German parliament passes Internet censorship bill | Hacker News Reader

German parliament passes Internet censorship bill

theinquirer.net

50 pointsarthurk40 comments

>> Users will still be able to access the flagged websites, but they will be advised that viewing child pornography is illegal.

That is not true. It won't be possible to access the website.

Edit: ... by just clicking the warning away.

You can access the servers by their IP adresses. The filtering will be DNS-based

Do you have a link for that information?

This is the bill(in German): http://dip21.bundestag.de/dip21/btd/16/128/1612850.pdf

relevant part:

  Die Sperrung erfolgt
  mindestens auf der Ebene der vollqualifizierten Domain-
  namen,  deren Auflösung in die zugehörigen Internetpro-
  tokoll-Adressen unterbleibt.

my translation:

The blocking will at least take place on the level of fully-qualified domain names, the resolution of which into IP-adresses will remain undone.

I do, but it's German:

(2) Für die Sperrung dürfen vollqualifizierte Domainnamen, Internetprotokoll-Adressen und Zieladressen von Telemedienangeboten verwendet werden. Die Sperrung erfolgt mindestens auf der Ebene der vollqualifizierten Domainnamen, deren Auflösung in die zugehörigen Internetprotokoll-Adressen unterbleibt. Source: http://www.zugerschwg.com/

The important part is "Die Sperrung erfolgt mindestens auf der Ebene der vollqualifizierten Domainnamen, deren Auflösung in die zugehörigen Internetprotokoll-Adressen unterbleibt." what means "The blocking is done at least at the level of the fully qualified domain names, whose resolution to ip adresses is omitted.".

Still searching for a native English source.

Without (yet) looking at the remaining text, "mindestens" causes me hesitation. "At least" or "at a minimum" does not seem to proscribe additional filtering, e.g. of IP addresses as opposed to DNS lookups.

Perhaps the use here has a colloquial or legal definition I'm not understanding. But to me, this language sounds like the proverbial slippery slope.

So, will providers work to restrict adherence to the minimum, or will they of themselves or in response to additional pressure go further? Or will the law go further by expanding the scope of this clause?

I have no sympathy for the original crimes involved. I also have little trust in legislated censorship and in the control and mission of the same remaining undistorted. I also am uncertain whether it is an effective or appropriate means of addressing the situation.

If only an approved government agency can research the situation, will the public be adequately informed? Democracy rests upon (relatively) equal access to information. What does legislation like this do to that basis?

> If only an approved government agency can research the > situation, will the public be adequately informed?

No, they will try to keep the lists a secret.

Of course they will fail, as did all the other countries with their filter and censorship lists, but the government will try to not tell its people and destroy democracy, one step at a time.

That won't work for sites on virtual hosts.

Then you can use a foreign or even your own DNS server. Avoiding the censorship methods is not the problem.

The problem is that a democratic country installs such censorship mechanisms though in its constitution you can read "censorship doesn't take place".

I agree, that is a problem. The 'think of the children' or 'be afraid of the terrorists' argument will at some point probably be used to outlaw encryption and to make it mandatory that you sign in to the internet. No more anonymizers, proxies etc.

there are already questions in our (im from germany) government to extend this censorship to 'killing games' and such. great fun. I guess it becomes time to throw rocks again.

Sounds impossible to implement. Arms race anyone?

Right. What I wanted so say is that you won't be able to just click the warning away.

You're right, this is not very clear in the article.

You can just used a DNS server which is not inside of Germany. Or you retrieve the IP from somewhere and setup your local hosts file or whatever. That was the point why this law provoked the biggest petition in the history of the country.

It does not really help against the matter it is directed at. It just establishes an infrastructure to be used for censorship in general. And no doubt that it will be used for much more than child pornography soon...

German conservative party CDU already requested it to be used to block

- first person shooters and online games (they call them "killing games" and think they are responsible for school shootings and rampages) - sites hosting instructions to build bombs (and with them probably everything related to chemistry...) - 'pages of hate' (yep, I have no idea what they mean with that...)

Soon there will be requests to block websites of other parties, online gambling, torrents... possibilites are endless.

Also there is no real control of which pages get censored. There is not even a judge involved. There are secret blacklists only approved by the BKA, the German FBI.

I'm not exactly sure on the application of censorship in this case, and I am strongly against censorship, but saying "this site is banned because: ..." seems better to me than putting people in gaol/jail retrospectively for say accidentally stumbling into a site (say on terrorism during research unaware it could be criminal) or something.

If you stumble into a site like this, it's not a crime and you won't go to jail.

Of course making it impossible to stumble into such sites is a nice thing, but deleting the side is surely the better way than just hiding it.

First Australia and now Germany. I don't freak out when China puts the blinders on but I get real unhappy when the First World democracies start acting all backward.

Have you seen how wide Australia's blacklist is? https://secure.wikileaks.org/wiki/Australian_government_admi...

