Deutsche Bahn to Sue Google 526
Many readers including this Anonymous Coward have written about this case: "After the DB-Deutsche Bahn (German railway comp.) won a case against Dutch ISP xs4all to remove 2 articles that were hosted on one of their servers, the DB now is going to sue Google (Wednesday) and probably in 2 days time Yahoo! and Altavista. Infoworld has an article about it. More background information about previous attempts to censor the same site can be found here and here's list of mirrors." And Yes, "Access is Forbidden."
Re:More proof that there is NO perfect country (Score:3, Insightful)
As we all know, once lawyers start to weigh and argue about things, anything can happen and right or wrong isn't really a matter anymore.
Censorship (Score:4, Insightful)
-- Clare Booth Luce, 1903-1987
Re:subsidiaries (Score:4, Insightful)
Second, imagine some radical group in the US. posting instructions on how to hijack some planes and fly them into skyscrapers on the internet. Don't you think your FBI would shut these sites down as soon as words gets out?
There goes your "free speech"...
q.e.d.
Thank you and now mod me down to oblivion for beeing a german nazi or whatever!
Re:Just out of curiosity... (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, you should read the article, it answers most of your questions.
They already asked google to take it down the hyperlinks and cached copies, but they didn't, so now they're suing
It's a tough situation : a handbook on how to destroy rail tracks is hardly worth fighting for - but even in those instances, freedom of speech must be absolute
but it sucks having to do it over some dangerous wingnuts' propaganda...
The whole story. (Score:5, Insightful)
It actually is a much longer story (and more interesting), you can read it HERE [cryptome.org]
Re:Not again (Score:4, Insightful)
A brick, and any information about making or using bricks, can be dangerous in the wrong hands too; we should ban everything about those as well.
Blocking a page about some idea to sabotage is not going to make such extremists go away or stop their actions.
It's just about control and power; and it's silly.
Re:These "Autonome" have a point, but ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, u cannot (logically nor practically) censor the web.
Re:subsidiaries (Score:3, Insightful)
Hu?
In wich world do you live?
German Constitution Article 5: Everybody has the right to distribute and express his OPINION freely as well as to inform himself freely. [...]
Note: free speach is expressing your OPINION. And it is getting free access to the OPINIONS of other people.
Free speach is NOT a detailed instruction in "HOW TO KILL PEOPLE", "HOW TO DESTROY OTHER PEOPLES PROPERTY" and "HOW TO RECRUIT TERRORISTS".
If a certain piece of paper with letters on it is free speach or an illegal encaurae of terrorism is a descission of a court.
I doub that you can call a descission of a court censorship.
Better you read the article, and make yourself an opinion, instead of jumping on the train of dumb comments
I fully support banning such stuff from the internet, exactly as I support banning child porn from the internet. But thats only my opinion.
Regards,
angel'o'sphere
Re:that is *so* funny (Score:3, Insightful)
But that couldn't happen again.
We taught them a lesson in 1918
And they've hardly bothered us since then.
-- Tom Lehrer, MLF Lullaby
Re:These "Autonome" have a point, but ... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Just out of curiosity... (Score:2, Insightful)
document is not illegal in Holland, and is the property of one of XS4ALL's customers. So far German authorities have not contacted XS4ALL, no official requests where made to remove these documents from our server.
I don't know about you, but it sounds like the documents in question are not illegal in the Netherlands (not much seems to be illegal in the netherlands).
Here is also a clip from the European Convention of Human Rights, article 10:
"Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. this right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information an ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers."
Now where is the 'not legal' part of all this? The only place i can see that happen is the party that is in Germany.. I haven't heard of this issue until today so I may not know all there is to know about it, but I did read parts of the article that don't seem to corrolate with what your saying...
The US does not have a monopoly on stupidity (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, some links on a few search engines are better advertising than numerous news articles describing exactly what the blocked pages contain...
"There is no chance to sue them in the U.S. You are really allowed to put anything on the Internet there,"
Yeah, instructions on hacking railway systems are ok, but you'd better not post instructions describing how to open legally purchased documents "protected" by some form of "encryption."
Re:Security by obscurity.. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's VERY important to remember two things...
Security by obscurity is bad when dealing when computers because computers by their very nature makes it much easier to root out patterns and obscure points of interest.
Security by obscurity in the physical world is a de facto standard and is paramount to many security issues. For example, like it or not, our goverment uses plain-jane trucks to move radioactive elements, high explosives, deadly biological materials, and large volumes of currency throughout our nation.
