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German President Refuses To Sign Censorship Law
thetinytoon writes "German federal president Horst Köhler has refused to sign a law to block child pornography that passed Parliament earlier this year, stating that he 'needs more information.' In Germany, the federal president has the right to reject a law only if its passage violated the order mandated by the constitution, or if it is obviously unconstitutional — he can't veto a law simply because he disagrees with it. The law was passed under a coalition government, but a different coalition took power before the law reached the president's desk. Political observers guess that the political parties would like to get rid of the law without losing face, but since it has already passed the Parliament, they can't simply abandon it."
... or at least according to the former family affairs minister - she said that everyone who is against this law is either a paedophile criminal or their lobby.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Well, obviously this guy supports child pornography.
Either that OR he wants to make sure that the censorship law is congruent with the German constitution.
Take a wild guess which of those two options is going to dominate headlines...
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
This may come off as a troll, but I'm legitimately curious:
I'm from the US. I have an adequate understanding of various forms of government, including parliamentary forms, but Germany's constitution and government really just drive me crazy with lack of understanding. I think perhaps a big part of that is cultural and being raised in a country with different values. The idea that the president can't veto a law, and that the only checks against parliamentary power are the constitution itself kind of bugs me a little. The German system in general bugs me a little I suppose, because I place such high value in free speech and things Germany apparently values differently. I'm not saying one is better than the other, I'm just saying I don't understand.
What I'd honestly like to understand is what the cultural differences are, and if anyone knows -WHY- they exist. Why is it that the US seems to have such a high value on free speech at least theoretically whereas Europe in general (Germany in particular) does not?
Maybe someone who has lived in the US and Germany and understands both governments could just write up a brief opinion, because I'm trying to understand without being a "US Imperialist" and saying OH WELL THEY'RE JUST WRONG AND NEED LIBERATIN' but I'd like to get an insider's view.
Parlament? That's about the 4th mistake in a slashdot summary I've seen in the last couple days that spell check should have caught, let alone an editor. Maybe there should be some system, along the lines of moderation or the fire-hose, that let's you vote for suggested changes for certain words in a story. If a change gets enough votes up, it can go to an automated system that compares how different the two words are. If they're very similar (maybe only a letter or 2 different) it can see if the second word is in a dictionary, and if it is change the story. This would prevent ever word from being changed to something like "GOTOGOATSE!!!!!!!!!!!!", which, although it may get voted if there are enough trolls, is probably neither similar to something in the original summary nor in a dictionary.
*sic
CATS/Diebold '08- All your vote are belong to us!
What, you mean child porn isn't already illegal in Germany?
This law has nothing at all to do with child porn aside from the name.
This is a censorship law pushed through legislation smartly framed as "Blocking Child Pornography." So, when the question comes up, are you against or for child pornography? Of course, the correct question is, are you for or against blanket policy allowing government censorship of the only free/cheap mass information medium in the world under the pretense of protecting children?
And, in the realm of censorship, Germany seems to have the most sense (amongst Western nations incl. U.S. and England) , probably having already gone through the fiery blindness of mad political rampage in the past.
For more on framing and how it defines the political scene (esp. in the U.S.) check this interview with George Lakoff, professor in linguistics. Here's a list of his lectures on YouTube.
To make this clear:
The coalition in Germany has changed, yet the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) which is the major part of the present coalition (CDU + FDP) also participated in the last coaltion (2005-2009) consisting of the SPD (German Social Democratic Party) and the CDU. The law was initiated by the CDU (without opposition from the SPD, to be true, but also without much enthusiasm) and they really did their best to have it passed.
The same people who initiated it are now trying to stop it - not because they suddenly came to their senses, but because they wanted it so bad they fucked it up. They still want it, they just have to make a better (more in line with the German constitution) attempt. If they don't stop it now, it is likely that it will fail in the court (Federal Constitutional Court), which will make it harder for a seccond attempt (and cause more negative publicity).
The Federal President is also ideologically associated to the CDU (although he is not allowed to be part any party), and he would be part of it, if he hadn't been elected as President. He won his election because of the support he got from the CDU. So he, too, didn't develop some common sense but is just helping his mates.
Archos 'officially' releases the open-source Special Developer Edition firmware... but installing it voids the warranty ?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
First of all I wonder why you always use the term "censorship" if it is clearly not appropriated?
