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In Germany, Offensive Autocomplete Is No Laughing Matter
itwbennett writes "We've all had a chuckle over Google's autocomplete results for various search queries. But one German businessman had a less funny experience when he searched for his name on Google.de: The autocomplete suggested search terms where his name was tied with 'Scientology' and 'fraud' (in German, of course). This was back in 2010. In 2012, a German court ruled that the autocomplete terms did not infringe the plaintiff's privacy. Now, a year later, the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe has overturned that ruling and ordered that Google remove offensive search suggestions when notified."
How will this affect my business proposal of adding paid autocomplete suggestions?
You type:
Che
And it autofills with:
Cheeseburgers are delicious at McDonnalds®
Sense_of_humor = -German_heritage*x
Guess they'll ask to remove Hitler and nazi suggestions.
Godwin's Law hit already. Geeze!
I seem to recall a case in Australia in the last year where Google was asked to remove offensive autocomplete terms, and didn't. And got sued. And lost.
It's because it's potentially defamatory. And just like I can't write "I saw Soulskill touch a dogs wiener" without potentially being sued, Google can't write that Herr Rolf is a fraud.
HELP MY ACCOUNT HAS BEEN HACKED BY AN ILLIBERAL ART STUDENT SET TO DESTROY THE INTERWEBZ!
How else would Autocomplete know what is offensive (or not) to you?
Since what constitutes "offensive" material varies wildly from person to person and also depending on the reason/motives people have to do any particular search, I doubt there is any way for autocomplete to comply.
I bet the plaintiff would consider my post defending autocomplete's cluenessless offensive.
I think that's fair. I have a software product that used to auto complete with "torrent" and "crack". Made me a little miffed. Eventually google stopped doing that.
I'm curious how German law determines what is an "offensive" search. If there's a legal definition, then maybe you can work something, but if "offensive" is determined by the "offended", then Google might as well disable the entire feature as anyone who doesn't like the autocomplete result for their name or term begin banning just about every potentially offensive combination out there.
The first autocomplete is "Deutschland über alles!"
Now that's offensive.
That Freedom of speech in Germany is dead. Mental note...
Slander is excepted from free speech in a lot of places. Say your name is "Bob Somelastname" and when you type "Bob Somelastname" into google it autosuggests 'pedophile', are you saying you should have no recourse and that should stay up forever? The court isn't saying google is liable for damages, they're just saying they have to remove the particular suggestions when notified.
Of course Google can't investigate every complaint that comes in, so what this could mean is the German Google won't have slanderous autosuggests for anyone (at least not anyone smart enough to complain) which will reduce its effectiveness but also remove a ton of false positives.
I stole this Sig
Freedom of speech is not dead in Germany. The constitution just put a different (higher) weight on personality rights.
In this case, googleing the name "Bettina Wulff" of the first lady would autocomplete to things like "escort" and "prostitute", because some people wrongfully tried to make a past life as a prostitute stick to her public image (which has been shown is just nonsense).
Now, I would agree that it is perfectly reasonable to put a higher weight on the right of free speech. But personality rights, and the right to be protected from libel are also important. Those are two legally protected values that have to be carefully balanced.
Germany already has many anti nazi laws in place. For example holocaust denial is verboten. Google has removed many neo nazi and old style nazi sites for Germany.
TODO create witty sig.
The Germany loves David Hasselhoff.
Solving Unix problems since 1989...
...you should see what it does when I Google my name...!
Sincerely,
Harry Fagina
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b48_1305790944
German's may not want to watch, in fear of being offended.
I can see this abused by organizations and individuals who have perpetrated frauds on people or who have acted in other devious and underhanded ways to make it more difficult to find sites that expose their activities (ie Scientology mind control, fraud, etc)
All they would have to do was to point to some civil suit that they had against the people making the alleged false claims to 'prove' that they were fighting these baseless accusations and that the results should be removed from autocomplete
I can see this also requiring rooms full of lawyers testing google searches to look for potential infringements.
the thing that comes to my mind is anytime I see a questionable website in an email or webpost I run it through google and it often suggests 'malware', 'virus' or 'trojan' which might offend someone who was selling some piece of crap like 'speedupmypc' or something
-I'm just sayin'
Exactly. Once more, this German court has confirmed that Germany has no freedom of speech. Everything that is outside of the realm of what the majority feels is appropriate, is forbidden. Whether that be related to the war, the poor, the economic situation, or prostitution.
