This morning Germany’s family minister Ursula von der Leyen (CDU) met with people from major internet provider to sign an agreement which deals with the establishment of a DNS based filtering system to prevent people from accessing child pornography. Let me say this at the very beginning: Fighting child pornography is the right thing to do. I condemn child pornography in the strongest possible terms, but here in Germany a lot of people have no doubt that this is just an attempt to bring internet censorship to Germany with sailing under false colors.
It’ll be the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) which will control these filter lists whereby it’ll be decided whether the access to a specific website is permitted or prevented. These lists won’t be made public, of course, which means that there won’t be any legal possibility to check the content of those lists. Therefore those lists will be expendable in the easiest possible way, e.g. blocking websites critizising the government or p2p related websites, . By experience in other countries, e.g. Denmark, Finland and Thailand, it’s easy to realize that content filtering is something you don’t want to have in the world:
- Finland’s internet censorship domain lists for example also includes the finnish anti-censorship website lapsiporno.info
- Thailand’s filter list for example contains 800 YouTube videos, several web boards and many sites which are dealing with critizism of its king
- Denmark with almost 4.000 filtered websites is also filtering legal websites like the Dutch transport company Vanbokhorst
Besides the fact that filtering via the Domain Name System (DNS) is kind of pointless since all one needs to do is to change the DNS server’s address to a different DNS server which doesn’t consider the government’s censorship lists, the energy and money would be better spent on getting the people who are offering child porn via their servers to others. Almost all of these servers are located in middle-european countries and the States (information based on the CCC’s analysis of the filter lists). Therefore, it wouldn’t be impossible to find and charge those people who are offering child pornography.
In addition, there’s no law which regulates internet censorship in Germany. The major provider are downright blackmailed by the government not to be mentioned with the same breath as child pornography.
According to the german website Zensurprovider the following provider are working together with the government to establish internet censorship by their own choice:
- Alice
- Arcor
- Deutsche Telekom
- Kabel Deutschland
- O2
- Vodafone
Other provider will act after laws have passed legislation:
- 1&1
- Congstar
- Freenet (Strato)
- KielNET
- NetCologne
- Versatel
At last the provider which don’t want to have something to do with internet censorship:
- EWE TEL
- M-net
- Manitu
- QSC
We’ve been there today from 9 to 10am at the press and visitor center of the german government, with approx. 200 people to express our deep concerns about internet censorship while Ursula von der Leyen, Joerg Ziercke (head of the BKA) and people from Germany’s five biggest Internet provider entered the building via its backdoor to sign the contract and to celebrate its closure.
At least we’ve been heared by the media with a lot of press coverage for a 200 people demonstration (e.g. that’s me demonstrating on a picture at Spiegel Online, thanks for the feature), but it still looks like that the law will be legislated on April 22th. Hopefully this won’t happen since the Internet inter alia has been built to let people freely decide which information they want to access or publish and not to be told what they may access and what not.
Image sources:
- Stopp sign from zensurprovider.de
- Image from depressingnews.net (cc-by-nc-sa)
- Taken from Taknil’s soup.io
Deutsche Regierung verpflichtet ISPs zur Einführung von Webfiltern …
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[...] Opinion on Germany’s possible internet censorship (17.04.2009) http://www.matejunkie.com/opinion-on-germanys-possible-internet-censor…; [...]
[...] because of Germany’s overall (internet) historical and legal background, I expected much more protests and critics by anti-censorship organisations (e.g. Odem, CCC) and individuals about the controversy [...]
[...] topics like the “Indexing and Censorship of German Websites“, and the shutdowns of several websites like “rivva“or “medienlese“, [...]
[...] because of Germany’s overall (internet) historical and legal background, I expected many more protests and critics by anti-censorship organisations (e.g. Odem, CCC) and individuals about the controversy [...]
Hey everyone,
I just want to point out (or try to with my bad English) that EVERYONE in the whole world is allowed to support this petition, because german constitution grands everyone to write petitions to the german parliament (or any other public institution of germany). This right has the totality of a human right in germany (some might say, because we are a nation of complainers ;-)) – Even childern, foreigner … may. Everyone means everyone.
If you can read German, in this thread of the discussion site of the online-petition, you can read exactly the laws that grand you these rights:
https://epetitionen.bundestag.de/index.php?topic=1564.0
(starts with a discussion to fill out the registration correctly – later that foreigners are allowed to sign the petition also)
So – why should foreigners sign a petition – THIS petetion – in germany:
1.) Even if you are a visitor in Germany, you have the right (again granted by german constitution) to get information by every (legal) public source you like – without censoring. Of course child porn illegal. But the mechanisms to block this content can easily exended to every content – and there are no general control mechanisms – the BKA (german FBI) decides by itself which sites should be blocked – the perfect mechanism for censoring.
2.) If you are in germany, and let’s say, go to an internet cáfe or use the connection of your hotel – and you reach a blocked website with bad luck, your IP is stored by the BKA. And the BKA has then officially thinks you are searching for cild porn – and because you are using internet not from home – there is the danger that it is not possible to find you the very next day. It might be not nice, if the police awaits you in the lobby of your hotel – only because some spambot or cyber-worm “helps” you to find illegal sites.
3.) The lists of blocked sites are secret. If you are not using a german provider, you will never know if YOUR homepage, blog, commercial website, ect. is blocked.
4.) This is an infrastructure for censoring – and we all know, if its installed, it will be used and extended. Do anyone in the world wants to have the germany Nation to be uninformed, wrong informed, censored? – AGAIN. History shows – we can do this quite effective and with uncontrolable consequences.
sign the e-petition to show, that even foreigners don’t want Germany to be censored again.
1.) make an account on the petition portal of the german parliament:
https://epetitionen.bundestag.de/index.php?action=register
email (repeat email), password (repeat password)
And then your name and adress:
Frau/Mann = Mrs./Mr.
Name = sirname
Vorname = first name
organisation = institution, company… (optional)
Titel = academic title if any (optional)
Straße und Hausnummer = street and house number
Postleitzahl = postual code/zip code
Wohnort = place of residence/city
Land = country
Bundesland = federal state of germany/foreign countries – choose the last one (AUSLAND) if you are not living in germany
Telefonnummer = telefon-number (optional)
then activate option “Ich bin einverstanden” – which says, you are ok with the privacy-policy of the portal.
At last prove, not to be a bot with:
“Visuelle Verifizierung” – type in the letters you see in the picture on the bottom of the site,
Then push “Registrien”-Button.
Your username is generated automatically: “NutzerXXX” – XXX is a number.
2.) sign in with the username and your password.
3.) Sign the e-petition:
You find the right one at:
https://epetitionen.bundestag.de/index.php?action=petition;sa=details;petition=3860
click on: “Petition mitzeichnen” – sign petition
Its in the field “Anzahl Mitzeichnungen” (number of signings) – the forth blue box.
Congratulations: You have signed a e-petition to the german parliament – against censoring the internet.
greetings,
M.A.