By not having the routes, the trucking schedules and payload information, a high degree of security is available. This is exactly security through obscurity. Would you want this information to be available? I know I sure wouldn't.
Imagine the cost (because of the physical security requirements) and the greatly increased odds of something bad happening in the event that this information were generally known to the public. I can easily imagine bad things for any number of reasons if this were public information. Since it's not, everything from protects (increasing the odds of accidents) to terrorist attacks are avoided, and this is just the short list.
In short, in the real world, security through obscurity is not only important, it's paramount to our national security...don't believe me, ask NTSA, NSA, CIA and the FBI as well as just about any other law enforcement agency. It's only with computers that this should be avoided; as a rule of thumb...
Re:These "Autonome" have a point, but ... (Score:4, Insightful)
By your logic the Allies in WWII were in the wrong for giving information on sabotage tactics to the French resistance. So much for supporting freedom fighters in tyranical nations.
This is the same basic flaw of logic that burdens the US's war on terror. According to the definition we are using (all non-government supported organized violence) our own founding fathers were terrorists.
Re:humor on hogans heroes (Score:2, Insightful)
But nevertheless appropriate as far as stereotypes go.
Of course, being as it is this stereotype holds true for pretty much all the people in the world. We are a bunch of egoistic cowards after all.
Re:Just out of curiosity... (Score:5, Insightful)
We don't need Freedom of Speech protections to protect Aunt Helen's "I love puppies!" website. We don't need them to protect Ed Jones's "The Taliban suck" page. The wingnuts are the people testing the bounds of free speech, and they're the ones who let us know how much of it we can count on.
Some argue that people like this are actually a threat to speech, by inciting the government to crack down so regularly. Personally, I take the opinion that your average government would simply attempt to regulate even less controversial speech-- things like "steal music" or "this politician sucks"-- if they didn't have the wingnuts to keep them constantly tied up in court.
PS I realize we're talking about a private company, in a country without all of the free speech protections of the US. Nonetheless, speech protections are important to us all, and should be fought for no matter where they're threatened. Particularly on the net, where one country's silly laws can potentially be applied to everyone on the planet.
Re:Who's laws are Google breaking? (Score:2, Insightful)
Hitler spewing anti-semetic statements is free speech. And as much as I and most other civilized, educated people would disagree with such statements, we can not censure someone else and not expect to be censured ourselves.
The Nazi regime rounding up and murdering millions IS NOT free speech it is murder. There is a distinct difference between opinion and action.
Allow me to use another example to illustrate the point. Matthew Lesko is this guy who advertises a book on American daytime television. He annoys me to NO end. And I often mention to my friends, "Gosh that guy is annoying, I'm surprised someone hasn't beaten him." By making this statement, does that mean that I'm going to hunt this guy down and give him a thrashing? No, of course not, because I understand the difference between word and deed. Would I support someone hunting him down and giving him a thrashing; no, while nice in concept, violence is not the answer. Not to mention that Assault is against the law (for good reason)
In summary, the right to free speech is a road that goes both ways. Not only do people have the right to espouse any opinion they have, but others have the right to promote equally opposite views on the same subject. Besides, do you want to be the person responsible for deciding which opinions are "correct" and which ones aren't?
-Runz
Re:subsidiaries (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not again (Score:4, Insightful)
But then again, information in itself has never harmed anyone. What harms is the practical use of that information and that is what is and should be illegal. Not publishing the information.
If we banned all information on how to blow things up and how to murder evil dictators, how many books, movies and documentaries would not need to be banned? I for one think that is too high a price to pay for banning people like these from publishing their ideas on the internet. As far as I know, none of the ideas in their manifesto has been used yet. So, arrest the bad guys if they are really stupid enough to use the material.
Re:Not again (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's roll... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice shot at a knee-jerk reaction.
What would I say to such a document? Post it. Link to it. Alert the media. Get CNN to do a cyber-scare article on it. Get people thinking about the state of security in their airports and the danger this represents.
Know why a group of people were able to seize guided missiles for the price of some flying lessons, airline tickets, and box cutters? It wasn't because box cutters are such a formidable weapon. It is because the passangers and crew of those airlines did not expect what was to come. Up to that point, hijackings tended to be isolated events that lead up to a police standoff on the ground. Most of the time, the majority of hijack victoms survived.