The law is about blocking a web site, that was found distributing child porn. That is not censorship. Censorship is if you want to express something (either privately e.g. as a letter or public e.g. as a book) and you have to ask a censor first for permission. That is censorship. E.g. in the former East German Republic you could not publish a book without asking a censor first. And if he said: "no!" you not only could not publish it but you where in deep shit. And furthermore a censor usually has not to explain why he said no. That is censorship. I would say there is no "western country" where we have any kind of censorship except for field post mailed by soldiers to their homes.
Second, in the case of this law, there was no judge involved for blocking a web site but a simple agency would do that. Furthermore the victim of such an agency had not much at hands to fight this blocking (e.g. if his domain was hijacked or DNS was abused to redirect to a child porn side, he found his domain blocked). The agency itself hat the obligation to "check from time to time" if the reason for blocking still existed, but had no defined time frames for that. The main objections are that you can't do much if you got blocked ... so the majority of the thechies are against this law, obviously.
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
It's unconstitutional, the article pressume it is constitutional, however the pedo claim is not the truth about this nasty law and he's right to refuse to sign it.
Just look in the news. Notice a trend.
I'd wager the only reason they passed this law at all is to have a means of blocking torrent sites. Sad but probably true. There's plenty of far better ways to go after pedophiles, but this happens to be the only one that can easily be used to catch "pirates".
The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation. -- Mein Kampf
The GP did fall for the same fallacy that was propagated by those big brother people.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
I don't understand what the hell is going in modern society that we suddenly think there are hoards of paedophiles everywhere. The only thing that might have changed in the last 50 years is that child porn may be more accessible now that it was before, but child porn doesn't make people into paedophiles any more than Kylie Minogue makes people homosexual.
I would (sort of) understand it if this was just a stupid legislative thing - ie making laws to ban child porn in order to get more powers to spy on ordinary people, etc. but the thing is that the general public seem to be obsessed by it over the past 10 years.
Today is by 43rd birthday. As I played with my 9 year old son, I thought about what my life was like when I was his age. The first thing that struck me was that (were it not for the rain here in London), he'd be out playing in the streets with his mates, not in some kind of house arrest situation where he has to have at least one parent with him at all times when he leaves the house.
It's fucking sad. And it makes me angry that politicians pander to irrelevant crap like child porn and paedophiles. Yes, paedophiles exist, and so does child porn, but the NUMBER of paedophiles hasn't increased, has it? If it has, nobody's saying why. And even if it has, then the effect of 0.00001% of the population having a predilection for children is frankly irrelevant compared to dangers such as traffic accidents, non-sexual abuse, violence and murder, which - incidentally - hasn't increased either!
What the hell is going on???
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
He is in the right. We are criminally charging children now who takes photo of them selves and parents who have photo of washing their babies. Etc. Loss of freedom human were born naked.
Things like these highlight some of the benefits of the German legislative system. Schavan would've been the better choice for the office of president and she'd've probably said 'Have enough information and my verdict is: Forget it' but never the less I'm positively suprised about this.
Köhler wouldn't have been my President but he has shown balls at other occasions and he has a very polite, neatly shrouded and delicate way of basically saying 'Go fuck yourself' to his party members without publicly hurting any feelings, as soon as day-to-day politics start screwing around again in Germany. He's like a gutter-grid keeping the biggest chunks of crap of the german supreme courts back. Which allready has a hard time keeping up with voiding all the BS Berlin has been coming up with lately.
Having a chancelor (currently Angela Merkel) for every-day politics and a President as mostly symbolic head-of-state does have its benefits, as it gives the President tthe obligation to use his power to prevent long-term-effects of election-term-based decisions and lobby/decoy/special-interest laws. And keeps him out of the regular decision making which gives him and his actions the required authority and weight.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
The really big problem is not the child porn; the problem is that with a censorship platform in place, it wouldn't take long to abuse it. In fact, IIRC, there already were proposals for blocks of other content immediately after the law was passed.
So we'd have a secret list of websites nobody can visit, which can contain just about any kind of website deemed "bad", with no public oversight, no means of controlling it and - in the first draft of the law - the always-present looming threat of your visit being logged and you being under investigation when you visit the website. Of course with no prior warning whatsoever.
Oh, and this came from the same administration that had the awesome idea of putting trojans on people's computers/PDAs/smartphones to investigate them, so with the law as written in the first draft we'd possibly be in "visit the wrong website and the BKA can rifle through your hard drive remotely" territory.
That's not just censorship, that's a whole censorfleet.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
I agree with your concerns about children's liberty being restricted in the name of "protecting" them. I also agree with your belief that there are some serious issues which are often ignored by the majority; the hysteria over paedophilia allows significant risks to children to remain undetected or trivialised.
