There's also the little matter where Sweden has the second fastest home internet connections in the world by a respectable margin (even though they still come nowhere near Japan's ludicrously big pipes).
However, that implies that all rape games are about men raping women. Given that we have two (three is intersexuals/transitioning transsexuals count) sexes to put on both sides, we get four to nine cases of objectification. And given the Japanese creativity when it comes to porn, there most likely would be a catered-to market for woman-on-shemale strapon sims.
If everyone is objectified by everyone, does that impinge on someone's rights?
I happen to think Iraq was a mistake, but so what? Besides, European politicians by and large were just using it to score political points.
Ah yes, I forgot Poland. If I remember correctly in many cases those political points were scored by trying to give the States as little support as possible.
I don't know, but attacking nations like Iraq or Afghanistan is certainly not a threat to liberty.
Afghanistan, okay. They harbored people claiming responsibility for an act that extremely pissed you off and refused to extradite them. But Iraq? Iraq is a prime example of the States invading a country just to get at its natural resources. What happens the next time the States need oil? They find a pretense to attack Saudi Arabia? What if the Middle East bands together under Iran's nuclear umbrella - how long until Norway becomes a valid goal? I see Iraq as a rather unsettling sign as it shows that the States will do virtually anything to get what they want.
The expression "put up or shut up" applies here: either Germany needs to become a world military power, or it needs to accept that other nations run the show.
But who do the States protect us from? North Korea? They're more of a threat to Japan and South Korea and even if they did actually threaten us, Europe has the nuclear capacity to play Unilaterally Assured Destruction with them. (And yes, it makes sense to see the EU as an entity here as neither France nor the UK would be happy about their neighbors getting nuked.) China? In fifteen years the Chinese will simply buy their way past anything the States do.
Or do you mean this in a "de facto we already rule the world" way? You know, if American behavior keeps reflecting this I do expect us to do warfare on them - economic warfare. Europe is the world's biggest market and we have very good trade relations to China, soon to be the world's biggest everything. If the USA keep making themselves look like the bad guys we can simply shift our economic attention away from them and convince them to do the same. If we make ourselves important enough to, say, China, Russia and India we're even rather safe as none of them could attack us without pissing off the others. And yes, while China has a bad human rights policy, they at least respect other nations' sovereignty (yes, I know about Nepal; the problem with the States is that they respect no other nation's sovereignty).
Right now the USA are an aging superpower on its way out, desperately trying to somehow keep themselves relevant, pissing off everyone in the process. A bit like the RIAA, if you will. I just hope they don't get desperate enough to do something really stupid.
Apart from the UK and France still having nuclear weapons, the USA being a NATO member has absolutely nothing to with, for example, making up bad excuses for attacking Iraq (and dragging us into that mess with you). Or running black sites over here. Or extraordinary rendition (whether you believe it or not, there are intelligence services besides your own). Or using WIPO to push DMCA-style legislation on us in a rather transparent case of the government bowing to their sponsors.
The problem is not that the States have big guns. The problem is that the States believe they are entitled to do whatever they want. Where is the difference between an absolutist protector and a tyrant? And when does such a country go from a protector of liberty to a threat thereof? All the free speech in the world does nothing for us if we ultimately have to bow to another country's whims.
I didn't say "impossible". What I am saying is that it appears to be better for people to be able to openly identify their political views so that others can debate them.
Well, the classical Nazis wouldn't because they'd risk getting lynched. Many neo-Nazis do; they just chose different symbols (well, they essentially ripped off the Skinhead movement from the UK).
Right after WWII, Germany was a defeated nation full of ex-Nazis; imposing restrictions on speech was justified and necessary. That has nothing to do with whether such restrictions are a good idea in a mature and functioning democracy.
The question is, when do you stop? After five years, ten, twenty? When the last Nazi is dead? That last one still hasn't occurred. When the idea of national socialism has died out? That's not going to happen anytime soon. We as a people are just starting to become comfortable with ourselves, so you can't expect us to drop all cautionary measures we have taken.
You're just making that up. Paragraph 185 is an unusual restriction on speech even within Europe, distinct from libel laws. It's so unusual that the EU itself has taken a position against these kinds of laws.
Again, "libel" is a bad translation for what it tries do cover. Also, yes, I've dug a bit more and have uncovered a lot of rather petty cases (although in essence it all revolves around when someone feels that his reputation or dignity has been violated). I certainly wouldn't shed a tear if we got rid of it.
It's by no means a perfect law but it's also not a law that can be used to suppress political speech - as evidence I point to the current election campaign of the SPD, which is essentially rather infantile name-calling, as well as the various anti-Schäuble actions, the most high-profile of which calls him the direct successor of the GDR's Ministry for State Security. The SPD is getting no legal trouble from the other parties at all and Schäuble has tried all kinds of obscure things (like trying to pretend the people demonstrating against him are enemies of the constitution) - if the insult paragraph could help him he'd use it.
Yes, one is openly insulting two billion people. Christians, atheists, and other groups often insult each other in that way without rioting. Insults are a normal and necessary part of political discourse in a democracy. If people riot because they feel insulted, then the problem is with the rioters, not with the people making the insults.
