thereby wield power that should normally be reserved to the judiciary. I am no lawyer, so please correct me if I am wrong.
However, if it is indeed true that the borders between executive and judiciary are violated in this case then a complaint of unconstitutionality (Verfassungsklage) is in order. Judging from recent verdicts of the Federal Constitutional Court my hope is, that the law will be declared unconstitutional.
"It can happen here..." In the US, that is.
Or worse, Concerned Geeks only at level 2 who have no idea what that stack even DOES.
But if I reply to you and you fire something back, some day when I've done some homework I can dig your name back up out of my email.
P.s. why does your handle add up to 17545? Or is that a bit-flip command to something?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Martial law/internal checkpoints - The last time I used Greyhound, I was accosted both boarding and exiting by Immigration. Mind you, I'm in Pennsylvania and white as can be. By the way, have you flown since 2001? I didn't think so... Did you notice how ever increasingly Coast Guard/Reserves/etc have been used for domestic policing lately, such as in Louisiana? (Remember that state militias were, unfortunately, federalized long ago.) National loyalty oaths - So many places across the country *require* school children to recite "The Pledge", or at the very least allocate time for it... Military conscription - Selective Service is still around and active. It just hasn't been utilized. Before you can get a student loan in the US, you must sign away that you're on the list, as well as some other certain things... National communications filtering - FCC yields extreme power over broadcast TV, and are trying to exercise even more over non-broadcast TV, too. The government of NY (a state, not even federal!) basically caused the death of Usenet in the US...
Off topic, but I can't for the life of me get the input to put line breaks into my posts. Do I have to use BR tags or something?
maybe now the cock-arsed moderators at wikipedia will stop deleting the 4.2.2.2 article.
Do some people still feel the EU would be better off handling ICANN instead of the US? I know not every country in Europe has taken this path, but just having one member of the EU doing something like this is a bit troubling.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
As some people tend to say "oh but police should do something against crime" or "just use OpenDNS" I would like to add some points here.
First we have to understand that this is one out of many laws over the last years (e.g. adding of biometric data and RFID chips to passports, logging all telephone/email etc. sessions for 1/2 year, allowance for shooting down hijacked plains etc.) which converted Germany into a police state again. Not so obvious or visual as in times past, but still as dangerous.
Fighting child porn is of course only a cheap argument as one can be sure that opponents can easily be labeled "child molester". Basically the same as we saw with "terrorism" in the recent past (see "patriot act" in US). Given Germany didn't have a terror attack so far, "terrorism" is not a strong enough fear factor / selling point, but "child porn" is great for building consent in order to have people enslave themselfs.
These days I often think about the famous Martin Niemoeller quote:
"In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist;
And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist;
And then they came for the Jews, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew;
And then... they came for me... And by that time there was no one left to speak up."
So at the end we are always affected - even if the first shots don't hit us directly.
Once the censorship infrastructure is in place, it is clear that it will also be used to serve the content media. Actually first politicians already acknowledge that - even before the "we do it only to protect the children" law is signed! But it will not stop there and on Wikileaks you can find filter lists of Norway for instance where you can see what stuff they censor. With the current events in Iran we also get a sense of where this can end.
The Internet is too vital for our societies to have politicians or the state mess with it!
PS: Sure OpenDNS might do the trick for the current law. But that's the wrong answer, because it basically is retreating - leaving the big pool of "non IT folks" behind. Also those loopholes will be closed over time or at least it will become suspicious / illegal. Actually that's also a "funny" part of the original version of the censorship law. The idea was that once you visit a web page which is on their list, that you will be forwarded to the state run "stop page". Hits at this "stop page" were planned to be logged and turned over to law enforcement. So in extreme cases you could think about adding a crontab entry to someone's computer ensuring the police to have him visit. Given that the only way to be safe would be to use something like OpenDNS in order to ensure to not hit the stop page. So actually you have to act like one who still wants to access the "child porn" pages in order to be sure to not be suspected of "child porn". Wired isn't it?
if there even is something like a worse and less bad part of this horrible story, anyway the worst part is in my opinion the fact that under the german law it is illigal for citizens to disclose those blocklists or parts of that blocklist.
You are apparently expected to trust them not to try anything funny if you believe that! (the gem of that story being the fact that a second instance court ruled it were even illigal to link to site which could in turn link to other "bad" sites.
There was a story about wikileaks story to that account not too long ago (the law wasnt even being passed yet, the fuss was about the australian blocklist!) now imagine/wait for this:
"blogger x" guys i found out that that brand new blocking list of our also includes political and other stuff, get a load of this!