The passangers of Flight 93 quickly learned of the fate of other hijacked airlines that day thanks to mobile phones. With the cry of "let's roll" (accredited to Todd Beamer), the passangers of that flight attacked their captors. It cost them their lives as the entire flight went down in a field in western Pennsylvania. But their flight was the only one to not also crash in to a monument and take additional lives on the ground (authorities believe the flight was headed for a target in Washington).
The difference between Flight 93 and other doomed flights that day was a slim margin of knowledge. A realization that the threat was different than the past. Information.
If a group attempted the same tactic today (with box cutters, much less the nail-clippers being confiscated by airport security now), they would meet the same resistance. Additional attempts of airline terrorism (the shoe-bomber being a prime example) has lead to quick action by fellow passangers to subdue their would-be attacker.
What would a document called "10 easy ways to Hijack an airliner and slam it into a building" do? I can tell you what a lack of such a document didn't do - stop the events of 9/11 from happening.
US equivalent (Score:2, Insightful)
In the US, nuclear materials are transported by road. Imagine, for a moment, what would happen if you posted accurate information on the route information, security procedures, and instructions on how to sabotage such a transport here. Do you really believe the FBI wouldn't be knocking on your door? In the current climate, you'd probably simply disappear in some US "holding cell" somewhere, not to be heard from for months or years.
Re:Host Name Change (Score:1, Insightful)
Or other deity of your choice.
Re:subsidiaries (Score:1, Insightful)
You compared child porn to documents instructing how to commit terrorism - there is a major difference between the two.
If I wrote a game that virtually depicted a school massacre, it would be in poor taste - but legal nonetheless. Same as if I wrote a flight simulator that gave you points for crashing planes into buildings and killing people. This is akin to publishing information about how to commit terrorism.
Now on the other hand, if I personally went on a school massacre, somehow managed to survive, and used the footage as part of a game - that wouldn't be legal, it would be exhibit A.
Re:Yeah, 3000 dead civilians is +5, Funny (Score:1, Insightful)
How many in all our other wars (about every 20 years).
They died defending free speech and the constition.
Now, we lose 3K in 1 incident and suddenly the republican party wished to remove any and all free speech in the name of a security that we can never have?
If you think that airports are secure, let me come on board with a small vial of airbourne microbes. Perhaps, some airbourne yersinia pestis. a simple virus
Perhaps a modified bacteria that will release botulinum toxin in its later growth.
Or perhaps release a bit of botulinum toxin into the h2o supply for a town.
Security is something that we will never have no matter how much we try.
There will always be a way to defeat any system given enough time.
Re:subsidiaries (Score:2, Insightful)
Why? Because there are some things more important than the war against terrorism, but Ascroft and his cronies don't see it.
Re:Not again (Score:4, Insightful)
Then you go on to blatantly pervert the concept of free speech. Free Speech does need to be associated with destruction and killing. Free Speech is absolute, it's the implementations that require (out of practicality) some restrictions.
Censorship doesn't really solve the problem (Score:3, Insightful)
This is more of a general rant than about the specifics of this case, but since the discussion has veered into general free speech issues, I think it's appropriate.
Thanks to the DMCA and similar restrictions, publishing information on cracking dongles [dictionary.com] (hardware keys for software) is basically illegal. Concrete details on how to crack a dongle definately is. The people putting up information on cracking dongles usually do so for the sole purpose of encouraging others to use illegal copies of software. Clearly the dominant use of this information is criminal.
So what's the harm in censoring this speech?
Well, several years ago I was asked to investigate adding copy protection to a new software product [archive.org] (now defunct). My initial research focused on "respectable" publications on the subject. I found almost nothing useful. If the information I found was to be believed, dongles were practically impossible to defeat. So I extended my search to cracker sites. Now I found something. I discovered that all dongle technologies have been defeated on a case by case basis. I discovered which dongle technologies were trivial to defeat and which were very hard to defeat. I learned specific, concrete weaknesses and arguments for and against dongles. With this information I was able to provide solid information for my employers to use to make a decision.
Let's say that the information on dongle cracking had been removed from the web. Well, my research would have been mostly fruitless. I would have had to largely rely on the misleading claims of the manufacturers themselves and reviews that didn't make serious attempts to defeat the dongles. However, the crackers would still have access to the information, passed around via instant messaging, password protected ftp, email, and other techniques. Dongles would still be insecure, but I wouldn't be able to make reasoned decisions about them.
