German State Alters DNS To Censor Web Sites [updated]

Rabenwolf writes: "In the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, the first ISP (ISIS Multimedia) has given in to pressure from the state government and has started to block foreign websites with supposedly "illegal content" by changing the corresponding DNS entries. ISIS customers trying to access these sites are redirected to the website of the local government. ISPs in North Rhine-Westphalia will have to pay a fine if they continue to provide access to sites with "illegal content" through their DNS servers. It's not as bad as China or Saudi-Arabia, but it makes you think... An article from the heise newsticker is here, and if you don't sprechen Deutsch, Google might help." Update: 11/22 15:23 GMT by T : As sqrt points out, this report is misleading: "A single technican altered the DNS Entries to demonstrate it is possible. His changes were already reversed. Heise already posted a new story about this today."

Well..

Just use a different name server then.

Pathetic attempt

Anyone finding themselves redirected can use any number of simple DNS tools to find out the real IP (by querying a root server, then the authorative server), then simply access the site by IP rather than FQDN. This may sound a little technical for Johann average, but not when simple instructions are made available to them.

(This would not work with sites that rely on HTTP1.1 to tell them the name of the site, so that many sites can be hosted on a single IP, but that is less widely used than it might be.)

IP addresses?

If this is based on DNS entries, tnen what is stopping people using the IP addresses instead?

I don't 'sprechen' GoogleDeutsch either :-(

(From Google)
The entrance offerers had questioned thereby whether the entrance to unpleasant, abroad can be prevented gehosteten Websiten at all effectively.

I think I might as well just learn German ;-)

Site-Restriction Already retracted

according to this [heise.de] article on heise, the restriction is no longer in effect. According to the press officer, a technician did it on his own and not in accordance with company policies.

Re:Will this teach slashdot editors?

The update needs an update: the blocking continues, just not ISIS but other providers, ISIS does not seem to be very open about what has really happened and according to our local government almost all who protested are are probably nazis.

Different places have different ideas

I really hope people actually think about this before replying about how this is simply wrong. Different countries have different ways of dealing with things. In America, for example, Freedom of Speech is enshrined in law - this gives an enormous amount of protection to citizens from their government, which is good, but also ensures the right of racists and others to say what they like, and recruit new members. In other countries, they frequently take a different approach, and for example consider protecting minorities from hate speech to be more important than letting everyone say whatever they like.

I wish people would understand that these are simply different ways of going about things, and certainly each has its own advantages and disadvatages. I don't honestly think, for example, that one groups is simply correct about gun ownership - perhaps America /is/ correct to claim that citizens need to be able to assert control, and not be powerless against their own government, but there are clear disadvatages. The same with speech - given no censorship, and no ability to assert local laws over internet content has major disadvantages, as well as the obvious advantages.

Re:Different places have different ideas

and as long as only hate speech and Nazi propaganda are banned, things are fine.

But once you have the mechanism in place to enforce whatever is banned, it becomes easy to do so. Let some time pass and people are comfortable with it. Now something more can be banned and it will have a little resistance but with time that settles down. Wait for some troubling times, as Germany suffered right after World War ONE, and things are ripe ... and the mechanism is in place ... to let the Nazis or other ill-intent groups have their way.

anti-hate-speech laws focus on the wrong thing

Anti-hate-speech laws, whether in Germany or Francs or the U.S., seem to be predicated on the idea that the speech itself has some sort of magical power over people's minds. I think that's very wrong, and it distracts attention from where it's needed most.

A number of different groups would have you believe that the swastika was this magical symbol that automatically turned rational people into genocidal creatures: All you do is hide the swastikas and everything's okay. Remember that the Holocaust had a very specific economic and political context: For a number of reasons, the German people had endured one of the worst economic declines ever to be suffered by an industrialized nation, and they were terrified and desperate. This does not excuse what happens, but it gives a much more sensible explanation than what normally passes for historical analysis -- "We need to keep the images of swastikas away from impressionable white kids", or "Germans are just a racist people", or similar pap.

So now Germany has a problem with skinheads (though it tends to get blown way out of proportion because the rest of the world watches the country very carefully). So why is that? Is that because German teenagers can get their hands on albums by talentless oi-skinhead bands? Or maybe, just maybe, it's because the reunification of Germany has been fraught with all sorts of economic and political stresses, and there are too many scared, uneducated, hopeless Germans who are looking for a scapegoat.