Es ist verboten! I'm surprised people haven't applied for political asylum in the U.S. yet. Here, speech has at least some constitutional protection.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
freedom of speech doesn't mean you can say whatever you like, nor does it mean you get an audience.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It's slightly different. We never actually had that to begin with. Or rather what is called freedeom of speech is defined as "the freedom of opinion and the right to freely express it as such"
This wording excludes libel and slander right from the start (which aren't protected speech in the US either if I remember right)
bickerdyke
That Freedom of speech in Germany is dead. Mental note...
Slander is excepted from free speech in a lot of places. Say your name is "Bob Somelastname" and when you type "Bob Somelastname" into google it autosuggests 'pedophile', are you saying you should have no recourse and that should stay up forever?
If a lot of people are entering the search query "Bob Somelastname pedophile" then Google autocomplete will add the word "pedophile" whenever someone types "Bob Somelastname". Google is not trying to be offensive, its just an algorithm that is based on the most common searches. This is simply how it is supposed to work.
People really need to shut the fuck up and stop being "offended" by every little thing.
What if Google just removes auto complete for everyone in Germany? 'cause how are they supposed to know what someone may find offensive?
Is there an empirical study of the probability of any autocomplete being offensitve in some language?
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess 'no,' based on the simple observation that "being offensive" is purely subjective, and thus diametrically opposed to empirical data.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
This is not about search terms or search hits but just about autocomplete. It's not about hiding what you did, but about not slapping people looking for you or your company into the face with terms that come solely from other people searching for something (and maybe even not finding anything).
I mean, if I start to type your name into Google and Google suggests completions of "sells drugs to minors" just because people search for this in connection with your name (or someone else with the same name) you wouldn't be happy either.
Besides: Google already IS redacting autocompletion heavily. It weeds out completions reeking of sex, of anything negative about Google itself... By doing this the completions become an edited publication and Google is responsible for what it "publishes" here.
It's much more about rights (of affected individuals) than about anything else. I don't think there's anything wrong with this. There's nobody else beside Google you can turn to to get this "publication" corrected or to sue (in case of libel), because it's Google who's publishing rumours here.
I never claimed it wasn't an algorithm (though I don't know if it's actually that simple) but that doesn't change the fact that people googling that name aren't going to get a pretty ugly suggestion about you.
Are you really telling me you wouldn't get a bit offended if Google autocompleted pedophile onto your name?
I stole this Sig
Alright, well, maybe not diametrically opposed - I suppose you could create a dataset based on the opinions of what all speakers of a particular language consider offensive, cull the list down to just the terms that all surveyed name as offensive, then compare it against a list of existing autocompletion terms... But damn, what a stupid waste of fucking time that would be!
A better plan: Let's all join together and decide, conclusively, that:
A) No one has a right to be offended, and
B) No harm == no foul
Seems a lot more practical.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Exactly. Once more, this German court has confirmed that Germany has no freedom of speech.
Your signature is wrong. You _are_ a complete idiot.
What suggestions? The German people were on vacation from 1939 to 1945.
Actually it does, at least in terms of ideas. That's why where freedom of speech is limited in the states, it's not broad but very specific. The idea of fires in theaters, whether in fantasy or theories or reporting on actual fires is not forbidden in the US, just yelling it in cases which can cause a deadly stampede.
Germany otoh, has a free speech clause in it's constitution but has a whole host of illegal ideas, which is the exact opposite of free speech.
freedom of speech doesn't mean you can say whatever you like
Doesn't sound like freedom to me.
If it has limits, it is not Freedom. I agree with the latter, and I agree that the former is the way that things are done in the majority of the world, but I don't agree that it's right.
I'm curious how German law determines what is an "offensive" search. If there's a legal definition, then maybe you can work something, but if "offensive" is determined by the "offended", then Google might as well disable the entire feature as anyone who doesn't like the autocomplete result for their name or term begin banning just about every potentially offensive combination out there.
