Germany to censor internet access, while UK bans Internet Archive

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PeterCH

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Germany's Minister for Families has announced a legislative initiative to force ISPs to implement a government-mandated block list (in English), which will be updated daily. She has agreed the principle of the legislation with the interior minister and the technology minister, which in German coalition government terms means it's pretty much a done deal.
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Link

An anonymous reader noted the latest developments in the controversial censoring of the internet by UK ISPs. Apparently since some content of the Wayback Machine is bad, the whole thing needs to be blacklisted.
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Pathetic, luckily it looks like Labour'll be voted out of office at the next election, not a moment too soon.
 
The problem with saying "it's ok if they block kid porn" is you start down the slippery slope. Who decides what is offensive? Who do you trust to decide for you what you shouldn't look at? The whole point of the internet is that anything is accessible to anyone with no limits. What if someone suddenly decided that an anti-isreal website should be banned because it 'causes' hate crimes? What about an anti-ANC website? You cannot put an absolute moral judge in charge of a communications medium. But, you can make certain things criminal, like producing kid porn or hate crimes. Treat the crime, not the medium by which it is transmitted.
 
Gaz{M} said:
The problem with saying "it's ok if they block kid porn" is you start down the slippery slope. Who decides what is offensive? Who do you trust to decide for you what you shouldn't look at? The whole point of the internet is that anything is accessible to anyone with no limits. What if someone suddenly decided that an anti-isreal website should be banned because it 'causes' hate crimes? What about an anti-ANC website? You cannot put an absolute moral judge in charge of a communications medium. But, you can make certain things criminal, like producing kid porn or hate crimes. Treat the crime, not the medium by which it is transmitted.
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Exactly.
 
Syndyre said:
Exactly.
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Obviously the child pron excuse is a pretext.
The real reason why they want control is:
1. Limit copyright infringement.
2. Limit anti-govt ideas.

It's poignant how modern western democracies can be as restrictive
as totalitarian regimes. Compare Australia, UK and now Germany to
the Great FireWall of China.
 
<moLe> said:
well it would be okay if they only block kid porn..
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Why block it? Shut it down if possible. Use the images to find the exploited children. Prosecute the site hosts and follow the money trail to the producers
of the porno and the consumers. Finding the people behind the sites and prosecuting them will reduce the number of sites in the future. Cloaking the problem is not the way to approach it.
 
This is sounding awesomely fishy.... the wayback machine??!!!?????

I think it's because the sites are archived, and they simply can't tell a live site to remove whatever they want anymore, because all of it gets cached and becomes too much to control, it's not only 2 billions sites, but 20 versions cached on them as well.

AFAIK the wayback machine does not archive pron (It would cause a big bang - too big of a pron overload) so the kiddie thing doesn't flow with me - they don't have ANY pron!
 
Keeper said:
This is sounding awesomely fishy.... the wayback machine??!!!?????

I think it's because the sites are archived, and they simply can't tell a live site to remove whatever they want anymore, because all of it gets cached and becomes too much to control, it's not only 2 billions sites, but 20 versions cached on them as well.
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It's possible to ask Archive.org to remove a certain site. Certainly the owner can. By law that's also possible.
 
PeterCH said:
Obviously the child pron excuse is a pretext.
The real reason why they want control is:
1. Limit copyright infringement.
2. Limit anti-govt ideas.

It's poignant how modern western democracies can be as restrictive
as totalitarian regimes. Compare Australia, UK and now Germany to
the Great FireWall of China.
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What's more worrying is how people just go along with it and don't seem to realise its significance.
 
Syndyre said:
What's more worrying is how people just go along with it and don't seem to realise its significance.
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This is so true, they only realize it when it's too late.

They use the "block child porn" or whatever, as an excuse to start the whole process, just now they will be blocking anything that they deem unfit or anti-government of the day.

B
 
Bismuth said:
This is so true, they only realize it when it's too late.

They use the "block child porn" or whatever, as an excuse to start the whole process, just now they will be blocking anything that they deem unfit or anti-government of the day.

B
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There's almost no defence against the "Please, think of the children" brigade. What politician is going to be re-elected if he's painted as being against blocking child porn?
 
Bismuth said:
This is so true, they only realize it when it's too late.

They use the "block child porn" or whatever, as an excuse to start the whole process, just now they will be blocking anything that they deem unfit or anti-government of the day.

B
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yep - some say that the people will encourage the 1984 scenario - We will accept it when they do it, yep - USA start with all the anti-terrorism stuff and the people accept it that the gov. is allowed to check all e-mails/etc.

"I'm not a criminal - i'm not afraid, if it can stop some bombings, let them do it!"

...and so the USA gets control, by using another excuse, and is openly accepted.


same with this - "Stop the child porn I say! BAN this, BAN that..." and the gov. freely can do what they want.

PeterCH said it perfectly. "2. Limit anti-govt ideas."

Banning the Wayback machine's Archive isn't to counter child porn, it's because they can't control that amount of information easilly. (that it archives the stuff automatically, to a huge Server Farm)
 
and that is how the wool is pulled over the citizens eyes, time and time again.
 
Syndyre said:
There's almost no defence against the "Please, think of the children" brigade. What politician is going to be re-elected if he's painted as being against blocking child porn?
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Exactly

This is all politicking... the politician that "proves" (i.e. convinces by accusing with little or no evidence) his opponent to be the dick wins the election. Obama vs McCain - McCain was allegedly the bigger dick. ANC DA - ANC alleges DA is white and voters think white leadership = bad leadership.

Politicians who take the moral higher ground, lose. But swinging something to be "against" the opposition is where elections are won. American politicians figured this out long ago, and a very large component of any US president's election campaign is to dig the dirt on his or her opponent.

And now, the de facto excuse of the modern age: National Security. It's about the security of the country or the security of our people or the security of our kids. Bull****, it's about the security of the cash in the politicians pockets is what it is really about.
 
This will simply speed up the use of relaying proxies, onion routers, Freenet, etc.

What they're proposing is not technically possible (just ask the Chinese), unless the quantum computing crowd are further along than we thought...
 
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