Of course, when it comes to what a politician can do about it, there's really no option at all, is there? Either he can stand up and say "We should work hard to make sure that everybody has good economic opportunities" -- and be branded as some stuck-in-the-past Marxist -- or he can point fingers and say "Let's keep Nazi images off the internet!"

Re:Censorship isn't a "different idea"

Could someone tell me, does this guy *actually* not understand that the first amendment doesn't cover Germany, or, er, did he just vote for Bush?

FBI Internet-tap plus unsecured DNS = trouble

As I commented [slashdot.org] on Nov. 14:

A [problem threatening free speech in the U.S.] is the FBI Wiretap of the entire Internet [foxnews.com]

The new FBI plans would give the agency a technical backdoor to the networks of Internet service providers' like AOL and Earthlink and Web hosting companies, Baker said. It would concentrate Internet traffic in several central locations where e-mail and other web activity could be wiretapped.

coupled with the Internet's unsecured DNS [slashdot.org]. The FBI could surreptitiously censor subtly or DOS sites that criticize the government, for example.

No longer true

This has already been reversed. See the newer article on heise [heise.de]

Redirected to local government?

That could be interesting. A german types in thenazipartyarentthatbadafterall.de (or its German equivalent), and they get their local government website.

Could be worse, I suppose. We might see the rarest of conditions, when politicians don't want the people's votes, after their picture seems to appear on amianaziornot.de

Curious...

They mention "illegal content" quite a bit, but I don't see where they define it. Then again, the Google translation left much to be desired and I did not read to the end of the article. Can anyone elaborate on it?

Side note: It would be most strange if the "illegal content" was pornography, from what I understand, prostitution is legal in Germany. Most would say that is morally worse than a little pr0n. (Me, I could care less).

I guess its all moot anyway.

Not as bad???

Why is this not as bad as China or Saudi-Arabia? Censorship is censorship, and governments trying to restrict their peoples access to information on the Internet is equally despicable regardless of the information or the method with which it is attempted.

The world has suffered too much already to the German people's willingness to allow their governments to manipulate and control them. I say shame on all those who are allowing it to continue...

DN-its-slow-acting?

Already in Monday the Duesseldorfer offerer Isis Multimedia Net changed appropriate DN-its-slow-acting on its name server.

Can someone who speaks german please explain what a DN-its-slow-acting is?

Site content anyone?

Anyone know what type of sites they were attempting to filter? Even if it was just another fascist sysadmin, he must have had a list from somewhere.

This is a Good Approach

Rather than sue websites (like France has done to Yahoo) Germany is attempting to address content issues within their own borders through technical means. I may or may not agree with what they are attempting to keep out, but I respect their right to try and I respect the fact their solution is lawyer free.

Of course, anyone with a phone number to an out-of-country ISP and a modem will have no trouble getting around this weak blockade, but that is a seperate issue.

Another example

Hopefully, the folks who kneejerk respond to stories about similar abuses in the US with "hah hah, the US sucks, come live in a real country" will keep this and similar problems (such as the French encryption policies and Yahoo lawsuit) in mind.

The Internet is shaking up the status quo globally, and the assaults on our freedom of speech to stop it are similarly global. If the US removes it's citizens' freedom, it affects you, whether you're in Georgia the state or Georgia the country.

Additional Info

There is googlized additional link [google.com] about the situation from the magazine Telepolis

Google gives the translated title as "Net barrier for Fritzchen stupid", with somehow somes it up nicely

It's so fucktarded, it's laughable

Just install a DNS server (as provided on any *nix distrib), and have it not connect to the ISP's (default setting), et voila, forget that shit.

I read in the paper that they not only want to censor "nazi" sites, but also Rotten [rotten.com], which displays very bad taste, but bad taste has never killed anyone, has it?

It's always the same problem with censorship: they claim to only target extremist groups, but there's always collateral damages.

List of blocked sites.

The Caos Computer Club has a transcript [www.ccc.de] of the letters sent to the ISPs by the Government. They demanded the blocking of: front14.org, stormfront.org, nazi-lauck-nsdapao.com for illegal nazi-content (which is illegal in Germany for historical reasons) and rotten.com As a site that uses pictures undermining the dignity of man and endangering the youth. I'd personaly - as a german citizen - prefer to see more money spent on media-education so people could make an informed decision about good and bad links to follow than on this campaign that opens doors to censorship (which is against our constitution btw.)