Google avoids lots of completions already. You won't get completions about many things that Google deems to be offensive, like sexual terms (even porn actors) or negative things about Google. Google does this fairly arbitrarily with no documented rules or anything. It's not that adding something to a blacklist if someone requests this in connection with his name would be anything major to this. In fact it would just give you some rights that Google assumes for itself as a matter of course.
Note that in Germany Google also was required to blank out houses in street view in Google Maps if the owner requested this.
More to the point, the lawyer wasn't offended. Who gets offended by a computer? But he was screwed. How could you attract clients if searching for your name (to find a phone number, for example, or a review) instead strongly implied that you frighten sheep and small children?
For all the help auto complete is, I'd be quite happy to lose it entirely. On the other hand, auto complete should be different on each user's machine because the users past searches influence the results shown. Also, other users may want to see the results this user complains of. In a world with so many people having the same name, trying to control your name bumps up against the rights of everyone else that has the same name. People have to accept that auto complete is not an information source in itself. To suggest it is result's in silliness like this.
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-time-to-stop-using-the-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-quote/264449/
...
If you're referring to Mein Kampf, you're mistaken. Publishing excerpts of it is prosecuted in civil courts, but only because the Bavarian state claims the copyright. When Hitler killed himself, his estate went to the state, including the publishing rights of that book. The copyright is about to expire after which everybody will be free to print copies in Germany.
On the other hand, distribution and use of some symbols commonly associated with Nazi ideology is a prohibited by the law. If and how much freedom of speech is restricted by these laws is a matter of debate. Certainly, the US is more permissive in this regard, but one should not forget that these laws grew out of denazification regulations instituted by the Allied occupation forces after World War 2.
Free Manning, jail Obama.
Work for the RIAA?
I stole this Sig
Libel and slander are civil matters in the US; in Germany, they are criminal matters and potentially carry jail terms. Germany also has jail terms (up to three years) for insulting religions.
There was once a website that was called isgay.com basically what you did was put in a sub-domain such as Billy-Bob.isgay.com and it would then take you to a newspaper style article that went on and on about how gay billy-bob was. Needless to say it was autogenerated from the sub-domain that you entered. The best part of the website was a section listing their hate-mail. Basically it consisted of "I HAVE CONTACTED THE INTERNET POLICE....blah blah." I think some of their haters were crying when writing it thinking that they had been outed.
All this guy has basically done is to engage the classic Streisand effect (I wonder if she is angry at her name becoming a meme for stupid on the internet) and now the 99% of Germans who didn't associate his name to Scientology now will.
It's a valid comment, and the problem was that he recognized his own slippery slope and used it to support a bad decision.
Yelling fire in a theater is a bad thing. It's the application of that to "show" that passing out a communist flier should be illegal because it's like yelling fire in a theater. Yelling fire in a theater is illegal, so not all speech is always protected. Now that we are in agreement that we don't have "free speech" in the USA. The follow up question is "where do we draw the line?"
Fire in a theater helps us understand this and leads to discussion on it.
Learn to love Alaska
If a lot of people are entering the search query "Bob Somelastname pedophile" then Google autocomplete will add the word "pedophile" whenever someone types "Bob Somelastname". Google is not trying to be offensive, its just an algorithm that is based on the most common searches.
Sorry, but no. Google already filters out LOTS of things, among them many words related to porn and many things Google doesn't like to see connected to its name if you start to type "Google". Nobody knows what else they filter here. Basically Google is redacting its auto-completion heavily already.
If this were indeed a plain algorithm I would tend to agree with you. But it isn't.
I dunno, I was pretty sure I had Freedom of Movement, but whenever I walk into other people homes, they get cranky and call police on me. "Freedoom of Movement" is a sham then, I guess
You saw hundreds, you just thought them Mexican.
Learn to love Alaska
Well, when you can be put in prison for three years just for saying words of praise about Adolf Hitler, I don't exactly think they had freedom of speech to begin with. It's not the United States, you know... and even here there are exceptions.
Actually, Germany has not exactly a "freedom of speach" clause in the constitution. Freedom of speach is not even something actually translateable to German (perhaps Redefreiheit?). After all "freedom of speach" taken literally is quite a strange concept, much like "freedom to move".
What Germany has are freedom of opinion, freedom of art, freedom of press and some other things.
