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Germany is pressuring Neocities to censor a disclosure of their censorship
- patrickg 12y agoTo make it clear: these sites are not blocked, you can still acess them. They just don't turn up when you search 'sick forbidden sex with animals' on search engines. How far does censorship go? Where does 'protecting our kids' start? Some of these sites contain stuff that is clearly illegal here in Germany. Is prohibiting something always 'censorship'? I'd say no, it is a matter of fine adjustment which has to be carefully established and controlled.
- darklajid 12y agoI agree with the sibling comment: The parents need to take care of their kids, not the state. Putting that aside: Why the hell would you block content that already is illegal anyway? The same discussion came up with Ursula's braindead child born blocklist. It serves no purpose. It is dumb. And .. entirely arbitrary on top (who maintains the list? How do you add or remove things from that list?) Defending this thing is hard, invoking "think of the children" is probably the only option here. But.. seriously?
- ThomPete 12y agoby whos criteria?
- patrickg 12y agoWe can take the law as a starting point.
- vdaniuk 12y agoWho watches the watchmen? Many laws are unjust, unfair and oppressive.
- patrickg 12y agoPlease quote some of the 'many' unjust, unfair and oppresive laws.
- vdaniuk 12y agoYou can't be serious...
- patrickg 12y agoYes, I am serious. As a judge I hear a lot of people complaining about the laws (in Germany, that's the point). But when I ask them to give examples, they get always quiet.
- lotsofmangos 12y agoLa majestueuse égalité des lois, qui interdit au riche comme au pauvre de coucher sous les ponts, de mendier dans les rues et de voler du pain.
- ThomPete 12y agoThats not an answer. People have different opinions about what should be the law.
- bigethan 12y agoYou're missing the point a bit. Neocities isn't taking the position that the blocking is a bad thing. They are arguing that people should get to know what the government is blocking. Today it's "sick forbidden sex with animals" but tomorrow it could be "your rights as a German" and if there's no transparency, the government can easily control the information that their people see. Which is a really big thing to control without any oversight or input.
- patrickg 12y agoNo, I don't think I am missing the point. My question was basically: is censorship always a bad idea? If yes, how can we enforce the law otherwise (forbidden pictures)? Or should we make our laws towards "showing everything is allowed"? Where does it start and where does it end?
- bigethan 12y agoby "missing the point a bit" I meant "slightly off topic for the article". You had one of the initial replies to the article, and I was hoping to keep the discussion a bit more on the topic of the article, which is an interesting one. To respond to your question: I default to trusting people. So in the grey area, I'm towards whatever side lets people decide their lives for themselves. But as to specifically where it starts and ends, that's not a specific call I'm informed enough to make. And I'm sure it differs from culture to culture. What's acceptable for my neighborhood is probably wrong for others. To me, that's where things get impossible to decide on one line for everyone. So I'd trust people to define their own community mores.
- patrickg 12y agoI considered my initial post on topic :) This is a very dificult and highly subjective topic. Free speech always ends where you start to hurt other people. So there is always 'censorship' in some way or another. The group of 'anti censorship' people (no censorship whatsoever) almost always neglect that point. I think the only question is: how far should censorship go? Should we block sites? Should we block search engines (like in this case)? What material should be blocked? How can we make sure that the list of items that are censored does not 'overflow'?
- mikeash 12y agoI don't see why we can't just call it "censorship" no matter what the reason. If it makes you uncomfortable to call it "censorship" when blocking Nazi propaganda or whatever, well, good. Discomfort is a sign that you're thinking.
- patrickg 12y agoI am fine with the term 'censorship', but we should discuss: where does it start, where does it end? What kind of censorship is allowed, and what is not allowed?
- DenisM 12y agoThat kind of discussion could benefit from some facts to discuss. For example, the list of sites being blocked. Unfortunately, the German government is trying to keep them secret, which hinders the discussion. Nicht wahr?
- JoshTriplett 12y agoProhibiting or limiting access to information is always censorship. Censorship of third-party information by governments is universally wrong. If you want to protect your children from certain types of information via censorship, that's not necessarily wrong, but it's entirely your own responsibility. There would be absolutely nothing wrong with this censorship list if maintained by a private entity and voluntarily applied by individuals to their own Internet connections.
- cyorir 12y agoYou believe that censorship by governments is universally wrong, but that view is not universal. German laws have been oriented to allow censorship since the allied occupation of West Germany. It is perfectly legal by German law as it is practiced where there is no contradiction with civil or European law. The German populace was generally supportive of this censorship in the post-war period to mend the ideological rifts that drove society apart in the early part of the cold war. While views are certainly changing in the "information age," if the German populace changes its views on censorship then it needs only to change its own laws.