Why is censorship bad?

OK so everybody says it is but i can't really work out how many people have actually thought about it themselves. The main aurguement seems to be that once your an adult it's your own resonsibility about what you see, belive and say. However judging by what some people do say belive and say thiers quite a big aruguement for cencorship... i gues the question allways comes down to who gets to do the cencorship. I persnoally belivve that their is a certain point where cencorship is a good thing. It's just a questions of finding that point, and agreeing on it.
Apologies for the spelling.
--
Burt "Out of my mind back in 5 minutes"

Sites NOT blocked anymore

As somebody else said already, the story was retracted after I submitted it. Apparently a technician changed the DNS entries without authorization from his superiors to demonstrate how easily it could be circumvented. But the state government is still trying to get the ISPs to adapt these measures. Read more about it here [google.com].

Fragmenting the namespace?

It looks like this has already been retracted. Still, it's interesting to imagine the possible ramifications.

If a country implemented DNS blocking like this as a long-standing policy, it's easy to imagine people trying all sorts of technical fixes to get around it. People would set up their own "All Hate DNS", or maybe they'd distribute .hosts files with lists of blocked domains ...

But once you're doing that, why even use the old domain name? If you had www.killalljews.com resolving through the "All Hate DNS", wouldn't you also want www.killalljews.hate, and www.finalsolution.now, and everything else?

It introduces the possibility of a conflicting, though smaller, namespace, being overlaid on the DNS -- one more step towards fragmenting the namespace [fhwang.net]. Not that such fragmentation is necessarily a good thing, but it sure would be interesting to watch ...

It gets worse

Now that ISIS has stopped blocking the sites under massive objection from free speech advocates, the local government has released a press statement in which they claim that ISIS gave in to racist pressure. Guess we're all nazis now because we didn't want to allow our government to take the easy route to complete content control.
The statement is here: Pressemitteilung 467/2001 der Bezirksregierung Düsseldorf vom 22.11.2001 [bezreg-due...orf.nrw.de]

Isolated case

This is only an isolated case. Till now, there is *NO* consensus between the ISPs and the law enforcers.

I had a lot of meetings with the BKA (something like the german FBI) about fighting criminality in the internet. And they underestimate scale and complexity of the net.

I give you one example. There is a software called PERKEO. PERKEO is able to checksum files quickly and has an internal database of known checksums of child pornography images. They argued, that most child pornography images (which are exchanged through the internet) are well known. Somewhat like 95+% shell be in the database.

In the discussion with the ISPs they argued, that it would be easy to add PERKEO to the proxy server. For every image accessed, the checksum is created and compared with the database. In case the checksum matches, the access is blocked.

When i tried to explain, that the introduction would only result in countermeasure (automatic modification of images), it was taken as unwillingness.

Every meeting (i know about) ended with the same results: Everyone is willing to fight criminals, but the is no modus operandi. The law enforcement agencies have wishes the ISPs do not consider compatible with the law and constitution.

Some politicians and law enforcers are growing more and more frustrated. So a state (Nordrhein- Westfalen) tries to work with laws that put more responisbility on the shoulders of the ISPs.

This generates confusion and the confusion results in such events like the one discussed.

CU, Martin

Against the German constitution?

I'm an American, not a German, but I thought that Germany's constitution forbade this. In particular, quoting from Article 5:

(1) Jeder hat das Recht, seine Meinung in Wort, Schrift und Bild frei zu äußern und zu verbreiten und sich aus allgemein zugänglichen Quellen ungehindert zu unterrichten. Die Pressefreiheit und die Freiheit der Berichterstattung durch Rundfunk und Film werden gewährleistet. Eine Zensur findet nicht statt.

Or, in English:

(1) Everyone has the right to freely express and disseminate his opinion in speech, writing, and pictures and to freely inform himself from generally accessible sources. Freedom of the press and freedom of reporting by means of broadcasts and films are guaranteed. There will be no censorship.

Could someone who is German or who has studied German law please clarify?

