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Censorship Your Rights Online

Study on Internet Censorship in Germany 54

Posted by michael from the see-no-evil dept.
An anonymous reader writes "There is a report on Germany forcing ISPs to censor the Internet by faking DNS entries. ISPs also seem to use this to steal mail and generally screw up the Internet. Next thing they plan is using BGP to break routing to unwanted webservers. Scary."
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Study on Internet Censorship in Germany More

Study on Internet Censorship in Germany

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  • Good old Germany (Score:1, Funny)

    by Zamt ( 585346 )
    You vish to send un e-mail? Vere are your papers?
  • Ever since /. published this story, German DNS servers inform that slashdot.org points to the aol server.

  • No no no... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by FroMan ( 111520 ) on Friday June 06, 2003 @02:12PM (#6133741) Homepage Journal
    They have it all wrong. It must be the US that is doing this. We know the US is the source of all censorship.

    </sarcasm>

    I love how everytime folks dislike a law (many of them bad) declare that they are going to move to Canada or Europe where freedoms really mean something.

    Well, lets see. Strike out Germany, they censor the web. Strike out France, they also prevent auctions on WWII artifacts. England with their video cameras and national ID cards are out.

    To tell the truth, I found I was able to get the the stormfront site that one of the links mentioned. Why? I live in the US. While we do have freedom issues here, I don't think they are quite the same as many other countries.

    Here, you are allowed to go against popular ideas. You can be a racist if you like. You can hate whites, blacks, anyone you want. You can hate the government or current administration.

    In the US you are able to create your own website and report any news you like. Infact, you can go to any website you wish, and you will actually get there (barring internet routing problems). The government isn't going to force ISPs to route around you.

    While many of the reactionary laws from 9/11 are causing problems, we have Ashcroft fighting to keep those laws on the books. You know why? Because, they are not permanent, there was a sunset clause put into the law. You know what else? Ashcroft isn't having an easy go at it.

    So, next time that you want to throw a temper tantrum that the US is removing your freedoms, keep in mind we could do much worse. We could be making it so you could not go to German sites or French sites or muslim sites or Christian sites.

    This isn't to say we should have these PATRIOT acts and such, but here we have the power and ability to fight laws like that. I think our energy is best used in that fashion, not whining how some other country that has a good law here or there but also has some other horrible laws.

    • Re:No no no... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by crow ( 16139 )
      You do have some good points in your rant. But what about Canada, Denmark, Sweeden, and such? The USA isn't as bad as some make it out to be, but there are examples of where it could be better.

      • Re:No no no... (Score:2, Insightful)

        by FroMan ( 111520 )
        Any of those might be fine, as might Germany, France or England.

        Myself, I have other issues with many of those other countries. I am not a big fan of being taxed any more than I already am. I don't know the tax rates in any of those countries, but I'd bet they are more than the US. I don't like the idea of nationalized health care, as Canada has, and Denmark and Sweeden probably have (I could look it up, but not worth it).

        My point original point was that the US isn't this draconiam state where the gove

        • Re:No no no... (Score:3, Insightful)

          by GigsVT ( 208848 ) *
          [US govt doesn't] decide what you eat,

          As long as it isn't one of the many forbidden herbs, in which case you could go to jail.

          where you work,

          Unless you want to work for a government contractor and happen to enjoy the aforementioned forbidden herbs. All government contractors are required to give drug tests.

          Or maybe you want to conduct business on Sunday, or sell alcohol, things that are still forbidden in many areas.

          what entertainment you are allowed

          Unless you want to:

          Have anal or oral sex (in m
        • I've never heard any teens and mid twenties complain about the history and foundations of the USA. I think most appreciate the history (remember, teens have heard the history and brilliance of our founding fathers more recently than their elders).

          What they don't appreciate is, like you say, the current state of some things, like the corruption of state officials, and the Bush administrations failure to stand up to the standards of our forfathers, for instance rallying against freedom of religion (one nati

    • Re:No no no... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Lars T. ( 470328 )
      Sure, ignore that the US also blocks websites. Also ignore that i had no problem accessing stormfront.org from the largest german ISP - as if I would have missed something but American Nazi Scum. But American Nazi sites don't get blocked by King Shrubya and his merry dudes.
      • What sites? Its easy to make claims, tougher to back them up.

