Even More Restriction For German Internet

tikurion writes "It's only been a few weeks since the law dubbed Zugangserschwerungsgesetz (access impediment law) was passed in the German Parliament despite over 140,000 signatures of people opposed to it. The law will go into effect in mid-October 2009. Now Minister for Family Affairs Ursula von der Leyen implied in an interview that she is planning on extending the reach of the law, claiming '...or else the great Internet is in danger of turning into a lawless range of chaos, where you're allowed to bully, insult, and deceive limitlessly.' More on golem.de via Google translate (here is the German original)."

Comments

4chan

[DreamsAreOkToo]

where you're allowed to bully, insult, and deceive limitlessly.

If this was their goal, there would only need to be one domain on the list.

Re:4chan

[TheP4st]

I suppose Germans don't value free speech as much as the Americans.

"Brett Bursey" learned the hard way what the price can be for exercising your "right" to free speach in the USA.

Re:4chan

[purpledinoz]

I guess I should rephrase: I suppose Germans don't value free speech as much as the Americans used to.

Re:4chan

[karstux]

Not all is lost in Germany. Political activism against the ongoing restriction of our civil rights is strongly on the rise. The petition against the censorship law has been mentioned in the article, and our Pirate Party has gained thousands of new members in the past few months. It has done pretty well in the European elections this year, and I think that public awareness to civil rights matters has improved since then. I strongly hope the Pirates will enter the Bundestag (parliament) in September.

Our government has used pretty underhanded techniques to push these laws, effectively grouping all opposition to the censorship law with child molesters. So if you ask someone on the street if "they're against a law which will combat child pornography on the internet", of course they will decline. On the other hand, if you asked them if "government and police should be able to censor the internet at will", the result would surely be different.

By the way, this phenomenon is not unique to Germany. In America, civil rights have been whittled away with terrorists as a scarecrow.

Re:4chan

[Stachybotris]

What I find even crazier is that most Germans I've talked to agree with this speech law. I suppose Germans don't value free speech as much as the Americans.

I'm going to Godwin this, but only because it's true...

IIRC, it's not that Germans don't value the freedom of expression, but rather that they're still suffering from a pretty bad case of what we'd term 'pendulum swing'. You see, after World War II ended, they got a little touchy about people being able to openly spew hateful and hurtful speeches. They clamped down pretty hard on peoples' ability to say what they want, though not directly through legislation, and it never really let up. To this day the Germans still remember what happened to them as a nation the last time bullying, lying, and insulting others went unchecked - they started a war that involved a fairly large number of countries and ended up with them losing and, essentially, being split in two. So, as a result, the older generation, and even the current on (albeit to a lesser extent) is really strict about policing itself.

Penny Arcade's 'Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory' also comes into play here... When hiding behind a screen of semi-anonymity, people with an audience will say and do just about anything to get a rise out of others. This is, unfortunately, part of human nature.

Given that, it's not difficult to see why they're overly sensitive about what people do and say on-line. They're trying, in their own misguided and ill-conceived way, to put the same sort of self-policing mechanism in place on the web that they use in real-life. But since they have to deal with an enormous number of outside influences (read: every site on the internet that doesn't originate in Germany), they have to use the club of law instead of the softer form of social pressure that works when people are standing around talking in the town square. Unfortunately for them, the 'net and the town square aren't the same thing and certainly don't work the same way.

Or, to summarize; this law, though probably poorly-written, is conceived with good intentions, though we all know how that goes.

Re:4chan

[shutdown -p now]

IIRC, it's not that Germans don't value the freedom of expression, but rather that they're still suffering from a pretty bad case of what we'd term 'pendulum swing'. You see, after World War II ended, they got a little touchy about people being able to openly spew hateful and hurtful speeches. They clamped down pretty hard on peoples' ability to say what they want, though not directly through legislation, and it never really let up.

You're mostly correct, except it wasn't the Germans themselves who did it. It was the Allies, then still occupying Germany, who imposed most of those restrictions as the required condition of Germany becoming a free independent state again.

Re:4chan

[Opportunist]

I even question the intentions of the law.

The alleged intention of the law is to make viewing child porn impossible or at least make it a lot harder. There are videos on YouTube how it's possible to circumvent the problem in a matter of 10 seconds. Even child protection organisations called the law "short sighted" and "useless", if they were friendly and didn't want to use stronger words.

Instead, what will happen? Someone browsing for CP will encounter this stop-page. If he's dumb, he'll browse through. If he's smart, he will start looking around for IP masking tools, making it even harder to find them if (not when, but if) a server containing such material is raided and IP logs are analyzed. Over time, the only IP addresses from Germany will be those of TOR exit nodes and similar tools, which in turn will result in a crackdown against anonymizing services.

Also, some politicians already "thought" about expanding the number of sites, to encompass other "undesirable" pages (like, say, TPB and similar "illegal" pages). Once such a tool is in existance, it will be abused. And I'm not so convinced that abuse has not been part of the idea altogether.

Das ist verboten.

[gandhi_2]

Heaven:
Where the police are British,
The cooks are Italian,
The mechanics are German,
The lovers are French and
It's all organized by the Swiss.