Interesting

I just got off the phone yesterday with a client from germany who was telling me that his website that we host here in america was pointing to a porn site. The content on his page was correct, as was apache's httpd.conf file, and the dns records on his nameserver.. Everything was setup correctly.

I told him that someone was probably playing with his ISP's DNS records. Go figure :)

Does it matter to those who really want?

It's very easy to pass over all this stupid barriers (including country firewalls). All I have to do is ask one single question.

Does anybody have a proxy (anonymizer) server avaiable?

Nothing else to say.

Run your own nameserver...

I've found that in many cases, using the nameserver your ISP hands you will result in a 1-2 second per lookup delay - most ISPs have horribly overloaded their DNS servers. Where I work, I was seeing 2-5 seconds per lookup. I brought this to the attention of our IT staff, and had them reconfigure our plant nameserver to do the lookup directly. Name lookups went from 2-5 seconds to <100 msec. Since we are a large shop with lots of clients, it makes sense.

Running your own caching nameserver will speed up your browsing, and if you use a real name server package, you can configure it to do the lookups itself rather than going through your ISP's servers. Thus, you can prevent them from screwing with your DNS, you can use alternate root servers if you so choose, and you get better response.

I'm somewhat shocked that Assimilation-XP doesn't have a caching nameserver....

Slashdot - a form of retribution.

Slashdot: News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters; and retribution against oppressive/anti-people/anti-intellectual/anti-free dom....... policies.
You censor something, and we'll make sure you don't have a website to show ... atleast for some hours ... and we'll cause your sys admins a lot of headaches.
Phear the power of 800,000 odd geeks with a LOT of bandwidth and free time.

root servers

All you need to do is install a dns server capable of resolving from the root servers - which bind 9 will do out of the box.

12 other ISPs still blocking

Reading the press release [bezreg-due...orf.nrw.de] on the site of the state government, I am astonished to see 12 other providers in NRW are still blocking the sites.

The article says that the government threatened the ISPs with fees up to 1 Million DM if they don't comply. ISIS forwarded e-mails concerning the matter to the government. The article ends with bashing on ISIS for taking back their measures.

Rumours for nerds

Update: 11/22 15:23 GMT by T: As sqrt points out, this report is misleading

"Slashdot - rumours for nerds. Stuff that might have happened"?

/jeorgen

Anyone not running their own DNS server...

... deserves this. Certainly it's the least difficult software I've ever installed on linux. When I first tried slackware years ago, I was constantly bugging people to help me with this or that, but even back then I managed to install bind on my own.

Besides, there is yet another benefit to running your own named. You're one step closer to escaping the ICANN tyranny. I'll let others argue which is worse, that or these German shenanigans.

Its hard to censor

If a government wants to start censoring the Internet in their country, they have to be careful. If the laws there are already strict then they have no problem and can go right ahead without worrying about riots. Otherwise, they must slowly turn the people around with PR to make them think that the censorship would be for their own good.

For example, they might start off by saying that the Internet promotes violence and criminal activity or terrorism. They might also explain that criminals and terrorists can use the Internet to communicate and collaborate without being traced. Another point would be that potential criminals could have access to sensitive information such as explosive techniques, or the locations of various potential targets. More recently they could put forward the point that newer trends such as p2p file sharing spread child pornography, graphical violence, and pirate material such as music, algorithms which could endanger an economy.

After this PR campaign a majority of people could be persuaded that Internet censorship is a very good idea. Given that allot (even most?) people have never used the Internet or not regularly, these will be easily led. The government could then proceed to censor. But of course that would never, ever in a million years happen in any civilized country would it? :)

ISIS is blocking again.

The fake DNS entries on ISIS' server are active again. Note that they are not just redirecting www.rotten.com, but the entire domain, via a wildcard CNAME entry.

to lighten things up a bit

firs of all, i am german, and i am writing this from a german perspective.

having read through the comments, i would like to add a few things.

firs of all, it affects just one state. in germany, each state is responsible for the media by themselves. this includes things like assigning frequencies and so on.
this particular state tries to push the local ISPs (which are not the ones used by the majoraty of the people living there anyway) to block access to those websites. this has been (and will be) opposed by the ISPs, for obvious (technical and constitutional) reasons. one ISIS technician did it, to prove it was possible.
it is uncertain if such a government blocking would be legal.