        • Re:No no no... (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Lars T. ( 470328 )
          Al Jadzira for one, among other non-streamlined news-sites during the war you keep getting lied to about. And the sites that Pennsylvania blocked but won't name.
          • Uhmm...

            I think you are right on penn, but I could get to Al Jazeera during the war...
          • As the other fellow said, who replied Al-J and these "other" news sites were not blocked on a national level. I think someone other than yourself would have mentioned something, or there is a much larger conspiracy out there to hide the fact.

            I did some looking on the Pennsynlvania stuff. Yeah, I guess there is some law that says you can't goto child porn sites. You are right there.

            I agree that the idea of censoring them is wrong. But wait, there's more! I disagree with censoring them because of the i
            • As the other fellow said, who replied Al-J and these "other" news sites were not blocked on a national level.

              Oh, no, they were just really slow all over the world for no good reason.

              I think someone other than yourself would have mentioned something, or there is a much larger conspiracy out there to hide the fact.

              So the fact that you didn't hear about it in the streamlined media is proof it didn't happen.

              I did some looking on the Pennsynlvania stuff. Yeah, I guess there is some law that says you can't

              • So the fact that you didn't hear about it in the streamlined media is proof it didn't happen.

                I guess the fact I haven't heard that aliens did an anal probe to Lars T means it happened too.

                Not only did I not hear about it from the mainstream media, I didn't hear about it from anyone else. I didn't scour the net for information, but I do read enough sources to get a general idea of what is going on. Had I read an even remotely credible source during the war, I'd have checked it out. Heck, even if just t

              • Just like there is a law in Germany that you can't tell lies about how the Holocaust never happened.

                You just said a mouthful right there. There's a world of difference between outlawing child abuse and outlawing speech. That would not happen here in the US.

                Germany is walking right back into the Statist quagmire that spawned Hitler and you don't even know it. Y'all better start haulin' back on the reins of your bureaucrats real hard...

                The free people in the rest of the world also need to stay vigilant.

                • Yeah, I know that even the President is allowed to tell lies. At least he does so. BTW the US forced us to do it.

                  And don't tell me that the Astro-Turf campaigns to shut up people in the US are any better.

              • "As the other fellow said, who replied Al-J and these "other" news sites were not blocked on a national level.

                Oh, no, they were just really slow all over the world for no good reason. "

                You must be new here. This is called the "Slashdot effect." Most likely, more people were trying to go to Al Jazeera's servers than they could handle.
                • Well, if it had just been "regular" excessive traffic, yes. But then why did the DNS servers get swamped, not the web servers? Nope, then it's a DOS attack. But that wasn't all [theregister.co.uk].
          • Al Jadzira was legitimately down during some periods of the war simply due to the stress put on it by (the more intellectual) americans. I used proxy servers in various countries in attempt to reach Al Jadzira; however, from none of though countries could I reach it.

            I did notice that many countries *did* block Al Jadzira with warnings/notices that it wasn't allowed.

    • Re:No no no... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by dk.r*nger ( 460754 )
      The government isn't going to force ISPs to route around you.

      I think that is a very naive statement. I'm pretty sure that in august 2001 you'd have sworn that the government would never [insert power given to government by the patriot act here].

      Europe isn't perfect, either. In Denmark we are currently dealing with very xenophopic legislation - and it isn't even caused by post 9-11 panic, "we" just don't like other peoples. Add 50+% income taxes, and I wouldn't want to live here, had it not been my father
      • I don't think it's xenophobic, it's an attempt to avoid this mass immigration that other countries are facing. Let's face it, at the rates some of these undeveloped countries spit out kids, a lot of us are going to be in the minority real soon. And there isn't enough resources to go around. I think immigration should be allowed only in extreme cases, and where one can prove that they will benefit the society that they wish to join.