"BKA" (kicks down door) you are not allowed to disclose stuff like that citizen! we'll confiscate your hardware as a start, cya in court!
The "elect someone else" option unfortunately doesn't work. Basically there are two big parties (CDU and SPD) and both want the same in most of the cases. So you can be sure that one of them will lead the next government and nothing really changes.
It's like if in the US there is an important issue where Democrats and Republicans agree on. If you are against their plan, what do you do? What chance is there that a third party is going to take the house or bring up the next president? Guess why Ron Paul ran for the Republicans? Because he knew that as a third party/independent he wouldn't even get on the ballets / into the big TV debates.
Just use a Proxy out of germany. It's the proxy that makes the DNS requests then, not you. And the world is full of proxies... You can also use tor.
When you read up a little on the history, views and personalities of the main politicians involved in this - Ursula von der Leyen and Wolfgang Schäuble - you find out quickly that they are both almost certainly borderline insane.
Schäuble is suffering from PTSD since that failed attack on him many years back. His medical records are kept secret.
von der Leyen is either a fanatic or crazy. The amount of disconnect from reality she displays certainly has a medical term, but I can't recall it right now. She's acting like the guy who insists on being Napoleon no matter what evidence to the contrary you come up with. You could show her a room full of scientific studies disproving each and every word she's ever said on the matter - and she wouldn't change her course one inch.
Quite frankly, these people are dangerous and criminally insane.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
And a short note sent off to the authorities that you attempted to view 'bad' knowledge. Get too many 'notices', you might earn a visit.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Patriot Act, Waterboarding, Wiretapping etc. - Europe is following, but US is still in the lead :-(
By law, everybody(!) can sign, regardless of age, nationality, place of residence, etc.
There's a step-by-step guide plus video (in English) on how to sign the petition if you don't understand German: http://www.piratenpartei-bayern.de/Signing_the_e-petition_for_Non-Germans - also some more info is on the digg article: http://digg.com/political_opinion/Official_Petition_against_German_Internet_censorship
Also, the petition system's servers suck, and the system is badly implemented. They barely sustained random link traffic, Slashdot will probably reduce it to a smouldering pile of ash. But, post away!
More information can also be found on Twitter: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=netzsperren+OR+Zensursula+-RT
The main petitioner twitters at http://twitter.com/FranziskaHeine
Petition statistics are available at http://sejmwatch.info/petition-internet-zensur.html (in German)
follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/moeffju
I wonder how hard it would be to DDOS the "stop" page so that whenever the general populace types in something objectionable, and they're redirected to the stop page, it will never load and they'll end up calling their ISP. This might cause enough cost for the firms, and general backlash that the government might back down from it.
Somewhat eye for an eye, but it doesn't sound like the government gave the general populace any chance of voting for this, and cloaked it in the old "won't somebody think of the children" excuse.
If you're interested in expressing your opinion from an international point of view you may contact the German members of the bundestag here: http://www.bundestag.de/ausschuesse/a19/mitglieder.html
The party that cowardly shied away from a real election campaign because they were afraid of the boulevard press and thus helps installing the censorship is called "SPD", Social Democratic Party.
The party that want's to install this censorship-infrastructure without judicial oversight because "Will somebody please think of the children" and of the starving artists is called CDU (Christian Democratical Union) or CSU (Christian Social Union). They eventried to ban paintball and first person shooters a few months ago.
You can find the website of the cowards and turncoats here: http://www.spd.de/start/portal/index.html
And what a FREE operating system like Linux has to do with Nazis who opposed freedom in any way?
You win the ToTD award, sir.
If you post as an AC, don't expect me to spend a mod point on you.
Thinking about my initial reply, I think a better answer to your question is that it is the wrong question to start with. We Americans and Europeans are in this together. We are loosing bits and pieces of our liberties every day. So it's not about who is looking worse today, but about how to stop this erosion and get elected politicians back into acting in our interest.
democratically elected parties, acting against the will of the citizens, without any worries.
elect a party, and for 5 years they do anything they want. until reelection.
apparently this 5 year duration is way too long. its like interim dictatorship. citizens do not matter until after 5 years.
we need to hold elections every year. so that there actually will be democracy.
Read radical news here
Did no one notice that right in the first paragraph it says "On Thursday the parliament is to vote on the *erection* of an internet censorship architecture."
Curious word choice fro blocking kiddie pr0n sites, something the Parliament is hiding?