i agree with all of you saying censorship is bad in general. i also believe it is wrong in this special case.

but there are some things you should take in account, before judjing germany as some repressive country.
those are, of coures, historical reasons. the nazis used media propaganda not only after they gained power, but from the very beginning of their movement, as they had the support of some big publishers. and they used a hole in the constitution of the weimar republic to abandon the constitution alltogether. to prevent this in the future, when the new constitution was made, making it protective had a top priority. protective means that any attempt to fight the constitution is illegal, and certain key paragraphs must not be changed (including the one about censorship being illegal, by the way).
so if you promote a plan to abandon the constitution it is illegal, if a party proposes to abandon the constitution, the party is illegal, and if the party has no democratic structure - guess what.

nazi symbols are illegal, denying the holocaust is illegal, basicly anything pro-nazi is.
contrary to popular believe Mein Kampf is not, but the copyright is claimed by the state of bavaria, so you can't buy it (you can't read it either, i tried it once but didn't make it past the first chapter).
i believe this should be kept up for some 40 more years. imagine you have suffered under the nazis, been arrested by the gestapo or maybe even sent to a concentration camp and you see the same symbols again on someones t-shirt.

but to get to main point: nazi propaganda in germany is illegal. so some people have their sites hosted somewhere else. 90% of german language nazi content is hosted outside of germany. so the idea is to block access to it from within germany. but three question remain:

- is it possible?
- is it legal?
- is it good?

the legal status is unclear, but critical.
the technical possibility is, to say the least, questionable.
the issue iif it is good is just being discussed. i think it's not, a proper educated mind should be able to deal with propaganda, from any side.

i wanted to write something about the different freedoms you have in europe and in the US, but i will do that in another post...

Use a different DNS!

You can point your computer to whatever DNS server you want. Just point to one in the US.

Who rules NR-W?

Which party rules North Rhine - Westphalia? (Or is it just Düsseldorf?

liberties germany/US

i believe there are a few things to be said about civil liberties in europe, compared to the ones in the US.

in the US you can say basically anything you want. you can buy guns freely and drive a car when you're 16.

in germany you generally have the right to promote your opinion publicly, but some restrictions apply. the restrictions are about nazi propaganda and symbols, attempts to abandon the constitution, and anything that hurts anybodies dignity.
someone quoted the sentence Soldaten sind Mörder (soldiers are murderers) before. it came up as bumper stickers and someone sued against it - but it was found constitutional by our supreme court.

you are not allowed to buy or keep guns without a special permission which you can get if you have a reason and proper training.

the reason for the american liberties, as well as certain german restriction are of course historical, but apply until today in peoples minds.
people have different priorities. as well as americans would never accept such restrictions, europeans generally find things like the capital punishment barbaric. also, many criminals getting life in prison in the US would have got medical treatment in europe as they would be considered mentally ill.

this gets me to another issue - things accepted by the public.
europeans are not as easyly offended when they hear swear words on tv, or by nudity.

reading through slashdot i often get the impression that a lot of the users posting here are simply not aware of the cultural differences that lead to different values and priorities.
i am often shocked reading about curfews for minors, and i am sometimes amused seeing people drinking out of brown paperbags in movies. but that's the way it is. while europe is more liberal with alcohol, drugs and sex, the US is with speech and guns.
the restrictions about publishing your opinion here are very limited, and i have faith in our judges.
i enjoyed being allowed beer when i was 16 (in public!), and i still enjoy driving to the netherlands or switzerland to buy the best weed there is à la carte. by no means would i like to live in a country where they can take my house for growing weed on the balcony, where i would have to fear my kid being killed while playing with a friends dads gun, or could be fired every day for no reason at all.

it's a question of mentality.

provider's press release on the block

In a press release [www.isis.de] published in the evening, ISIS gives its version of the day's events: According to this press release, a technician had been experimenting with blocking the relevant web sites since the beginning of the week, despite the fact that the ISP originally didn't want to implement the block (the district government had originally called for the block in early October). This experiment was then stopped in the morning, and reactivated in the late afternoon after an ISIS executive had met the head of the district government to discuss the issue. ISIS then complains about the situation of ISPs which are either perceived as censors, or as fostering right-wing radicalism. It is emphasized that ISIS maintains its criticism of the technical solution used to block the sites - in particular because the solution leaves so many back doors that the effort can't actually be justified. According to the press release, ISIS will meet the district government in December, in order to discuss further activities and work on a political solution.