I never felt that deeply offending someone was necessary in political discourse but if it's deemed that way over there it does explain why nobody likes the USA anymore.
Imagine there's a bit more violence in Iraq, the USA responds by sending more troops and in response to that some Eurasian newspaper makes a caricature that shows Barack Obama as Adolf Hitler, declaring that the States will now begin an ethnic cleansing of the Middle East. Because, you know, America is all about ruling one's subjects with an iron fist. I'd expect a lot of Americans becoming quite angry about that - it's not only very insulting but also shows the American values as something they explicitly aren't. Even if only one percent of all Americans gets angry, that's still three million people. One percent of all Muslims getting angry makes twenty million people - enough to seem like an army and make for some very impressive TV footage, even though most muslims don't even care about it.
You argued that laws similar to paragraph 130 exist in the US and in support of that statement pointed to an ADL page on hate crime laws. But paragraph 130 is very different from US hate crime laws. Hate speech is generally legal in the US, even speech advocating illegal violence against minorities.
Ah. I would've known right away had you quoted the sentence where I talk about the Sta
Isn't it obvious? If you make Nazi symbols illegal, many Nazis that would otherwise be wearing them won't be wearing them.
Er, what? The only ones wearing them would be the ones who want everyone to know their ideals. Do you really think forbidding them to wear a certain symbol is going to magically make it impossible for them to inform people about their opinions when they really want to? I mean, neo-Nazis do exist and many of them are fairly easy to spot because they tend to have their own identifying marks. The others are hard to spot because they don't want to be identified.
Because you talk about these issues as if the US and German positions were two equally valid, historically proven, and plausible choices. But if you actually look at the history, you'll find that that's not the case.
So essentially the position the USA enforced here is wrong because it's not as old as the one they enforced at home. Gotcha. Older is always better.
No, that is incorrect; offenses under paragraph 185 need not be libelous.
That's how the paragraph seems to be usually read, however. Also note that "libel" is not an accurate translation; "violation of dignity" is much more accurate.
Yes, like for example cartoons representing the Prophet Mohammed.
You are referring to the ones that show Mohammed as a suicide bomber? However could that disturb public peace? I mean, we're just openly insulting two billion people over the actions of a few thousand (which actually run counter to the beliefs of the people we're insulting). I certainly can't see how that could lead to problems.
Not even close; you're confusing hate crime laws with hate speech laws.
Paragraph 130 (Why does/. strip out the paragraph symbol? It's in 8859-1.) explicitly talks about acts of speech. I don't see why it shouldn't be called a hate speech law. I never said "hate crime law", if that's what you mean.
Typically German: you think that because it's in the law the matter is settled. In reality, the fact that it's in the Constitution is only the beginning: it takes laws, courts, and police to implement that, and how the boundaries are drawn is a constant struggle.
Which, according to your depiction, does not occur. At least you gave the chance of free speech being remstricted for moral reasons as 100%. Since the First makes such an action unconstitutional and Americans love their lawsuits (ie. I assumed that the struggle does occur), the only way such restrictions can be absolutely certain is the First being defunct. Amendments can only become defunct by being repealed, thus you argue that the First has been repealed. Or, of course, nobody bothers to oppose unconstitutional laws anymore.
I don't see much of an outrage over free speech restrictions in Germany. In fact, most people don't even seem to understand the issues or history very much.
Look, if you find non-total free speech unacceptable ask your parents or grandparents what the hell they were thinking when they obviously screwed up over here. The policies we have today didn't appear out of thin air, they were put into place during nation building. I do understand the history of why we value human dignity higher than unrestricted speech. Before criticizing someone over not understanding their history, first please actually learn about that history yourself.
(By the way, telling a German that we don't understand our own history because we made preventing the same mistakes and not free speech our top priority is pretty offensive and, to paraphrase you, typically American. Essentially you criticize that using different premises we came to a different conclusion than you did.)
Some people are so uninformed, they don't even know
Actually, a consequence of these laws is that you cannot "spot them" on sight.
please elaborate. You keep repeating that it's impossible to identify bad people without absolutely free speech, yet you failt to explain why.
Don't be so glib. The US legal tradition of free speech goes back many centuries.
And that is relevant to what I said how? I pointed out that it's possible to talk about Nazis without allowing them themselves to talk. To use another analogy: Chemical weapons are illegal to own and there are treaties restricting them on the nation level. Yet we can talk about them and we'd be able to identify them, even though people are not allowed to use them freely. Because knowing something and experiencing something are two different things.
Germany doesn't just prohibit "hate speech", it prohibits speech based on whether it may offend particular groups.
Can you point me to the corresponding laws? Right now I only find 185, 166 and 130 StGB.
185 prohibits insults - however, insults under 185 need to be libellous (the direct translation would be "reputation-violating", so the meaning is that they need to be aimed at damaging the victom's reputation). Merely making a statement someone doesn't agree with doesn't apply.
166 prohibits the "insulting of denominations, religious communities and ideological communities" but only if the insult occurs "in a way fit to disturb public peace". Again, I can say anything I want about a religion as long as I don't cause an uproar. The paragraph isn't one of our best but it's not quite as restrictive as you make it look like.
