Controversial or not, the proposed web censorship legislation is now one step closer to becoming law in Germany. All this after one member decided to become a member of the Pirate Party because he opposed it. While the government argues that the legislation is suppose to stop child pornography, many international examples suggest that such censorship is also used to block political speech.
The news could only serve to push the deeply divided debate further into the limelight Germany. News is surfacing that points out that the controversial web censorship legislation in Germany has been passed by the German parliament. Already, a member of the Social Democrats, Jörg Taussig, defected from his party on this controversial issue to become a Pirate Party member – thus also marking the first time the Pirate Party managed to get a member into the German parliament in the first place.
Already, there have been protests on this very issue. An e-petition has been made to stop such legislation and gotten over 134,000 signatures.
The Pirate Party is against web censorship and made their opposition to web censorship a part of their election platform during the European elections. The German Pirate Party posted about the protests (Google Translation). They have a slogan about the censorship proposal saying, roughly translated to English, “Erase the Bocks Instead – Stop Web Censorship!”
The German Pirate Party argues that child pornography must be stopped, not hidden behind a bunch of stop signs. The argument appears to be based off of the fact that government mandated censorship can be circumvented through proxies. The currently proposed censorship legislation would put up stop signs if anyone were to access a banned website.
One thing is for certain, the way things are going in Germany, this issue is only going to get more people involved.
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We have such a filter in Norway, and except for the danger of “purpose shifting”, I dont mind it.
The filters limited use is written in the constitution as it sais clearly that censorship must not occur, except “in order to protect children from moving images”. Also the censorship is governed as a joint effort between Telenor (telecom provider), KRIPOS (FBI) and Save the Children. The only major drawback is that the lists of blocked websites is not made public. I am not sure for how long the webcensorship logs are kept.
The argument is always to combat child pornography or fight terrorism because we might be willing to sacrifice civil liberties for those causes, but thats rarely the real reason. I havent read the German proposal, but I doubt it is as restricted as the Norwegian one.
For the last time, web censorship does not help “stop child pornography”. As a comparative example, if video recordings involving actual murders are censored, it still does not stop murders from occurring or increase its rate of occurrance
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As for terrorism, why the hell would terrorists use their own Internet access when they know that it will leave data footprints leading to them? If they were that stupid all of them would have disappeared already. Also, there is very little chance that they would say “Let’s meet ” online.
‘or’ should be read ‘nor’ and I guess ‘increase’ should be ‘change’ to be more broad.
Wow, when someone says they don’t mind censorship, well thats a pretty sad statement imo. One mans terrorist is another mans hero. Why should the government be the gate keeper of information? Do you trust the government? Do you think they are infallible? Look at the US and how many errors have been made on the “terrorist watch list”, people with names that match suspects being put on lists and then being unable to fly and or dispute. Innocent until proven guilty?
Filtering the internet its wrong and its sad that people enjoy being told what they can and can’t see.
I’m half German, married Italian American and was born on the 4th July.
I was brought up with a ‘can do’ anything attitude – not the current ‘can’t do’ vogue. I don’t want some obese short sighted palsied sentimental idiot telling me what’s right – when it’s patently obvious from their ill health, rolls of fat, ignorance and pomposity that they’ve got it so wrong. Frankly I’d tear their heads off and use them for soccer..than live in their ‘Stepford paradise’.