If you translate "freedom of speach" to German and then back what you get is "freedom of opinion", which is the freedom to have an opinion and to state your opinion. Which is a much more precise term, because it has not the problem of all those "yelling fire" problems. If you talk about general "speach" you have to determine which speach is protected and which not, because it is obvious that not everything can be protected (heck, even in the US you get a full list of criminal offenses you almost can commit only by speaking or writing). While with opinion it is much easier: If it is an expression of your opinion, it is protected (and absolutely protected, not overrideable by any practical considerations like your "freedom of speach" often is.). If it is about claiming facts (Tatsachenbehauptungen) it is not (ast least not by freedom of opinion).
Yelling fire in a theater is a bad thing. It's the application of that to "show" that passing out a communist flier should be illegal because it's like yelling fire in a theater. Yelling fire in a theater is illegal, so not all speech is always protected. Now that we are in agreement that we don't have "free speech" in the USA. The follow up question is "where do we draw the line?"
Fire in a theater helps us understand this and leads to discussion on it.
Actually it doesn't help because more often than not it is misquoted. The actual quote is:
The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.
The emphasis is mine. Falsely shouting fire in order to create a panic is illegal, or rather the person making the speech is accountable of the resulting harm. However, shouting fire in a crowded movie that is actually on fire is not illegal, as most reasonable people would agree that there is a moral responsibility to letting others know of imminent danger.
Didn't you know, "freedom" is whatever USA has at any given moment? As the liberties change, the definition of freedom changes with it. This is how we can say "land of the free" without choking on the words.
This is like medieval animal trials and nearly as ridiculous.
Algorithms are not sentient beings, nor are they created with malicious or slanderous intent. They are, perhaps, imperfect, but you'd have to be a complete moron to legislate or judicially mandate perfection (oh, wait...)
If history is any indication, I shudder at the thought that it could be centuries before have even remotely sane tech policy.
Are you really telling me you wouldn't get a bit offended if Google autocompleted pedophile onto your name?
I am offended by lots of things I read and hear everyday. That does not justify censorship. There is no "right to not be offended."
The general complaint is still true: in Germany (and most other EU countries), the freedom of speech is generally limited to what the majority finds acceptable.
That is not true at all. One can claim the same about the US and just be as correct as that.
In the U.S. the opposite is true. For example, the idiots of the Westboro Baptist Church can say and protest as much as they want, even though 99.999% of the U.S. population absolutely hates them (that includes me). Whould they have lived in Germany, they would have been in jail a long time ago.
Can you name me a law that would have put them in jail? I might be missing what they do, but if they only put those pesky "God hates fags" signs, then I see nothing applicable.
But I will defend their freedom to express themselves
Please, stop that pathetic slogan. You are not defending their freedom. You are defending your misunderstanding of the world.
, in that regard (note the 'in that regard', I'm sure other things are better in .de).
Like in Germany you have a codified freedom of opinion. An matter of opinion can not be an insult and cannot otherwise be against any law (as freedom of opinion tops any other law). From what wikipedia claims with all your "freedom of speach" you do not even have that in the US.
Are you really telling me you wouldn't get a bit offended if Google autocompleted pedophile onto your name?
I am offended by lots of things I read and hear everyday. That does not justify censorship. There is no "right to not be offended."
I was originally talking slander, the person who replied to me said they wouldn't be offended (which I found unlikely), but the original complaint was and still is about slander.
If someone googles your name and they see 'pedophile' come up, they're going to get a strong negative impression of you (especially if it's a somewhat unique name). If your livelihood or reputation is strongly tied to what people see when they look for you online that can have pretty drastic consequences and I'd say that's potentially slanderous.
The fix, telling Google, 'pedophile' and 'fraud' are both really ugly terms and I don't want them suggested with my name since I'm neither, sets a potentially pad precedent but it's particularly damaging to Google.
I stole this Sig
Can you name me a law that would have put them in jail? I might be missing what they do, but if they only put those pesky "God hates fags" signs, then I see nothing applicable.
here you go.
Please, stop that pathetic slogan. You are not defending their freedom. You are defending your misunderstanding of the world.
On the contrary. As soon as those idiots from the WBC are being silenced, someone else will be next. This is the same mechanism that is used for other methods of government surveillance. It starts out as anti-terrorism or anti-child pornography, but will soon be used for petty crimes and regular unwarranted searches.