The ISP changed his mind again

According to http://www.heise.de/pda/newsticker/m22902.html [heise.de] the provider blocks again as told by the government.

Again an Update !

The provider "ISIS" has enabled the block of this websites again !
heise.de(in german) [heise.de]

A member of their local goverment said that they support the racists with their unblocking of the webpages, because of that they are blocking the domains again. I think in a few days the block will be gone again, stupid. Can't they decide ?

Some background info in English

German Statutes in English Translation [iuscomp.org]

Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany (Grundgesetz, GG) [iuscomp.org]

Article 5 [Freedom of expression]

(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 honor.

...

Criminal Code (Strafgesetzbuch, StGB) [iuscomp.org]

Section 86 Dissemination of Means of Propaganda of Unconstitutional Organizations

(1) Whoever domestically disseminates or produces, stocks, imports or exports or makes publicly accessible through data storage media for dissemination domestically or abroad, means of propaganda:

1. of a party which has been declared to be unconstitutional by the Federal Constitutional Court or a party or organization, as to which it has been determined, no longer subject to appeal, that it is a substitute organization of such a party;

2. of an organization, which has been banned, no longer subject to appeal, because it is directed against the constitutional order or against the idea of international understanding, or as to which it has been determined, no longer subject to appeal, that it is a substitute organization of such a banned organization;

3. of a government, organization or institution outside of the territorial area of application of this law which is active in pursuing the objectives of one of the parties or organizations indicated in numbers 1 and 2; or

4. means of propaganda, the contents of which are intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist organization,

shall be punished with imprisonment for not more than three years or a fine.

(2) Means of propaganda within the meaning of subsection (1) shall only be those writings (Section 11 subsection (3)) the content of which is directed against the free, democratic constitutional order or the idea of international understanding.

(3) Subsection (1) shall not be applicable if the means of propaganda or the act serves to further civil enlightenment, to avert unconstitutional aims, to promote art or science, research or teaching, reporting about current historical events or similar purposes.

(4) If guilt is slight, the court may refrain from imposition of punishment pursuant to this provision.

Section 86a Use of Symbols of Unconstitutional Organizations

(1) Whoever:

1. domestically distributes or publicly uses, in a meeting or in writings (Section 11 subsection (3)) disseminated by him, symbols of one of the parties or organizations indicated in Section 86 subsection (1), nos. 1, 2 and 4; or

2. produces, stocks, imports or exports objects which depict or contain such symbols for distribution or use domestically or abroad, in the manner indicated in number 1,

shall be punished with imprisonment for not more than three years or a fine.

(2) Symbols, within the meaning of subsection (1), shall be, in particular, flags, insignia, uniforms, slogans and forms of greeting. Symbols which are so similar as to be mistaken for those named in sentence 1 shall be deemed to be equivalent thereto.

(3) Section 86 subsections (3) and (4), shall apply accordingly.

Section 130 Agitation of the People

(1) Whoever, in a manner that is capable of disturbing the public peace:

1. incites hatred against segments of the population or calls for violent or arbitrary measures against them; or

2. assaults the human dignity of others by insulting, maliciously maligning, or defaming segments of the population,

shall be punished with imprisonment from three months to five years.

(2) Whoever: 1. with respect to writings (Section 11 subsection (3)), which incite hatred against segments of the population or a national, racial or religious group, or one characterized by its folk customs, which call for violent or arbitrary measures against them, or which assault the human dignity of others by insulting, maliciously maligning or defaming segments of the population or a previously indicated group:

a) disseminates them;

b) publicly displays, posts, presents, or otherwise makes them accessible;

c) offers, gives or makes accessible to a person under eighteen years; or

(d) produces, obtains, supplies, stocks, offers, announces, commends, undertakes to import or export them, in order to use them or copies obtained from them within the meaning of numbers a through c or facilitate such use by another; or

2. disseminates a presentation of the content indicated in number 1 by radio,

shall be punished with imprisonment for not more than three years or a fine.

(3) Whoever publicly or in a meeting approves of, denies or renders harmless an act committed under the rule of National Socialism of the type indicated in Section 220a subsection (1), in a manner capable of disturbing the public piece shall be punished with imprisonment for not more than five years or a fine.