I can understand it all right. But I sure as hell don't agree with it. And it's totally counterproductive with respect to the goals claimed for it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The petition has closed with 134.014 signatures. These will now be validated and dupes, obvious fakes etc. will be sorted out, but nevertheless, the petition was overwhelmingly successful - the most successful online petition in Germany so far, in fact!
However, it is fairly certain that the law will be passed anyway, despite it being unconstitutional. The fight will go on ...
Keep checking Twitter: http://twitter.com/FranziskaHeine http://twitter.com/netzpolitk http://twitter.com/Mitzeichner http://twitter.com/saschalobo http://twitter.com/moeffju
Germans: There will be demonstrations etc., keep an eye around. It's not over yet.
follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/moeffju
Fighting child pornography is just the marketing slogan.
In the US for instance one would instead use something like "preventing terrorist from finding construction plans for dirty bombs" or something similar. Look for something that terrifies people, for something that gets them emotional and looks like a no brainer. Thats all you need.
I think there was some US/UK person some decades ago who urged us to be alerted when politicians motivate something with women or children. Unfortunately I can't remember the quote - if someone knows it, please let me know. Thanks!
What this is about is putting censorship infrastructure in place and there are some politicians who already have acknowledged that.
Proxy, Tunnel, SSH
Well yeah that is kind of the point isn't it?
The dumber you think they are the less effort you put forth to get around there rules. If I could intercept and log all DNS traffic before it left my network on my old 486dx66Mhz Redhat 6.2 server many many years ago I think it's not too hard for them to do the same or at the very least drop the packets that aren't going to a approved DNS server.
After all who is going to goto the trouble of learning how to type in the two DNS servers into their computers? I mean after all only people who have something to hide would bother to do that... right???
So afraid of repeating the mistakes of the past they gladly trade a tyrannical dictatorship for a tyrannical politically correct "democracy." When I see what Germany has been reduced to I'm amazed that only a few generations ago they nearly conquered Europe for the second time. It isn't just Germany though, the UK has been rushing headlong into a police state with such speed it's like they think Orwell's 1984 was an instruction manual. My own country isn't much better, although here in the US it seems like we aren't moving as fast towards a police state as the rest of the world.
I sincerely hope this does not come to pass in Germany. The loss of freedom for anyone anywhere in the world should outrage us all. In the end though the Germans have to fix this themselves, and they'll end up with the government they deserve just like the rest of us.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
Given that all packets heading for IP address $ADDR get dropped on the floor by the very first piece of ISP equipment it hits, good luck trying to use your non-spoofed results two years from now.
You could show her a room full of scientific studies disproving each and every word she's ever said on the matter - and she wouldn't change her course one inch.
That sounds like delusions. Well, you say "change her course"---to be specific, delusions are about beliefs you don't change despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary; you're talking about behavior.
She's acting like the guy who insists on being Napoleon [...]
Assuming Napoleon is grandiose, could you be talking about delusions of grandeur?
On the other hand, the description on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalomania doesn't seem to quite fit your description. But maybe I'm not reading your description right.
(!MD)
That's just about what I was going to write here. I feel the same and I would happily emigrate rather today than tomorrow if I knew any country where the situation is better. Unfortunately this is a global problem and most of the people all over the world are too uninformed to see what's going on, or worse, they just don't care. I mean look, we got 130k signatures to the petition against that law, which is more than most petitions (no matter on which topic) ever reach, and still it's only about one promille of the people who signed it. This really makes me sad.
I'm an American living in Germany. I swear this place would be okay to come for a short vacation but living here long term is like living in a 3rd World country.
Want to get a cell-phone? Tough-break, you have to live here for 2 years first.
Want to get a phone line, cable-tv, or high-speed internet? Tough break, you have to be a citizen AND live here for 2 years first.
Want to eat a bowl of your favorite cereal? Tough break! They don't sell it here and if you try to get a friend to mail it to you, the Government is going to hold it for 3 months first and then charge you 20% taxes on what THEY think its worth.
... and in the DRM, bind them.
If governments start poisoning DNS servers, then we may need to go back to using raw IP addresses. Instead of http://xyz.com/ use http://123.456.789.012./ DNS was always a trust-based system anyway and that trust is being removed. Alternatively, point your PC to DNS servers outside the affected country.
If you are in HTML mode, yes, you have to use HTML tags. Change your posting mode in preferences if you don't like that.
You win the ToTD award, sir.
Tard of The Day?
"Nazi-Esque GPL" ???
The GPL merely says enjoy the freedom to use the software but grant that same freedom to others.
I suppose you find the Windows EULA grants you more freedom?