Like in Germany you have a codified freedom of opinion. An matter of opinion can not be an insult and cannot otherwise be against any law (as freedom of opinion tops any other law). From what wikipedia claims with all your "freedom of speach" you do not even have that in the US.
German law differs a lot from U.S. law. German law is eventually governed by the European Convention on Human Rights. This, in turn, provides an exception for "protection of morals". Which is exactly the clause that undermines the entire protection, as "morals" are locally defined. The U.S. constitution does not have that exception, which is why it is my belief that freedom of speech is better protected in the U.S.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
You are correct in that the nature of free speech limitations can be different in the US vs. Germany. However, the limitations to free speech in the US are actually more broad rather than more specific. In the US, limitations are only based on broad categories such as libel, rather than making specific ideas illegal. For example, I can not legally publicly say that you enjoy frequent coitus with your mother. If false, it is libel/slander, and if true, a violation of your right to privacy (assuming you consider dissemination of such information damaging). But publicly proclaiming you to be a motherfscker is illegal not because statements regarding maternal copulation are explicitly outlawed, but because they fall under a restricted category.
OTOH, the topic of TFA is regarding a category, not a specific idea, specifically speech that violates ones right to privacy. As such, it is conceivable that a US court could make the same ruling that the German court did in this case.
This is actually very interesting if true. However, I am curious whether all freedom of opinion is actually protected in Germany. Specifically, I was under the impression that claiming facts about nazis was ok, as in holocaust museums etc., but claiming the opinion that nazis were awesome and should be emulated is what is not allowed.
Disclaimer, I hold the opinion that all nazis should go burn in a fire, and the 'nazis were awesome' comment is purely 100% just playing devil's advocate. Just to make sure we're clear.
Hello Mr. Google, I'd like to know more about discrimination in the military! Oh... according to Google the military is the most tolerant organization on earth! That's weird, can't seem to find any articles that I found last month saying otherwise. Must have pulled the articles when they found out how wrong they were.
Google is required to remove offensive autocompletes when notified
Why would anyone think there's a right to not be offended?
This is pretty much how copyright violations work.
Which I believe is garbage as well.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
1) German court cannot 'force' Google to do anything of the sort. Such matters are covered by international treaty, and the proper US response to such a request would be to state that this is a case of protected speech. 2) Boo-hoo. It's auto-complete.
There is little gain in sitting around debating or discussing events from 70+ years ago that have been beaten to death worse than a dead horse.
I would like a law outlawing atheists and Christians from discussing evolution while relating it to religion. It is boring as hell, goes nowhere interesting and you hear the worst possible opinions.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
Uh, yes, actually, that's exactly what it means.
Restrictions can be placed on where, when, and how you say it in order to protect the rights of others (you don't have a right to blare it from loudspeakers at 3am and disturb my right to reasonable peace and quiet, you don't have a right to say it while waving a knife and disturb my right to reasonable safety, etc.), but in terms of content, you can say whatever you damn well please. Any government that doesn't recognize that doesn't recognize freedom of speech.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Accountability comes with that.
You see don't Google auto-completing Sergey Brin's name and saying "Did you mean dog rapist?" If it did, don't you think Google would change it ASAP?
Google's marketshare is too large and the use of its services is too widespread to just let some guy's reputation be hurt by offensive autocompletes.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
Or maybe it could be said that yelling "fire" in a crowded movie theater objectively causes risk of harm due to panic, but that it can be deemed as necessary if there actually is a fire.
You know, just like some people have a legal pass for stabbing you with sharp objects under some circumstances.
There's nothing like $HOME
So you believe that yelling "fire" in a crowded area with the intention of causing immediate harm should be legal, if it isn't already?
Learn to love Alaska
A lot of you are ignoring one important fact: Google is not a person.
Does a company even have a right to free speech?
Also, Google claims it's simply repeating what others typed into the search box, so it can hardly count as Google exercising free speech rights, correct?
Now if it was a private person we're talking about and they typed that text by themselves, they'd be in for slander. And that even in the US. Case closed.