130 prohibits "agitation of the people" and targets (to quote this translation of the StGB) "[w]hoever, in a manner that is capable of disturbing the public peace incites hatred against segments of the population or calls for violent or arbitrary measures against them; or assaults the human dignity of others by insulting, maliciously maligning, or defaming segments of the population", plus people who disseminate/publicly display/offer to people under 18 writings doing the same, plus people who deny the Holocaust. Apart from the last bit that's a pretty average hate speech law and it doesn't cover "might offend". While the USA doesn't have a similar federal law, many states have similar state laws. The Anti-Defamation League has a nice map.
So, you're saying its certain then? The reason Americans enjoy free speech rights is not because the Constitution says so, it's because people constantly fight for them.
That's funny, I must've looked somewhere else when they repealed the First Amendment so they could stop people talking about sex.
And the fact that these politicians think this helps them politically tells you a lot about German voters, as does the fact that you and others don't seem to think it matters much.
So the Americans are okay with a constitutional amendment denying healthcare benefits to same-sex couples? Because Sarah Palin said she supports it and I didn't see anyone physically attacking her over it. Oh, there was an outrage? Funny, same thing happens over here (on a smaller scale, though, because people aren't quite as touchy about gaming).
Just because I'm not surprised that politicians are trying everything to profile themselves doesn't mean I just sit there and take it in. I just know that nothing big is going to come out of this one and I care more about the politicians with a lower profile, a real malicious agenda and actual power over what they talk about. Of course this teacup-sized storm doesn't alarm me much; I know it's not going anywhere and won't be talked about once the election's over.
A laudable value, but how should one go about doing that?
We went with "make sure everyone can spot them on sight and keep them from gaining new traction".
If you don't allow Nazi propaganda, Nazis can't be identified, they can't be publicly debated, and they can't be publicly opposed.
And if you don't legalize murder your soldiers can never defend your country. Turns out that there is something between "total freedom to do whatever you want" and "nothing is allowed at all". You get to see a lot of swastikas and even genuine propaganda material in school; about half of our history lessons (and history is mandatory most of the time) are about Germany ca. 1928-1948. You can even buy, analyze, debate and whatever Mein Kampf if you want to. Publishing it is difficult, though, because copyright was transferred to Bavaria after the war and they're a bit finicky about it; this will end when the book enters public domain in 2015.
Also, nobody cares what you debate about. As long as you don't glorify the Nazis or say the Holocaust didn't happen.
But the next threat to German democracy is going to involve restrictions on free speech, blind trust in government decisions, and suppression of public debate, and that makes the ability of the German government to take actions like this so worrisome.
Someone here actually trusts the government? I mean, besides the government itself? Besides, I still don't see how our free speech would suddenly be restricted in a way that doesn't allow us to criticize the government. We do not have a general censorship here and in fact we see the anti-Nazi restrictions as something distinct from censorship. And we really don't like the idea of being censored.
But it isn't so specific, is it. Germany also prohibits speech that may be offensive to members of different religions, for example. And, as this story shows, politicians can quickly enact politically expedient new restrictions on speech.
Actually, the "different religions" thing is connected to the Nazi thing in that the two overlap significantly. And I still don't see how we would go from hate speech to political debate. It's about as likely as the USA imposing limits on political speech on moral grounds.
Plus, it's an election year and politicians always talk nonsense during election years so people remember who they are. This is just a bunch of politicians wanting to be reelected and pandering to the generation that didn't grow up with video games. They don't even have any weight to throw behind their demands. It's like a bunch of US governors demanding that the president vetoes something.
The worrisome guy is the man in the wheelchair (Wolfgang Schäuble). He does want to kill off liberties left and right to get back at the people who put him into that wheelchair and he has the power to actually have a chance to do it. These windbags are nowhere near his league.
Yep, that's why I'm actually going to vote tomorrow. (By the way, that might be one reason why a strong EU is so popular in Europe: Unlike our nations, it can still be influenced by the voters.)
Yes, the allies didn't want US-style free speech in Germany; it would have been unwise to have that a few years after WWII with many Nazis still part of German government. But that was a couple of generations ago and the old Nazis are dead.
Yeah, but "never allow anything like the Holocaust to happen again" is the central value this country was built upon. Throwing that out would be like the USA tossing the concept of liberty.
There's no need to complain to anybody. WWII has been over for more than 60 years, and Germans are in control of their own destiny again. If Germans want to change their constitution or their laws, they can.
But they don't want to. About every single moment between 1945 and ca. 1990 has been spent reinforcing a hatred for our own past - such much so that coming to terms with our past is considered revolutionary and still somewhat controversial in 2009. National pride is something we had to reinvent; it happened just a couple years ago (and many people are still sceptical about it). The result of that conditioning is that national socialism is anathema to us. It is to be avoided at all costs.
We literally don't see how unlimited free speech can be superior to free speech that doesn't allow Nazi propaganda - the latter has a much higher chance of national socialistic ideas taking root and those are the absolute, ultimate evil.
