Germany introduces internet censorship

[Syt]

German parliament passes bill in fight against child pornography sites

The legislation requires Web hosting companies to post "stop" signs when internet users try to access child pornography sites. The bill still has to go through several stages before it becomes law.

The motion has been the subject of a protest petition, with opponents claiming it is a first step towards Internet censorship. The petition has gathered 130,000 signatures calling for the bill to be scrapped.

The proposed law has been promoted by Family Affairs Minister Ursula von der Leyen, who claimed it was an "important sign from society.

"We in Germany won't stand for it any longer that images of children being raped can be called up on the Web," said Leyen.

Lawmakers modified the bill to respond to the criticism and added a sunset clause whereby the legislation would expire after three years.

Others claimed that the bill did not go far enough in restricting access to child pornography.

Internet users will still be able to access child pornography sites even after the stop sign appears, but they will have to click through the warning, which informs them that viewing child pornography is a crime.

Once the legislation passes, police officials will have to draw up a list of Web sites that feature child pornography and send the list to all telecommunications companies.

The bill also requires Germany's chief privacy commissioner, Peter Schaar, to regularly view the lists. Schaar has opposed this, saying it is not his job.

There were already calls by polititians to use this censorship tool also for blocking access to violent computer games and other things.

Critics say that it's a populist cop out that glosses the problem over instead of going after the creators/hosts of such sites. One IT expert said that phishing sites are usually killed within hours while the process for child pornography can take weeks. Additionally, there were complaints that people could easily go around the blocks by using proxies and that a lot of the business is  going on in file sharing circles, not on hosted internet sites.

The list of "bad sites" will be non-public.

[Neil]

I was going to say, if they know about child porn sites, why don't they just kick in the doors and go after the site owners?

You really have to wonder about how the stuff gets around, mind you.  I somehow doubt that you can just type 'child porn' into Google.

[viper37]

I was going to say, if they know about child porn sites, why don't they just kick in the doors and go after the site owners?

every time the subject comes around, we're told it's because they are outside the national territory, or in some fucked up place where it's tolerated.

You really have to wonder about how the stuff gets around, mind you.  I somehow doubt that you can just type 'child porn' into Google.

P2P, IRC chat rooms where people exchange links or files or the last time they arrested some people it was some forum in Germany, dismantled by the police there, then the info transferred here. 

Apparently the FBI and various law agencies (one such recent case at least) do catch people by posting a web site where the user is required to register with his credit card to get child porn.  As long as they're dumb, they're easy to find.

[Grey Fox]

It use to be easy to find with Google, maybe that changed now.

[Malthus]

I was going to say, if they know about child porn sites, why don't they just kick in the doors and go after the site owners?

You really have to wonder about how the stuff gets around, mind you.  I somehow doubt that you can just type 'child porn' into Google.

I assume like-minded perverts find each other through chat rooms, gradually develop a trust in that way over time, and then agree to share each other's "stashes".

Much like Langusihistas, only somewhat less offensive.   

[Viking]

This has been the case here in norway for a while already. If you try to access certain sites from here you just go to a police warning page.

[Zanza]

Meh. I predict this will be misused for something unrelated to child pornography within three months after it is installed.

This shows once again the anti-liberal and populist tendencies in our mainstream parties.