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
Well, on the other hand there is no right to life in the USA. Personally I think it is far worse - what good is freedom of speech if you are dead, but surely YMMV.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
As for Germany, I expect their limits on particular forms of speech have a little something to do with them underpinning and justifying the systematic slaughter of millions of people. They're probably just a tad sensitive to people perpetuating the same ideas which arguably are malicious slander against an entire culture. Racist attacks and neo-Nazi movements are still a real problem for the country. Even this week a neo-Nazi "kill squad" is on trial for the murdering 10 people.
[I]n terms of content, you can say whatever you damn well please. Any government that doesn't recognize that doesn't recognize freedom of speech.
No.... no you can't. There are things like official secrets. There are things like libel (which although not criminal in itself _is_ backed up by the criminal system - if you don't pay, you go to jail).
There are things like AACS and DeCSS, which made numbers illegal. Just because people get away with it all the time, does not make it not illegal. People have been prosecuted for propagating numbers.
Fraud laws are a restriction on free speech - Fraud, almost by definition is all about speech, if it wasn't it'd be theft.
And of course, there's the big restriction on free speech : copyright.
I'm personally for some restrictions on free speech... people who claim they have absolute free speech are just wrong.
Please note the first two will get you in trouble in the US well
Please, there is no law against "insulting" somebody in the US. Comedians make their living at it.
You can curse as you want in TV, you can say shit, you can show nipples
You've got us there, but these days broadcast TV is not nearly as significant as it used to be. There's plenty of places to get your boobs or swears on television or elsewhere.
you can talk bad of the church if you want to. Try that in america and see how you literally can cried down (not from the law but from many part of society). Chances are high a quite number of disturbed people will demand you get killed.
People bad-mouth the "church" all the time, and here I mean religion in general because there is no singular "church" in the United States. There are no lynch mobs out for these people. One Muslim idiot made some threats against the South Park creators and that made the news, and that idiot was arrested and sentenced.
Then again, the States are slipping. Germany does have a number of restrictions (mostly revolving around Nazis or causing violence) but we're utterly bewildered by the American concept of "free speech zones", which apparently allow for the selective exclusion of arbitrary viewpoints from an event. (That's probably not what the law says they do but that's how they seem to be used.)
Come on, guys! We're supposed to defend human dignity to the point of restricting freedom of speech and you're supposed to defend freedom of speech to the point of restricting human dignity. What's next, America requiring all blood in video games to be green? That's our wart, get your own!
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
That does not justify censorship.
I think you're stretching the moral point of free speech considerably.
This is not restricting anything produced by a human, it's restricting the output of a non sentient machine. I am a ver yardent supporter of freedom of speech, but I do not see how it extends to the ramblings of a machine (distinct of course from the mechanically translated ramblings of a _person_).
There is no "right to not be offended."
There is a right not to be slandered.
Tacking "pedo" onto someones name when there is absoloutely no evidence for it is basically slander / libel (depending on how the tacking on is done).
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The U.S. constitution does not have that exception, which is why it is my belief that freedom of speech is better protected in the U.S.
Having just moved from the U.S. to Germany late last year (and being married to a German), I'm inclined to say on paper the U.S. is better protected, but in life that is probably not true. There's a lot of speech suppression in both the U.S. and Germany. Nowhere near as much as most other countries in the world, but plenty enough to make an argument that Germany may come out ahead of the U.S. on freedom of speech.
Here's how Google should comply.
Seargh: George Whoever
1. George Whoever (censored by German government)
2 . George Whoever (censored by German government)
3 . George Whoever (censored by German government)
4 . George Whoever (censored by German government)
5 . George Whoever (censored by German government)
etc.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Your comment is more valid than you think. There are a few people who are named Hitler or Adolf in Germany. They are usually older. I have heard of one personally. They are usually immigrants from the former German exile communities from the eastern Europe and Kazakhstan. Due to different regulation and history, they were forced to keep their names. The Germans themselves managed to change their family names, if it was associated with Nazis in any way.
~ Best man at your service.
Since we are comparing two very different legal systems - US's being based in the common law tradition and Germany's being purely statutory law, I used the term 'illegal' in the broadest sense of 'in opposition to the law of the land' regardless of whether that law is civil or criminal.
How about yelling "fire" in a theatre showing "The Inferno" ?