It's simply a matter of different core values. The USA were founded upon "we weren't allowed to speak up so now we'll make free speech our highest ideal". Germany was founded upon "we committed incredibly atrocious crimes against humanity; keeping that from happening again is our greatest ideal".
Don't take that as an argument, for censorship, by the way. It's an argument for a very specific, limited kind of censorship that has to be used with care.
What these idiots want is to desperately profile themselves in an election year. They can't outright say "we don't eat babies like $OTHER_PARTY" or they would.
To be honest, I am thinking about doing something... Moving to Sweden, where the Pirates actually have clout. I'm not so sure whether the German ones will ever take off. Or whether I will ever be able to actually vote for them, not living in one of the large population centers.
And no, I won't open a local chapter and try to get elected. I don't have the money to not do a regular job fulltime and I'd feel unclean if I actually went into politics.
There is essentially no anonymous speech, since all communications ports need to be registered and all electronic communications are tracked and logged.
By the NSA. I'm not aware of any German agency doing that. Okay, my ISP has to retain who used which IP address for the last couple months. Do you mean that? Or do you mean the push for warrantless wiretapping, which essentially turned into a decade-long legal battle, unlike in the United States?
Registration, tracking, and surveillance of citizens in Germany seems to be so widespread that people don't even care anymore and just think it's the same way everywhere.
The United Kingdom is not part of Germany.
People have the attitude that "as long as the government does it, it's OK, at least we aren't like the US, where Google tracks everybody", which is a bizarre view given Germany's history.
Which is exactly why Wolfgang Schäuble (the current Minister of the Interior) is all but warred on by privacy advocates, a somewhat recent example being the CCC acquiring one of his fingerprints and publishing it.
And you only need to look at the 1930's to see how a progressive and liberal German government can turn into a genocidal regime bent on world conquest.
Thee government at the time was completey unable to make any decisions due to being cluttered with many small warring parties. That's one of the reasons why the NSDAP was so successful with its rhethoric: Half of it was actually right.
And it's not just the government that does it: some of Germany's biggest corporations have been illegally listening in on employees and customers and even forged communications.
And got slaughtered by the media and sometimes sued by the employees for it.
Somehow, the idea of "free speech" seems to have gotten lost in the translation after the Western allies laid the foundations for German democracy after WWII.
We've always had it, with restrictions (many of which were defined by the Allies themselves). Full-blown free speech like in the USA was never intended to exist here. Since the only people we could complain to about it have nuclear weapons and a "nukes mean no responsibility" attitude I think I'm not going to.
That one is rarely invoked; most likely when a game shows Nazi symbols (which are highly illegal in Germany). Lately they have become more relaxed so WW2 games are sold here but a well-known banned game is Wolfenstein 3D (back from the "shows a swastika = glorifies the Third Reich" days).
Amusingly, some German games are censored when yold outside Germany. In the strategy game The Nations two of the factions produced cigarillos and booze, respectively, as food. In the States, that had to be changed to lollipops and candy.
Every FPS can be classified as "violent" because violence happens to be the primary means of problem resolution in the game. At the same time, FPSs happen to be the genre most likely to produce a sellable engine as FPSs are the most concerned with graphics and their optimization. If we just go and ban every FPS we do shoot ourselves in the foot - we drive off Crytek, the golden boy of the German gaming industry, and we ensure that nothing like them will come again. (Granted, Crytek is rather internationalized today, likely because we already had this bullshit before.)
Meanwhile, we also hurt other economies because gamers are as likely to stop playing FPSs as Wolfgang Schäuble is to respect the citizens' right to privacy. We'd just replace 100% of the legitimate sales with filesharing downloads and make the games that much more appealing to impressionable teenagers. Cue the USA getting mad at Germany for not stopping the rampant piracy and Germany being confused over where it suddenly came from.
Well, it will deal a very harsh blow to the German video game industry. Essentially, we have CryTek. And Factor 5-- nope, they first left Germany and then went out of business. Rainbow Ar-- no, they died in the 90s. Okay, Sunflowers and Zuxxez are still alive. And Blue Byte.
So essentially we have Anno and The Settlers. plus Two Worlds That's two moderately successful series and a rather forgettable game. Gothic doesn't quite count; I don't even know if JowooD is going to have someone develop a fourth game after they scared the original developers away.
On the other hand we have Crytek, who are internationally reknowned for making a kick-ass engine that generates sales on its own and have pushed out a number of AAA titles. Yeah, we really could stand to lose that. I mean, who wants foreign companies licensing a locally-produced game engine for lots of money? Or a locally-produced game being a hot seller worldwide?
Of course laws should be more than a business decision but the tenacity with which some German lawmakers keep trying to ban violent video games (violent shows and movies are A-okay, as long as they have an age recommendation) leaves one wonders if they shouldn't invest some time actually reading about the subject (and not just from one source) and thinking about the possible consequences.
Replay value is bad. Is makes you play the old game instead of buying new ones. Games need to be fun enough for you to buy but not fun enougn for you to keep. Because gaming is not about fun, it's about fulfilling the industry's entitlement to your money.