Re:Just out of curiosity... (Score:3, Insightful)
Please, don't forget that those examples are not limitations of speech. They are limitations of acts that may be commited through the mechanism of speech. It would be perfectly legal to yell "Fire" in an ampitheatre being used for a lecture at a firefighters convention. I see naked children on TV regularly, but they're not being sexually exploited - they're in diaper commercials. Libel and slander are just that - libel and slander, not any particular speech.
We make laws against inciting riots, exploitation of children, and spreading malicious untruths about people. We do not directly limit speech. This is an important disinction that too few people recognize.
Only if they knew (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Let's roll... (Score:5, Insightful)
I read the article which the DB is trying to have pulled (it's in German, and too long to translate -- and I bet the babelfish will choke on the technical railway terms). It's a technical explanation of how to disable the axel-counting sensors which are located at intervals on stretches of track. The sensors let the central signal controlling computer know whether there is a train on a specific track section or not.
The basic mechanism is: when a train is allowed to proceed, via a green signal, onto a section of track, the axel-counter tallies the number of axels and the central computer switches the signal to red. As the train leaves the section of track a corresponding axel-counter tallies the axels and if axels-in == axels-out, the central controller knows the track is free again.
Now, here's the rub (and this is pointed out in the article as well): if the axel-counters are offline, the signal defaults to red. Trains may still proceed along the track section, but only if they radio ahead and move at walking pace.
So the situation is nothing like teaching someone how to hijack a plane and fly it into a building. Using the detailed technical information in the article, the only thing you can do is really inconvenience trains by forcing them to slow to a crawl along track sections you've damaged the axel-counters to. Sure, if you go out and take a battle-axe to random pieces of railroad equipment, you may damage something that causes a crash; or you may stick the axe in a high-voltage transformer and electrocute yourself. But, in a certain sense, the article is teacheing responsible sabotage -- what to disable which has no chance of causing loss of life -- not to you, and not to train passengers.
Re:Let's roll... (Score:2, Insightful)
Have you ever read Debt of Honor by Tom Clancy? Well, I bet someone who helped to plan the 9/11 attack did. The book ends with a commercial airplane being flown / crashed into a senate meeting killing the president and a number of senators. This book seemed like an unrealistic problem until it actually happened. No one took it seriously until a real airplane was used as a weapon.
So I do not agree that some obscure website called "10 easy ways to Hijack an airliner and slam it into a building" would have saved anyone any grief.
Re:Oh, I know some Germans who would disagree... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Just out of curiosity... (Score:2, Insightful)
- the church of scientology bitched mightily against the German government because it removed it's religious non-profit tax status to replace it with a for-profit organization status. They love money remember. The church of scientology is being observed by the "Verfassungsschutz" (lit. = federal agency for the protection of the constitution) because it's been established by court that it has near-totalitarian goals (i.e. domination) that threatens the constitution. Other than that it operates just as freely as in the US (they bugged me, I've had their material in my mailbox, etc.).
- this is a Perl world: there's more than one way to do it (I mean democracy here). The US constitution works fine for Americans, the German constitution works fine for Germans, etc. A constitution reflects the preferences and experiences of the people who live with it (and ultimately write it). There isn't any such thing as a supremely democratic and freedom-maximizing constitution, as the many rights we enjoy collide frequently. Therefore, your sentence "it makes me grateful that I live where I live, despite its many problems" applies to many countries, and to my understanding it means that you like the constitution you live with. That's great.
Re:Just out of curiosity... (Score:3, Insightful)
So, what rights do you have in the US that I don't have in the UK? At least I can discuss ROT-13 in a public place without getting sent to jail.
Ignoring the This country vs. That Country wars... (Score:2, Insightful)
By way of disclosure, I am an American, and the thought of this sort of limitation on what Google can link to is distasteful to me; however Google has offices in Germany, and Germany has laws preventing this sort of thing. So, if a German court decides that Google was wrong in what they did, Google should suffer the consequences. End of Story. If you don't like the laws of a country, don't set up operations there, its that simple. I would expect US based companies to follow German laws, if they have a presence there, and I would expect German companies to follow US laws if they have a presence here(Russian companies too!). The only time I would expect a company to be exempt from a law, is if they don't have a physical presence. As such, I could post a copy of the offending article, and be relativly safe, as long as I stay out of Germany. And a German national could crack the CD protections of the RIAA, and be realtively safe, as long as they stay out of the US. Its either that, or a lot of people need to start preparing a hell of a legal defence for violating Shira law by viewing porn.