"the effect of 0.00001% of the population having a predilection for children is frankly irrelevant compared to dangers such as traffic accidents, non-sexual abuse, violence and murder"
Actually, the percentage of people who are attracted to children is much higher than that, even if the men who like sexually mature 15 year old girls are not included in the statistics. Despite the widespread occurrence of paedophilia within the general population, most paedophiles refrain from abusing children for several reasons:
I'm not just making assumptions based on the fact that I live responsibly with a paedophilic orientation. I know many other paedophiles who are also responsible people.
I have posted this information previously, but it remains relevant:
From Hall, et al -
From the British Journal of Social Work -
From Is Pedophilia a Mental Disorder? -
"To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free" ~ Nineteen Eighty-Four
The law states that the government manages a secret list which ISPs have to implement (without looking at it... don't ask me how this is supposed to work but hey, it's a law concerning the internet, thus not necessarily feasible) which does not block anything outright but rather displays a big STOP page, telling the user that he is about to look at a "forbidden" page and asking him whether he really wants to go there.
Or, as a German comedian put it, it's not a "no trespassing" sign. It's a stop sign. And people will do what they do when encountering a stop sign. They will stop, look that nobody is coming, and keep driving.
The law came under fire from freedom of speech proponents and anti-child abuse groups alike, the former for the obvious reasons, the latter for the similarly obvious reason that it doesn't change jack. All it does is that you don't see the crime anymore, it still happens and it still is a problem.
It's akin to the various pics that sprung up soon after this idea passed, like this one. Here we see the solution applied to homelessness.
And yes, it's much like a 3 year old closing his eyes and thinking "I can't see it so it ain't there".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You know it could have been "free speech zones" at DEMOCRAT gatherings too:
http://camelsnose.wordpress.com/2008/08/26/what-a-denver-democratic-convention-free-speech-zone-looks-like/
Did you see this word in the post you are referring to - Republicrat???
I'm thinking the GP was referring to both (very similar) parties.
[UID-HeinzIntel]
denken Sie an die Kinder!
Bow-ties are cool.
That was just the "justification" for it. The law really kills free speech in a most horrific way. In fact, pretty much every German freaked out over this and protested (unlike when similar things happened/happens in the US/Canada). It's nice that at least one politician is trying to get rid of it.
But it's already known as birth control ...
although, it is just an excuse to get tighter control over the people to my opinion.
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Obviously, this is all based on on thing I over[mis]heard a while back.
Like to brew? Want to talk about it? Brattlebrew: groups.yahoo.com/group/brattlebrew
Frankly, I have a really difficult time working this out. Is it an age thing, or is it a physical maturity thing?
I always frame the question like this: when I was a 14 and 15 year old boy, I certainly had sexual thoughts and
fantasies about some 14 and 15 year old girls, many of whom were certainly capable of reproducing, and some of whom,
along with my contemporary male colleagues, were certainly already *practicing" the act of coitus.
Was I a pedophile? Was I pedophile still when I turned 16? 17? 18? 21? Did those 15 year old girls suddenly
stop being sexually enticing?
Now at 45, the attraction has certainly diminished, and I still do nothing at
all if such attraction reoccurs, but some now 15 year old girls look hot, flirt like crazy, and fuck their 15 year
old boyfriends. And because I don't and never have fucked any 15 year olds, but still remember wanting to and
trying to when I was 15, I'm apparently a pervert and should be locked up or castrated.
Times past, girls were getting married and pregnant at 15 as a common matter, and now they're forbidden
fruit to even think about. I tell you what's gone wrong - humanity took a fear pill, liked it too much, and now has
an addiction to being scared - we just love it - it gives us an excuse to stop thinking, which always was too much
like hard work anyway.
a law should be signed to block child pornography that passed Parlament earlier this year, am I right?
So the president (CDU) is vetoing the CDU's own law because everyone knows it's unconstitutional and the courts overthrowing it might discredit the CDUs future attempts. How very reasonable!
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
I'm older than you (not a lot) and I can empathise 100%
In my day as a child I grew up, slowly, day by day, gaining experience of the world.
Today it is the opposite, kids are (allegedly) shielded from everything, effectively cut off from society and so cut off from any opportunity to grow and learn naturally.
We are breeding hot house flowers.
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
While you make a good point, the ESRB ratings are not decided or forced by the government -- you don't even need to get an ESRB rating for a game in order to release it, but many retailers want it.
So while the US does have some overly conservative values, for the most part they are not enforced by the law to the extent that they are in Germany.