Yes, but as far as I know MKV uses the V component of DVD - which is actually an open standard. It's the Ds that are expensive to license. You'll notice that Blu-Ray (or, as it's known in technical parlance, BD) doesn't contain the V component at all, which is one reason it was so expensive to develop: They had to completely redo the whole infrastructure themselves just so they could drop the V and one D (that backfired, though, as their replacement B component is just as expensive).
MKV avoids that hassle by being a virtual container format (in fact, the K stands for "kontainer", which is Russian for container). The whole "plastic disc with microscopic pits that gets read with a laser" part gets pushed into software where much of it can be optimized away (in fact, the whole plastic substrate layer occupies a whole of three bytes in an MKV file; five bytes for the gold master). That way they can avoid having to license the Ds - they just made their own DVD drive-like software device that's just different enough to not require royalties.
Once the MKV core is loaded into cache, it's like having a DVD player built into your CPU. As CPUs are blazingly fast today, you see no performance penalty in the emulation. It's really quite ingenious.
GM needs to save a failing company that has only ever been run by people that have been there so long they have no idea what life outside the company is like.
So they need to replace the execs. A company contains more than just those. You need some people who know the company to keep the company running. And that's not just execs, that's fleet managers and safety officers as well.
I damn sure wouldn't want someone with zero work experience take over factory safety on his own when there's a perfectly good 45 year old safety officer who has an excellent track record, keeps on top of current regulations and exactly knows just where the workers are willing to bend them for convenience. You could send in the young one to back up the old one and learn the ropes from him but don't just fire the old one because the new one is younger and has a bold new look on how to avoid dust explosions.
I'm not talking decision makers here. GM has shown that theirs are useless. I'm talking about the people who actually keep the company working. That's low-level managers, overseers, administrators etc. There are a number of positions where you really want solid work experience.
I'm not taking offence to the "40", I'm taking offence to the "everyone". Such broad terms usually end up including people you don't want included.
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No, military (especially automatic) weapons are actually regulated. For instance, the US Army can have clips with more than ten bullets in them.
Aw, c'mon. I was really hoping for a big coalition between "Europe - Democracy - Esperanto" and The Violets (who campaign for holistic politics).
There's also the little matter where Sweden has the second fastest home internet connections in the world by a respectable margin (even though they still come nowhere near Japan's ludicrously big pipes).
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However, that implies that all rape games are about men raping women. Given that we have two (three is intersexuals/transitioning transsexuals count) sexes to put on both sides, we get four to nine cases of objectification. And given the Japanese creativity when it comes to porn, there most likely would be a catered-to market for woman-on-shemale strapon sims.
If everyone is objectified by everyone, does that impinge on someone's rights?
Ah yes, I forgot Poland. If I remember correctly in many cases those political points were scored by trying to give the States as little support as possible.
Afghanistan, okay. They harbored people claiming responsibility for an act that extremely pissed you off and refused to extradite them. But Iraq? Iraq is a prime example of the States invading a country just to get at its natural resources. What happens the next time the States need oil? They find a pretense to attack Saudi Arabia? What if the Middle East bands together under Iran's nuclear umbrella - how long until Norway becomes a valid goal? I see Iraq as a rather unsettling sign as it shows that the States will do virtually anything to get what they want.
But who do the States protect us from? North Korea? They're more of a threat to Japan and South Korea and even if they did actually threaten us, Europe has the nuclear capacity to play Unilaterally Assured Destruction with them. (And yes, it makes sense to see the EU as an entity here as neither France nor the UK would be happy about their neighbors getting nuked.) China? In fifteen years the Chinese will simply buy their way past anything the States do.
Or do you mean this in a "de facto we already rule the world" way? You know, if American behavior keeps reflecting this I do expect us to do warfare on them - economic warfare. Europe is the world's biggest market and we have very good trade relations to China, soon to be the world's biggest everything. If the USA keep making themselves look like the bad guys we can simply shift our economic attention away from them and convince them to do the same. If we make ourselves important enough to, say, China, Russia and India we're even rather safe as none of them could attack us without pissing off the others. And yes, while China has a bad human rights policy, they at least respect other nations' sovereignty (yes, I know about Nepal; the problem with the States is that they respect no other nation's sovereignty).
Right now the USA are an aging superpower on its way out, desperately trying to somehow keep themselves relevant, pissing off everyone in the process. A bit like the RIAA, if you will. I just hope they don't get desperate enough to do something really stupid.
Apart from the UK and France still having nuclear weapons, the USA being a NATO member has absolutely nothing to with, for example, making up bad excuses for attacking Iraq (and dragging us into that mess with you). Or running black sites over here. Or extraordinary rendition (whether you believe it or not, there are intelligence services besides your own). Or using WIPO to push DMCA-style legislation on us in a rather transparent case of the government bowing to their sponsors.
The problem is not that the States have big guns. The problem is that the States believe they are entitled to do whatever they want. Where is the difference between an absolutist protector and a tyrant? And when does such a country go from a protector of liberty to a threat thereof? All the free speech in the world does nothing for us if we ultimately have to bow to another country's whims.
