Even More Restriction For German Internet 330
tikurion writes "It's only been a few weeks since the law dubbed Zugangserschwerungsgesetz (access impediment law) was passed in the German Parliament despite over 140,000 signatures of people opposed to it. The law will go into effect in mid-October 2009. Now Minister for Family Affairs Ursula von der Leyen implied in an interview that she is planning on extending the reach of the law, claiming '...or else the great Internet is in danger of turning into a lawless range of chaos, where you're allowed to bully, insult, and deceive limitlessly.' More on golem.de via Google translate (here is the German original)."
Re:Umm.. why? (Score:4, Informative)
I was further doing some reading and here is something interesting:
http://www.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/it-medien/die-angst-vor-der-totalen-ueberwachung;2434939;2 [handelsblatt.com]
Einführen müssen die Filterstrukturen Internet-Provider ab 10 000 Kunden. Für kleinere Unternehmen wÃre der finanzielle Aufwand zu hoch. UniversitÃten und Ãffentliche Bibliotheken sind ausgenommen.
Ok translated... Any ISP with under 10,000 clients can ignore this, as well small companies, universities, and libraries...
TYPICAL GERMAN politics, come up with a screwy law, and make it even more screwy! So I guess what I can take from this is that child porn is ok to see at a university, but not a corporation or large ISP... Yeah that makes sense, really does...
Solution to this problem: Pirate party! (Score:4, Informative)
TYPICAL GERMAN politics, come up with a screwy law, and make it even more screwy! So I guess what I can take from this is that child porn is ok to see at a university, but not a corporation or large ISP... Yeah that makes sense, really does...
I guess they introduced these exceptions because implementing the censorship infrastructure on the ISP side takes a great deal of time & money. Obviously only big ISPs can afford that ;)
The big parties of the German government once again proved that they're just doing what they want and not what the citizens want! That's why I'm going to vote for the Piratenpartei [piratenpartei.de] (Pirate party) on September 27.
Please forgive that woman (Score:5, Informative)
She has been recently discovering the internet, before she was living happily in Barbieland playing with her Disney ponies.
The wakeup call was simply too hard for her.
Seriously, if you read interviews with her, that woman is the german equivalent to Sarah Palin. Stupid dangerous outrigt arrogant and does not even listen one second to anyone!
Re:4chan (Score:5, Informative)
IIRC, it's not that Germans don't value the freedom of expression, but rather that they're still suffering from a pretty bad case of what we'd term 'pendulum swing'. You see, after World War II ended, they got a little touchy about people being able to openly spew hateful and hurtful speeches. They clamped down pretty hard on peoples' ability to say what they want, though not directly through legislation, and it never really let up.
You're mostly correct, except it wasn't the Germans themselves who did it. It was the Allies, then still occupying Germany, who imposed most of those restrictions as the required condition of Germany becoming a free independent state again.
Re:"despite over 140,000 signatures..." ? (Score:3, Informative)
There's a rule in software support: "For every customer who complains about a bug, there are a hundred that are also experiencing it, but don't bother to complain." I propose that the same can be said about signatures like these.
Re:Umm.. why? (Score:5, Informative)
Because "Zensurulla" (censorship Ulla) as the German Miss Education has been nicknamed, has a long history of political stunts and blunders.
Very well remembered (even though she tried hard to downplay it and make it forgotten) was her attempt to encourage academics to have more kids. She was pissed at the "lowlives" who pump out baby after baby even though they couldn't get them what she deemed a good life and education, while people with PhD's simply don't have many kids, if any. So she envisioned a bonus for people with high education if they had more kids. Quickly nicknamed the "Akademikerwurfprämie" (university graduates litter bonus).
Appearantly she didn't take into account that a few hundred bucks a month ain't enough to encourage someone with a career and an income beyond 6k a month to toss it all for a kid if all they got in return was a bonus they could possibly only laugh at.
So now she stumbles with her feet firmly lodged in her mouth from one blunder to the next, hoping that she finally manages to come up with an idea that could possibly get her some recognition and make all the former "ideas" forgotten. Well, it works, but only because one stunt is even more harebrained than the one before.
Re:Impedimented (Score:4, Informative)
You mean, to make sure some law like the "Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz" could not become reality anymore? And yes, this law came into existance a decade ago.
This is why I will vote for the Pirate Party (Score:3, Informative)
This is exactly why I will vote for the Pirate Party at the next election.
I don't agree with some of the stuff the Pirate Party stands for but I absolutely don't agree with anything the CDU, SPD or any of the other major political parties stand for.
Re:4chan (Score:3, Informative)
The abuse of the tool already happened... or at least the abuse is already intended. Just after this law was accepted (matter of single digit hours, not days, mind), politicians asked to extend this tool to contain sites besides CP. The next thing is terrorism. After that? Well, I think filesharing is a top candidate.
Nobody guarantees that it will stop there, though.
Re:4chan (Score:3, Informative)
Re:4chan (Score:3, Informative)
In fact, there was no decision as such to split Germany in two. Immediately after Germany's surrender, it was split into four occupation zones (US, British, French and Soviet), but this was always intended to be temporary. However, the zones under occupation of the Western powers and zone under Soviet occupation each formed a separate government, each of which claimed to be the rightful government of all Germany. The differences could not be reconciled (the Cold War was heading into high gear at this point), so each wound up ruling its portion of Germany.
Re:Minister for Family Affairs (Score:4, Informative)
I hope you're joking. Orwell was a self-professed socialist. Well, nowadays we'd call him a social democrat, but still.
His 1984 was squarely aimed at...the commies!
It was aimed at Stalinism and totalitarinism, which he viewed as very much what socialism _shouldn't_ become. He was smart enough to see that no right-wing nutbag needed such a book.
Re:4chan (Score:3, Informative)
He hasn't started any wars so far.
He doesn't seem to be in any hurry to wind down Bush's wars, either. Granted, it's a lot easier to get into a war than get out of it, so I'm willing to give him a pass on this one. But --
I also haven't heard of him condoning practices that violate international treaties.
Then you haven't been paying attention. He is extending Bush's monstrous policies on "enemy combatants" and vigorously fighting any effort to open up the records. Glenn Greenwald has been covering this extensively on Salon for the last several months; look through the archives [salon.com] and you'll be pretty shocked.
Look, I voted for Obama, and I haven't yet -- quite -- ripped the "Vets for Obama" sticker off my car in disgust. I still have no doubt that he'll make a much better President than McCain would have. But while I expected him to back off somewhat on most of his campaign propaganda once he got in office, as all politicians do, I have to say I'm really kind of surprised at how thoroughly he's turned his back on what appeared to be some core values.