...

Section 131 Representation of Violence

(1) Whoever, in relation to writings (Section 11 subsection (3)), which describe cruel or otherwise inhuman acts of violence against human beings in a manner which expresses a glorification or rendering harmless of such acts of violence or which represents the cruel or inhuman aspects of the event in a manner which injures human dignity:

1. disseminates them;

2. publicly displays, posts, presents, or otherwise makes them accessible;

3. offers, gives or makes them accessible to a person under eighteen years; or

4. produces, obtains, supplies, stocks, offers, announces, commends, undertakes to import or export them, in order to use them or copies obtained from them within the meaning of numbers 1 through 3 or facilitate such use by another,

shall be punished with imprisonment for not more than one year or a fine.

(2) Whoever disseminates a presentation of the content indicated in subsection (1) by radio, shall be similarly punished.

(3) Subsections (1) and (2) shall not apply if the act serves as reporting about current or historical events.

(4) Subsection (1), number 3 shall not be applicable if the person authorized to care for the person acts.

The problems behind

Note: I'm a 40 year old German citizen and so I can maybe give some other points of view

First of all note that according to this article [heise.de] now the sites are blocked again. So it looks like that there seems to be a need for blocking nazi sites?

Did you ever stumble over such a site by accident? I'm online now for many many years, but even hitting some hard core porn sites by misleading search engines I never hit one of the Nazi sites because I was misled (and since I'm not interested in the rubbish they have there I never visited them on purpose). So if somebody want's to get that "illegal" material he's going for it on purpose and he will surely find another way to get it. So blocking nazi sites is a sort of ostrich policy, don't look at the real problem and pretend that the problem will go away by itself.

From my very own point of view Germany has to deal with the real problem and that is the answer to the question why people should want to access such site. Why are the new nazis attracting some people.

One thing can be that even 56 years after World War II Germany is not able to deal with that dark chapter in its history at school. I remember my own school lessons about history, we were forced to learn everything about Julius Caeser for example, but the whole period between 1900 and now was more or less done in 2 hours. Just like "that was bad" and stop. The kids just don't know what really happened in that time and since nobody is telling them the truth instead of "that's some sort of taboo" they might think that it wasn't that bad. I would really strongly recommend that every kid at school has to see a KZ memorial once in his school life. There are plenty of them existing in Germany and they really give you in impression how bad it was. I recently visited Dachau and I was really feeling sorry that I had to get adult and go there by myself instead of my school taking me there.

On the other hand Germany has to deal with 4 million unemployed people (total population 82 millions) so there is a great chance that you finish school and you get no job. Education at school is focussed on a program that creates workers in a minumim time and there is not much about social competence and human rights and so on. So you have frustrated people that get the message "no future" from the actual job market, they get little supply from the social system and they are poorly educated. Do you really think that those people can resist a "strong leader" that is promising them a sort of future and that is at least dealing with them?

I think that every society or every state can be seen like a sort of organism. At the moment the human organism is attacked by flu viruses and a healthy organism can stand that attack without medication. A weak organism needs medication to survive. And blocking out things instead of "healing" the system looks like a big dosis of medication to me.

Already implemented in Switzerland!

There are already several ISPs in Switzerland which do also block websites, either by altering DNS entries, blocking IP numbers at the router level or blocking transparent proxies.

Unfortunately there is not much information in english, but the case has been mentioned in a GILC [gilc.org] newsletter (GILC Alert 52 [gilc.org], point [7]). The Swiss Internet User Group (SIUG [www.siug.ch]) has some informations, but everything is in german.

Censored again?

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/fr-22.11.01-00 1/

That is such bullshit

Sure, the US government is oppressive, except when compared to any other. No local magistrate has the power or ability to keep me from posting to this website, and should they try to do so, I have the power to sue them, undo the censorship, and get them to pay me for the exercise of that privilege.

Freedom of speech in the United States is not absolute, of course. But it is unparalleled elsewhere. In what other nation can you go to the nation's highest court and announce "Fuck the draft?" with absolute immunity?

Re:My Rights in North Rhine-Westphalia

Maybe it's more about a trend to do such stuff in Germany and all over the world. Guess you did not get the point.

AL "I don't live in NRW" eX