Well, the classical Nazis wouldn't because they'd risk getting lynched. Many neo-Nazis do; they just chose different symbols (well, they essentially ripped off the Skinhead movement from the UK).
The question is, when do you stop? After five years, ten, twenty? When the last Nazi is dead? That last one still hasn't occurred. When the idea of national socialism has died out? That's not going to happen anytime soon. We as a people are just starting to become comfortable with ourselves, so you can't expect us to drop all cautionary measures we have taken.
Again, "libel" is a bad translation for what it tries do cover. Also, yes, I've dug a bit more and have uncovered a lot of rather petty cases (although in essence it all revolves around when someone feels that his reputation or dignity has been violated). I certainly wouldn't shed a tear if we got rid of it.
It's by no means a perfect law but it's also not a law that can be used to suppress political speech - as evidence I point to the current election campaign of the SPD, which is essentially rather infantile name-calling, as well as the various anti-Schäuble actions, the most high-profile of which calls him the direct successor of the GDR's Ministry for State Security. The SPD is getting no legal trouble from the other parties at all and Schäuble has tried all kinds of obscure things (like trying to pretend the people demonstrating against him are enemies of the constitution) - if the insult paragraph could help him he'd use it.
I never felt that deeply offending someone was necessary in political discourse but if it's deemed that way over there it does explain why nobody likes the USA anymore.
Imagine there's a bit more violence in Iraq, the USA responds by sending more troops and in response to that some Eurasian newspaper makes a caricature that shows Barack Obama as Adolf Hitler, declaring that the States will now begin an ethnic cleansing of the Middle East. Because, you know, America is all about ruling one's subjects with an iron fist. I'd expect a lot of Americans becoming quite angry about that - it's not only very insulting but also shows the American values as something they explicitly aren't. Even if only one percent of all Americans gets angry, that's still three million people. One percent of all Muslims getting angry makes twenty million people - enough to seem like an army and make for some very impressive TV footage, even though most muslims don't even care about it.
Ah. I would've known right away had you quoted the sentence where I talk about the Sta
Er, what? The only ones wearing them would be the ones who want everyone to know their ideals. Do you really think forbidding them to wear a certain symbol is going to magically make it impossible for them to inform people about their opinions when they really want to? I mean, neo-Nazis do exist and many of them are fairly easy to spot because they tend to have their own identifying marks. The others are hard to spot because they don't want to be identified.
So essentially the position the USA enforced here is wrong because it's not as old as the one they enforced at home. Gotcha. Older is always better.
That's how the paragraph seems to be usually read, however. Also note that "libel" is not an accurate translation; "violation of dignity" is much more accurate.
You are referring to the ones that show Mohammed as a suicide bomber? However could that disturb public peace? I mean, we're just openly insulting two billion people over the actions of a few thousand (which actually run counter to the beliefs of the people we're insulting). I certainly can't see how that could lead to problems.
Paragraph 130 (Why does /. strip out the paragraph symbol? It's in 8859-1.) explicitly talks about acts of speech. I don't see why it shouldn't be called a hate speech law. I never said "hate crime law", if that's what you mean.
Which, according to your depiction, does not occur. At least you gave the chance of free speech being remstricted for moral reasons as 100%. Since the First makes such an action unconstitutional and Americans love their lawsuits (ie. I assumed that the struggle does occur), the only way such restrictions can be absolutely certain is the First being defunct. Amendments can only become defunct by being repealed, thus you argue that the First has been repealed. Or, of course, nobody bothers to oppose unconstitutional laws anymore.
Look, if you find non-total free speech unacceptable ask your parents or grandparents what the hell they were thinking when they obviously screwed up over here. The policies we have today didn't appear out of thin air, they were put into place during nation building. I do understand the history of why we value human dignity higher than unrestricted speech. Before criticizing someone over not understanding their history, first please actually learn about that history yourself.
(By the way, telling a German that we don't understand our own history because we made preventing the same mistakes and not free speech our top priority is pretty offensive and, to paraphrase you, typically American. Essentially you criticize that using different premises we came to a different conclusion than you did.)
please elaborate. You keep repeating that it's impossible to identify bad people without absolutely free speech, yet you failt to explain why.
And that is relevant to what I said how? I pointed out that it's possible to talk about Nazis without allowing them themselves to talk. To use another analogy: Chemical weapons are illegal to own and there are treaties restricting them on the nation level. Yet we can talk about them and we'd be able to identify them, even though people are not allowed to use them freely. Because knowing something and experiencing something are two different things.
Can you point me to the corresponding laws? Right now I only find 185, 166 and 130 StGB.
185 prohibits insults - however, insults under 185 need to be libellous (the direct translation would be "reputation-violating", so the meaning is that they need to be aimed at damaging the victom's reputation). Merely making a statement someone doesn't agree with doesn't apply.
166 prohibits the "insulting of denominations, religious communities and ideological communities" but only if the insult occurs "in a way fit to disturb public peace". Again, I can say anything I want about a religion as long as I don't cause an uproar. The paragraph isn't one of our best but it's not quite as restrictive as you make it look like.