Hell is:
Where the police are German,
The cooks are British,
The Mechanics are French,
The lovers are Swiss and
It's all organized by the Italians.

Re:Das ist verboten.

[Repossessed]

Heaven:
Where the police are British,

In heaven they write you up as a terrorist for taking pictures?

Umm.. why?

[NervousNerd]

Now Minister for Family Affairs Ursula von der Leyen implied

There shouldn't even be a family affairs department. What families do is their own matter, unless they do something illegal.

Re:Umm.. why?

[SerpentMage]

It's called Social department in the Anglo Saxon world... All countries have "family affairs" departments.

But besides that I do find it problematic on what the German government is proposing. If they truly did believe what they did, they would actually fix the school system first! The German school system is a mess and is prone to the exact problems that von der Leyen is trying to solve in the Internet. But hey fixing the school system would mean that von der Leyen would actually have to do something, you know her job!

Re:Umm.. why?

[Opportunist]

Because "Zensurulla" (censorship Ulla) as the German Miss Education has been nicknamed, has a long history of political stunts and blunders.

Very well remembered (even though she tried hard to downplay it and make it forgotten) was her attempt to encourage academics to have more kids. She was pissed at the "lowlives" who pump out baby after baby even though they couldn't get them what she deemed a good life and education, while people with PhD's simply don't have many kids, if any. So she envisioned a bonus for people with high education if they had more kids. Quickly nicknamed the "Akademikerwurfprämie" (university graduates litter bonus).

Appearantly she didn't take into account that a few hundred bucks a month ain't enough to encourage someone with a career and an income beyond 6k a month to toss it all for a kid if all they got in return was a bonus they could possibly only laugh at.

So now she stumbles with her feet firmly lodged in her mouth from one blunder to the next, hoping that she finally manages to come up with an idea that could possibly get her some recognition and make all the former "ideas" forgotten. Well, it works, but only because one stunt is even more harebrained than the one before.

Minister for Family Affairs

[sakdoctor]

Why are the most innocuous sounding positions in government, always the most malevolent?

Minister for Family Affairs
Home secretary

I will literally shit myself if my government appoints a minister of puppies, pink ponies and day old baby ducklings.

Re:Minister for Family Affairs

[dido]

Those are some of the finest examples of actual Orwellian doublespeak in the real world. Read 1984 sometime, and perhaps you'll get a glimmer of understanding. The Ministry of Peace is engaged in making war, the Ministry of Truth falsifies history, the Ministry of Love tortures and punishes those who do not love Big Brother, and the Ministry of Plenty oversees poverty and shortages.

" I say Freedom "

[testman123]

Citizens of the world, dark forces are at work in most of our democracies. They plans to get control of a power tool & medium: the internet. Their aim at restoring the "control on information and the oligopolies" of the previous millennium and extending it further any known limits.

Most of them claim, it is to restore "good old values". But the real reason behind all those bigotries is the money my friend!
The fight for freedom as started.

But, the force of the cipher is among us ;-)
Are you ready ?

We need to lock everyone in their houses

[FranTaylor]

Or else the great outdoors is in danger of turning into a lawless range of chaos, where you're allowed to bully, insult, and deceive limitlessly.

wrong

[lordharsha]

the great Internet is in danger

Pity she can't see that the threat is from people like her.

 

turning into a lawless range of chaos

In other words, a free and uncensored global platform for communication

Solution to this problem: Pirate party!

[Sven Jacobs]

TYPICAL GERMAN politics, come up with a screwy law, and make it even more screwy! So I guess what I can take from this is that child porn is ok to see at a university, but not a corporation or large ISP... Yeah that makes sense, really does...

I guess they introduced these exceptions because implementing the censorship infrastructure on the ISP side takes a great deal of time & money. Obviously only big ISPs can afford that ;)

The big parties of the German government once again proved that they're just doing what they want and not what the citizens want! That's why I'm going to vote for the Piratenpartei (Pirate party) on September 27.

Re:Time machine?

[Ihmhi]

It'd have to be a machine that go could pretty far back. Way back, even.

Obligatory: ACHTUNG ALLES LOOKENSPEEPERS

[adelgado]

Das computenmachine is nicht fur gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Is easy schnappen der springwerk, blownfusen, und poppenoorken mit spittzensparken. Ist nicht fur gewerken by das dummkopfen. Das rubbernecken signtseeren keepen hands in das pockets--relaxen und watch das blinkenlights.

Free advertising for the Pirate party.

[Ihlosi]

Apparently, some people in the German government haven't realized yet that the Pirate party has made it on the ballots in some places, and that the next election is less than two months away.

Just keep giving them some more free advertising.

Completely unrelated, I'd also see some legislation allowing the Federal Constitutional Courts to hand out savage beatings with the clue stick to everyone involved in drafting and passing unconstitutional laws. And they should broadcast it on TV, too.

Please forgive that woman

[MemoryDragon]

She has been recently discovering the internet, before she was living happily in Barbieland playing with her Disney ponies.
The wakeup call was simply too hard for her.

Seriously, if you read interviews with her, that woman is the german equivalent to Sarah Palin. Stupid dangerous outrigt arrogant and does not even listen one second to anyone!