- rosser 12y agoThere's legal, and there's moral. The two sets are not coterminous.
- cyorir 12y agoTrue. We shape laws to approximate a vision of what should be moral. As views of morality change, the laws often fail to keep pace.
- sgift 12y agoIt is not as easy as it sounds. The law in question states (Article 5, German basic law): (1) Every person shall have the right freely to express and disseminate his opinions in speech, writing and pictures, and to inform himself without hindrance from generally accessible sources. Freedom of the press and freedom of reporting by means of broadcasts and films shall be guaranteed. There shall be no censorship. (2) These rights shall find their limits in the provisions of general laws, in provisions for the protection of young persons, and in the right to personal honour. --- In theory, it is quite easy to fix the problem: Remove (2) and you are done. In reality, no politician would ever try to do that. "You are against keeping children save?", "You are against honour?" and so on. Still, it would be for the best to remove it ... the government uses it to push every shit they want in regards with censorship - after all, basically everything can be restated to be "for the protection of young persons".
- peterkelly 12y ago> Where does 'protecting our kids' start? It starts with parents, who's responsibility it is to supervise their children and educate them about how to use the Internet responsibly. If you're reliant on easily-circumvented blacklists to protect your kids, you're doing it wrong. Specifically, the responsibility (with regards to Internet content) does not rest with a government. > Is prohibiting something always 'censorship'? Yes (at least when the thing being prohibited is information). That's what censorship is. One can validly argue about whether or not a particular instance of censorship is right or wrong, but that doesn't change the fact that it's still censorship.
- austerity 12y agoEvery single law limiting access to information ends up being abused to create censorship in favor of somebody's selfish interest, political or otherwise. Privacy laws? Abused. Libel laws? Abused. Copyright? Abused all the god damn time. When it comes to knowledge, taboos and restrictions are an archaic pre-rational way of dealing with dangerous ideas and should be put to rest right about now. There's simply no place for this kind of stuff in the modern society.
- nasmorn 12y agoThe ridiculous part is the secrecy. The US censors nipples on TV but at least that is not a secret and I will not be prosecuted for saying so
- pgeorgi 12y agohttp://www.bundespruefstelle.de/bpjm/Service/english.html http://www.bundespruefstelle.de/bpjm/Service/english.html is not very secret. The list is also opt-in, so the US equivalent would be an option on your TV to have it blur nipples or drown out certain four letter words.
- WildUtah 12y agoIt just goes to show: You can cargo cult ban anything with a swastika on it, but if you can't change the culture, the Naziism remains in the hearts of your government officials. And remember that it was the refusal of major Weimar parties to allow any discussion of aggressive reform and relief measures that lead to the rise of German Nazi and Communist parties in the 1930s. It's all self-inflicted wounds from the fundamentally illiberal ruling intellectual and bureaucratic class of the country. And when the next downturn with a murderous evil dictatorship moves in, which country is ready to prevent you from even discussing it? That country is just asking for it to happen again.
- patrickg 12y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
- lotsofmangos 12y agoIs hardly out of context with the article being commented on. "You don't get rid of history by blacklisting people from viewing it, you don't convince people that Nazis are bad by, literally, stooping to their level and censoring (okay, I went there). And, as this leak clearly proves, it doesn't work anyways."
- patrickg 12y agoPlease show me how this first post makes any point in the discussion.
- lotsofmangos 12y agoIt is a follow up to a position taken in the article. It is slightly heavy handed maybe, but the idea that a society through fear of its own past may create the tools that allows for a repeat of the very thing it is trying to avoid, is clearly a reasonable concern. The fact that we happen to be discussing Germany, doesn't suddenly stop you from being allowed to make historical comparisons.
- grecy 12y agoIt's interesting the German government publishes this list publicly in it's hashed form, but when someone reverses it they deem it illegal. Is there any legal basis to this? If I publish a list in pig-latin, can I deem it illegal to translate that into English? If I publish something in 8-bit ASCII, can I deem it illegal to "translate" that into English? How far does it go?
- hobs 12y agoIsnt that basically the DMCA?
- gst 12y agoIANAL, but many European countries have something called "Database copyright" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_European_Union#Database_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_European_...). Basically if you build a database of something you can get a copyright for the database as a whole, even if there's no copyright for the individual items. I wouldn't surprise me if the German government claims that their list falls under these database copyright laws. But even if that's the case there would still be the question how copyright treaties affect such a copyright and if this copyright is enforcable in the United States.