130 prohibits "agitation of the people" and targets (to quote this translation of the StGB) "[w]hoever, in a manner that is capable of disturbing the public peace incites hatred against segments of the population or calls for violent or arbitrary measures against them; or assaults the human dignity of others by insulting, maliciously maligning, or defaming segments of the population", plus people who disseminate/publicly display/offer to people under 18 writings doing the same, plus people who deny the Holocaust. Apart from the last bit that's a pretty average hate speech law and it doesn't cover "might offend". While the USA doesn't have a similar federal law, many states have similar state laws. The Anti-Defamation League has a nice map.
That's funny, I must've looked somewhere else when they repealed the First Amendment so they could stop people talking about sex.
So the Americans are okay with a constitutional amendment denying healthcare benefits to same-sex couples? Because Sarah Palin said she supports it and I didn't see anyone physically attacking her over it. Oh, there was an outrage? Funny, same thing happens over here (on a smaller scale, though, because people aren't quite as touchy about gaming).
Just because I'm not surprised that politicians are trying everything to profile themselves doesn't mean I just sit there and take it in. I just know that nothing big is going to come out of this one and I care more about the politicians with a lower profile, a real malicious agenda and actual power over what they talk about. Of course this teacup-sized storm doesn't alarm me much; I know it's not going anywhere and won't be talked about once the election's over.
So I follow the same course of action that sa
We went with "make sure everyone can spot them on sight and keep them from gaining new traction".
And if you don't legalize murder your soldiers can never defend your country. Turns out that there is something between "total freedom to do whatever you want" and "nothing is allowed at all". You get to see a lot of swastikas and even genuine propaganda material in school; about half of our history lessons (and history is mandatory most of the time) are about Germany ca. 1928-1948. You can even buy, analyze, debate and whatever Mein Kampf if you want to. Publishing it is difficult, though, because copyright was transferred to Bavaria after the war and they're a bit finicky about it; this will end when the book enters public domain in 2015.
Also, nobody cares what you debate about. As long as you don't glorify the Nazis or say the Holocaust didn't happen.
Someone here actually trusts the government? I mean, besides the government itself? Besides, I still don't see how our free speech would suddenly be restricted in a way that doesn't allow us to criticize the government. We do not have a general censorship here and in fact we see the anti-Nazi restrictions as something distinct from censorship. And we really don't like the idea of being censored.
Actually, the "different religions" thing is connected to the Nazi thing in that the two overlap significantly. And I still don't see how we would go from hate speech to political debate. It's about as likely as the USA imposing limits on political speech on moral grounds.
Plus, it's an election year and politicians always talk nonsense during election years so people remember who they are. This is just a bunch of politicians wanting to be reelected and pandering to the generation that didn't grow up with video games. They don't even have any weight to throw behind their demands. It's like a bunch of US governors demanding that the president vetoes something.
The worrisome guy is the man in the wheelchair (Wolfgang Schäuble). He does want to kill off liberties left and right to get back at the people who put him into that wheelchair and he has the power to actually have a chance to do it. These windbags are nowhere near his league.
Yep, that's why I'm actually going to vote tomorrow. (By the way, that might be one reason why a strong EU is so popular in Europe: Unlike our nations, it can still be influenced by the voters.)
Yeah, but "never allow anything like the Holocaust to happen again" is the central value this country was built upon. Throwing that out would be like the USA tossing the concept of liberty.
But they don't want to. About every single moment between 1945 and ca. 1990 has been spent reinforcing a hatred for our own past - such much so that coming to terms with our past is considered revolutionary and still somewhat controversial in 2009. National pride is something we had to reinvent; it happened just a couple years ago (and many people are still sceptical about it). The result of that conditioning is that national socialism is anathema to us. It is to be avoided at all costs.
We literally don't see how unlimited free speech can be superior to free speech that doesn't allow Nazi propaganda - the latter has a much higher chance of national socialistic ideas taking root and those are the absolute, ultimate evil.
It's simply a matter of different core values. The USA were founded upon "we weren't allowed to speak up so now we'll make free speech our highest ideal". Germany was founded upon "we committed incredibly atrocious crimes against humanity; keeping that from happening again is our greatest ideal".
Don't take that as an argument, for censorship, by the way. It's an argument for a very specific, limited kind of censorship that has to be used with care.
What these idiots want is to desperately profile themselves in an election year. They can't outright say "we don't eat babies like $OTHER_PARTY" or they would.
To be honest, I am thinking about doing something... Moving to Sweden, where the Pirates actually have clout. I'm not so sure whether the German ones will ever take off. Or whether I will ever be able to actually vote for them, not living in one of the large population centers.
And no, I won't open a local chapter and try to get elected. I don't have the money to not do a regular job fulltime and I'd feel unclean if I actually went into politics.
By the NSA. I'm not aware of any German agency doing that. Okay, my ISP has to retain who used which IP address for the last couple months. Do you mean that? Or do you mean the push for warrantless wiretapping, which essentially turned into a decade-long legal battle, unlike in the United States?
The United Kingdom is not part of Germany.
Which is exactly why Wolfgang Schäuble (the current Minister of the Interior) is all but warred on by privacy advocates, a somewhat recent example being the CCC acquiring one of his fingerprints and publishing it.