    • Re:No no no... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      There is resistance against censorship in Germany. Many respectable organizations and individuals have expressed strong objection on an abstract level, practical ways around this kind of censorship are discussed and tutorials are written to illustrate the futility of filtering methods. But we still have this stupid law and politicians in the regional government who work towards enforcement in their realm of influence. So yes, we're rightly accused of using inappropriate measures to further inappropriate cau

  • Not only is the method idiotic and broken... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Tuxinatorium ( 463682 ) on Friday June 06, 2003 @02:17PM (#6133776) Homepage
    ...But the cause is idiotic as well Censorship never accomplished anything of value except perhaps limiting little boys' access to likenesses of the human body, if you see that as valuable, and stopping reporters from giving out so much information about troops that the enemy starts watching CNN for combat intelligence. Everything else that censorship has done was destructive.

  • What's all this then? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Friday June 06, 2003 @06:38PM (#6135974) Homepage Journal
    This whole discussion has me scratching my head. I can't find any reference to this alleged DNS-censorship that isn't online gossip. Nothing on an actual news site. I've found reports that German companies want to implement this kind of censorship [odem.org] and of course all these claims that they've already done it. But I just don't see it. Why isn't the German equivalent of the ACLU raising a stink? Why is there no actual news?

    Perhaps somebody who actually understands how DNS works could convince me this isn't just a black-helicopter urban legend. Until then, I'm inclined to put this with that guy that "proved" that whitehouse.gov was registered in the U.K.!

    • Re:What's all this then? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by amorsen ( 7485 ) <benny+slashdot@amorsen.dk> on Friday June 06, 2003 @08:39PM (#6136482)
      You should not necessarily be surprised that the Germans accept blocking of neo-nazi sites without much discussion. I may be wrong since I am not from Germany but from Denmark, but anything related to nazism seems to be almost as offensive to a German as child pornography is. Imagine that there were sites with child-pornography operating openly in some other country. Do you think the US providers would be told by the government to block access to those sites? And do you think any civil rights group would raise more than a murmur over this, apart from perhaps issuing a report about how badly the blocking is implemented?

      In any case, such blocking is interesting from a technical viewpoint. Doing it in DNS is easy and it scales well, but it is also easy to circumvent. Doing it by inserting a black hole route in BGP is easy for the first couple, but routers will not be able to handle an unlimited number of /32 blackhole routes. As long as the router does not melt, it is a pretty effective method. There are other methods, but they all suck in at least one way.

      And then someone invented Freenet. Practically impossible to block. It will be interesting to see which country that will be the first to make it illegal.

      • I know about censorship in Germany. I've even ranted [slashdot.org] about it. My puzzlement comes from this notion that there's some dark conspiracy to censor the German internet, and all we have to prove it are some strange DNS logs.
    • There is a lot of action against this, but most of it is, of course, in german ... :)
      At ODEM.org (english) [odem.org] we have a lot of material and infos [odem.org] and so on about this -- but the most are in german.
      We have an online petition [odem.org] (Link to the english version) with more then 17000 signers, including the "internet experts" of the big political parties, the "reporters without frontier", Ian Clarke, Richard Stallman and others. You are invited to sign [odem.org] also ... ;-)

      But, yes: in the public outside of the net communi
      • Great, you've got 1700 people to sign your petition. And some of them are famous! That proves that your information is correct? No, it just proves that it's very easy to get a lot of names on a petition.

        You seem to be saying that somebody is tweaking the German internet, and nobody's raising any fuss about it because it's anti-Nazi censorship? You're going to have to offer a lot more than a few ambiguous DNS listings to make that convincing!

  • I'm sure i'm going to be slapped down many points for saying this. But in many ways, I don't see this as being much diffrent then the spamhaus project, among other sources of blacklisting spam sites.

    Now don't get me wrong, I use spamhaus my self. But make no mistake, it is a form of censorship. I use it specificly to censor sites that have had prior evidence of sending spam.

    The only key diffrence here is that Germany seems to be taking a stand on hate groups. In america there are a vast number of ISPs

  • Hi,
    at ODEM.org [odem.org] we provide a lot of stuff to this topic:

  • Quote " Some german Companies fiddle with a techniqe of using routing protocols to block unwanted web content. "

    Hate to break it to you, but using the web within a corporate environnement is a perk, not a right. And they CAN , have the RIGHT, to censor what they deem an abuse like looking for porn, gambling, whatever.

    As for the other stuff "blocking stormfront", 1) I dislike to break it to you, but some web site are contrary to german law. I see nothing wrong in blocking them. You are american and dis

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