- DanHulton 12y agoHm. Would that still apply given that - if I read this right - the list of hashes are distributed publicly?
- gst 12y agoWhat is the license under which those hashes are distributed? Just because something is distributed publicly doesn't mean it can be legally redistributed.
- grecy 12y agoThen don't redistribute it, just distribute the step-by-step directions required to reverse it [1] (as is done on a site linked by the original article) [1] - of course, directions could be just source that does it for you, a la DeCSS
- censormirror 12y agoStreisand effect in 3..2..1.. https://github.com/censormirror/bpjmleak https://github.com/censormirror/bpjmleak
- bpjm 12y agoHere is the censored plaintext list: http://pastebin.com/NgZRSJ54 http://pastebin.com/NgZRSJ54 And here is a zip of the neocities site, including the censored lists: http://pomf.se/dbhmba.zip http://pomf.se/dbhmba.zip
- werid 12y ago> 01c62dc977afbbe6e5f3367cbe178d91 tag/anders-breivik > 032136816da36d1cd24f67eb8d404ea2 schuelercd > 034bf0787b9eaca0a73110b0e0250c59 news/96/62/Srebrenica---Die-Buehne-des-Genozid > 0666f0acdeed38d4cd9084ade1739498 fp > 068b3740462938d378ffcb768714a366 video/view/ Not sure what's going on here. Interesting to see Breivik listed though among all the porn.
- rhema 12y agohttp://bible.org http://bible.org Huh. That's odd.
- smegel 12y ago> http://nakedoldies.com http://nakedoldies.com That's a bit mean spirited and ageist.
- daledavies 12y agoc7e5b8832a5400f627a467aea1524ad9 forum/ Am I reading this correctly, are they banning all URLs containing a "forum" subdirectory?
- danceonfire 12y ago> 536931d80decb18c33db9612bdd004d4 susi Poor women called Susi.
- nocensor 12y agoLooks like the plaintext files have already been taken down. There's a copy here: https://github.com/censormirror/bpjmleak https://github.com/censormirror/bpjmleak Please fork
- Sami_Lehtinen 12y agoSecret censorship list, just like one whe got in Finland.
- werid 12y agoBut that's a DNS blocker I assume, which is used in many countries. ISPs use them "voluntarily"...
- danielrhodes 12y agoIf you go through the list, 99% of them are porn sites. However there are some glaring exceptions I saw: DailyMotion, a popular YouTube competitor with more lax content rules. main.htm - Not sure what this accomplishes! Ogrish - A shock site dedicated to gore and other types of extreme content. A relative link to a page which appears to be on a torrent site where you can download an Xbox game. And quite a few neo-Nazi or nazi sympathasizing sites (e.g. http://ihr.org http://ihr.org). Germany has banned all literature and symbols promoting national socialism, but the sites in this list are certainly not exhaustive.
- gioele 12y agoIn contrast, the Italian site of censored sites (DNS domains) is public. The bad thing is that it is "published" as a series of faxes to ISPs. Luckily those have been digitalized and put in a database: http://censura.bofh.it/ http://censura.bofh.it/ http://censura.bofh.it/elenchi.html http://censura.bofh.it/elenchi.html
- legulere 12y agoThis article does a poor job at explaining the situation. This is about a group of lists called index. They're created by the BPjM (Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons). They're kind of the strictest level of an age rating. You're still allowed to publish the stuff to people that are over 18 years old. However you're also only allowed to advertise to people over 18 year old. There are lists where they suspect it's actually illegal to publish (child porn, porn with animals, hate crime like the game KZ Tycoon, ...), however it's up to the courts to decide if it is illegal if someone publishes this stuff. So what does this mean for websites? You can still go to them if you type in the addresses, there's no DNS blocking or something else in place. Links to those websites however are considered as advertisement and thus not allowed for websites reachable by minors. This is the reason the list of URL's is separate from the other lists and is kept secret. Also note, that websites doing a real age check (not just clicking yes I'm 18) shouldn't be on the list.
- pgeorgi 12y agoWhat they desperately try to prevent (since about forever) is that the index becomes a "shopping list" among minors. The offline index was effective while being locked up in their office or other places where age controls can be ensured: publishers and stores mostly try to avoid the fines that they get for advertising index-material "to the youth" (ie. outside adult-only areas). The online index needs to be installed to routers to be effective and thus have to leave the BPjM's control. That's why they veiled it, and why they're now so furious that the descrambled list is available on the net (and in the news, too).