Thee government at the time was completey unable to make any decisions due to being cluttered with many small warring parties. That's one of the reasons why the NSDAP was so successful with its rhethoric: Half of it was actually right.
And got slaughtered by the media and sometimes sued by the employees for it.
We've always had it, with restrictions (many of which were defined by the Allies themselves). Full-blown free speech like in the USA was never intended to exist here. Since the only people we could complain to about it have nuclear weapons and a "nukes mean no responsibility" attitude I think I'm not going to.
German Basic Law. There is no German Constitution, even though there is a German constitution.
That one is rarely invoked; most likely when a game shows Nazi symbols (which are highly illegal in Germany). Lately they have become more relaxed so WW2 games are sold here but a well-known banned game is Wolfenstein 3D (back from the "shows a swastika = glorifies the Third Reich" days).
Amusingly, some German games are censored when yold outside Germany. In the strategy game The Nations two of the factions produced cigarillos and booze, respectively, as food. In the States, that had to be changed to lollipops and candy.
Every FPS can be classified as "violent" because violence happens to be the primary means of problem resolution in the game. At the same time, FPSs happen to be the genre most likely to produce a sellable engine as FPSs are the most concerned with graphics and their optimization. If we just go and ban every FPS we do shoot ourselves in the foot - we drive off Crytek, the golden boy of the German gaming industry, and we ensure that nothing like them will come again. (Granted, Crytek is rather internationalized today, likely because we already had this bullshit before.)
Meanwhile, we also hurt other economies because gamers are as likely to stop playing FPSs as Wolfgang Schäuble is to respect the citizens' right to privacy. We'd just replace 100% of the legitimate sales with filesharing downloads and make the games that much more appealing to impressionable teenagers. Cue the USA getting mad at Germany for not stopping the rampant piracy and Germany being confused over where it suddenly came from.
Already in effect as a Europe-wide policy, which you would know if you watched the Eurovision Song Contest.
Well, it will deal a very harsh blow to the German video game industry. Essentially, we have CryTek. And Factor 5-- nope, they first left Germany and then went out of business. Rainbow Ar-- no, they died in the 90s. Okay, Sunflowers and Zuxxez are still alive. And Blue Byte.
So essentially we have Anno and The Settlers. plus Two Worlds That's two moderately successful series and a rather forgettable game. Gothic doesn't quite count; I don't even know if JowooD is going to have someone develop a fourth game after they scared the original developers away.
On the other hand we have Crytek, who are internationally reknowned for making a kick-ass engine that generates sales on its own and have pushed out a number of AAA titles. Yeah, we really could stand to lose that. I mean, who wants foreign companies licensing a locally-produced game engine for lots of money? Or a locally-produced game being a hot seller worldwide?
Of course laws should be more than a business decision but the tenacity with which some German lawmakers keep trying to ban violent video games (violent shows and movies are A-okay, as long as they have an age recommendation) leaves one wonders if they shouldn't invest some time actually reading about the subject (and not just from one source) and thinking about the possible consequences.
Replay value is bad. Is makes you play the old game instead of buying new ones. Games need to be fun enough for you to buy but not fun enougn for you to keep. Because gaming is not about fun, it's about fulfilling the industry's entitlement to your money.
Yes, but as far as I know MKV uses the V component of DVD - which is actually an open standard. It's the Ds that are expensive to license. You'll notice that Blu-Ray (or, as it's known in technical parlance, BD) doesn't contain the V component at all, which is one reason it was so expensive to develop: They had to completely redo the whole infrastructure themselves just so they could drop the V and one D (that backfired, though, as their replacement B component is just as expensive).
MKV avoids that hassle by being a virtual container format (in fact, the K stands for "kontainer", which is Russian for container). The whole "plastic disc with microscopic pits that gets read with a laser" part gets pushed into software where much of it can be optimized away (in fact, the whole plastic substrate layer occupies a whole of three bytes in an MKV file; five bytes for the gold master). That way they can avoid having to license the Ds - they just made their own DVD drive-like software device that's just different enough to not require royalties.
Once the MKV core is loaded into cache, it's like having a DVD player built into your CPU. As CPUs are blazingly fast today, you see no performance penalty in the emulation. It's really quite ingenious.
So they need to replace the execs. A company contains more than just those. You need some people who know the company to keep the company running. And that's not just execs, that's fleet managers and safety officers as well.
I damn sure wouldn't want someone with zero work experience take over factory safety on his own when there's a perfectly good 45 year old safety officer who has an excellent track record, keeps on top of current regulations and exactly knows just where the workers are willing to bend them for convenience. You could send in the young one to back up the old one and learn the ropes from him but don't just fire the old one because the new one is younger and has a bold new look on how to avoid dust explosions.
I'm not talking decision makers here. GM has shown that theirs are useless. I'm talking about the people who actually keep the company working. That's low-level managers, overseers, administrators etc. There are a number of positions where you really want solid work experience.
I'm not taking offence to the "40", I'm taking offence to the "everyone". Such broad terms usually end up including people you don't want included.