FYI the Australian plan to implement DNS level filter never got implemented mainly due to public backlash. The current blacklist is only for people electing to use the (govt. paid) client-side filtering software.

Oh good.

um isn't viewing child pornography illegal in Germany? Seems kinda redundant

This is (so the government says) directed at material which is hosted in countries that do not cooperate in the deletion of such material. Of course the government made a big joke of itself when publishing lists/numbers of those countries. It was a disgrace.

Government said child porn is not illegal in India and other countries. They forgot _every_ kind of porn is illegal in India. #fail

Of course it is. As it is in 99% of all countries. But there are elections this September, so they did all kind of silly bills to get publicity for their party.

And with many people this works: "Oh, child porn on the internet? You have to DO something against it so nobody can access it. Hiding it is the right way to go."

That deleting it and prosecuting the people responsible for it would be the much better way, and required by the law, is forgotten if you can impress some voters. And it's cheaper and easier for them.

And now that we have this censorship instrument, let's block xyz (replace with something they don't like) too. No matter that our constitution says "censorship doesn't take place".

there should be a law that prohibits passing of any major policy bills (except emergency ones) in say 3 months preceding the election.

Then they'll do it 4 months prior. Your intent is sound, though.

yeah true. but public memory is short, I'm guessing that the influence/impact of those bills would be lesser if done 4 months before the election, than 1 month before.

So the politicians pass the pandering laws 4 months prior, but talk them up around the election.

Then they'll just call it an emergency and pass it anyway.

Obvious solution nobody mentions in the comments: use Tor.

http://torproject.org

A work-around at most, not a solution. First, TOR can be outlawed just like hacking tools and copy-protection circumvention programs.

Secondly, it's not about technologically educated people not being able to communicate any more. It's about the masses, the have-nothing-to-hide 95%. It's about the BKA being able to tell those 95% that Stefan Schmidt's blog contains evil illegal stuff and that by consequence, Stefan Schmidt shouldn't be let near your kids.

Sadly most TOR servers have already been shut down in Germany. Some of the server providers have been accused of spreading child pornography and other illegal activities themselves. The pressure is immense.

I was talking about using Tor as a client. In this moment I'm considering Germany a country whose censorship you want to avoid, just like China.

Yeah, but you can't use Tor effectively as a client if there are not enough nearby servers IMHO.

Wrong. Your Tor client won't necessarily choose them. Tor doesn't work like most P2P applications choosing other peers depending on the speed. It chooses an aleatory sequence of 3 Tor nodes that changes every 10 minutes.

This is a sad day for Internet.

People like me, who were old enough in the late 90s to discover this new medium and explore our fantasies, whether porn, or so many free games, and so many other free stuff, like filling those forms that get you no where, talking to some person miles away, reading ancient books, dude it was fun.

We knew this day would come however, when our subconscious dream of having an outlet with no rules, an anarchistic environment where one has complete freedom to say whatever they wish, free from the knowledge that anyone is looking over their shoulder, that anyone knows who they are, that anyone cares about what they say or see. This is the place where rich and poor are alike, treated alike, a place in which one can travel from phsycis to china, from cars to conversing about business.

Child pornography is abhorrent and despicable, but so is bestiality, some think porn in general is too, some think films with violence should be banned, games with violence, etcetera.

When my children will grow to my age perhaps they will never have known of a different internet, yet I will be glad to tell them the tale of a place where no one ruled and everyone was free, free from the knowledge that anyone is watching them, that anyone knows them, that there were any consequences to their actions. I will tell them that in that period, the stale and static internet that they now have, was blossoming, dynamic and advancing at incomprehensible speed. I will tell them that this place was the land of freedom, where man and women where able to escape the propaganda of their countries and find out the truth, where men from tyrannical states were able to get out the news of what is happening inside.

I will tell them that this was the land of freedom and like every other freedom land it fell to those who distrust us, to those who believe that we are incompetent, weak, unable to look after ourselves, unable to know what to think, what is right and wrong.

When a democratic country opts in to censor this place, it is a sad day for freedom itself. Has Germany forgotten where only 60 years ago their censorship and propaganda took them? Think of the children! - they cry. And I am, I want my children to have an outlet which is governed by no one, I want my children to have a place where no one knows who they are so that they may feel entirely free to say whatever they wish with no exception whatever, because words are what makes us think and no one has been harmed in the past 20 years from people being able to say whatever they wish.

It is abhorrent that a democratic country opts in for censorship and I think that if the time has not come to say enough, the kettle is boiling to the near limit.

If all the people who care about freedom on the net fight back, we'll win. I don't know where you live, but if it's Germany there's the Piratenpartei Deutschland at http://piratenpartei.de/

You can find your national Pirate Party at http://www.pp-international.net/

Try and support the free and anonymous Internet project: http://freenetproject.org/

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