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Comment by martin_a | Hacker News Reader

> to censor content that is legal to publish in most places, but not Germany

We don't really like if somebody thinks Hitler was kind of a cool guy and that he should have continued "his work". Besides that you can say lots of things in Germany without getting too much trouble.

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Yeah, so free speech is what we agree with.

Naaaaah... The first five articles of the German rule of law are pretty clear. They explicitly forbid to discriminate based on race or alike. As the ideology of the Third Reich is based on this discrimination, "cheering" this ideology is not allowed.

Things have changed in recent years. Germany now has vaguely defined "hate speech" laws, meaning they can get you for any statement they don't like. It's not just about liking Hitler anymore.

That's troubling. Has it been enforced, however? Europe - and probably everywhere else too - has anacronic laws that are rarely if ever enforced.

I'm not keeping track. Certainly a lot of things are being preemptively censored, especially on social media. People have also lost their jobs.

It is not an "anachronistic law", it is a new law that came into being very recently.

There are a few worrying cases. One person, for example, got his house raided for calling a politician a dick on Twitter [0]. There are also a few far-reaching laws, such as the NetzDG [1], which is being pretty harshly criticized. That being said, Germany has never been as pro-free speech as the US (holocaust denial, for example, is illegal for a long time already) and you can still state your opinion pretty openly, as long as you're not an extremist.

[0] https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/pimmelgate-hausdurchsuchung-...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Enforcement_Act#Critic...

Citation please?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straftaten_gegen_die_%C3%B6ffe...

That was literally 12 years ago and is not in effect and doesn't even have a German wikipedia page and the federal court would have nicked. Ist alles von der Kunstfreiheit gedeckt!

No, the censorship laws in Germany are definitely still in effect. The petition in protest against them was 12 years ago.

You need to be more specific then, which law do you mean? Because the "Straftaten gegen die öffentliche Ordnung" is a whole section of the StGB which covers all sorts of things ranging from the prohibition of running an illegal online trading platform, to trespassing or leaving an accident. The closest is the Paragraph 131 which prohibits showing violence for the purpose of glorifying violence or to degrade the "Menschenwürde" (not sure what a good translation is).

Please see the paper linked in my sibling comment above:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29475379

(tl;dr: Germany censors harmless depictions of gory violence in video games.)

Science disagrees on you with the harmless part. It is shown that violent video games desensitise people with regards to violence, just as violent movies do except there is a categorical difference interactiveness.

I don't like that fact either but to ignore facts because they don't mesh with my politics is bad.

The primary argument I am making is that Germany lacks freedom of expression, not that depictions of violence in video games are or are not harmful.

Germany lacks freedom of expression.

This may be a concern (regulatory risk) for companies who are customers of hosting companies that are subject to German law.

? That article says there was an attempt to introduce a law banning violent video games. That attempt never was implemented, so what is this link supposed to prove?

I also read it that way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Enforcement_Act

Germany always had hate speech laws. To run afoul of those takes quite significant effort though.

It's not the same thing. It has been illegal to insult people or calling for their murder. The new laws in contrast are very vague and give the government much more room for interpretation.

For example, from Wikipedia, "agitation" is not allowed.

Merely disagreeing with a politician can be considered hate speech.

It does not take a lot of effort, either, just using certain words can be sufficient.

Germany now also seems to have the concept of "protected groups" that you can not critizize in any way, which I think is probably new. I am not a lawyer, though.

> It's not just about liking Hitler anymore.

What they enforce is Nazi shit and pro child abuse publications being banned. Really not objectionable at all. If you must be angry, there are many countries that are significantly worse than this.

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