FC: German state moves to block "illegal" sites including rotten.com

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

[Rotten.com is certainly in poor taste, which I believe is the point, but 
illegal? Heavens. Now some Germans will no longer be able to get their 
daily dose of Bonsai Kittens, hosted at rotten.com. 
(http://www.politechbot.com/p-01715.html) As silly as this proposal is, 
this is not the first time a German government has moved to require its 
ISPs to block access to purportedly offensive content. In early 1996, if 
memory serves, Germany required ISPs to block webcom.com, a large 
California ISP that happened to host a holocaust-revisionist website run by 
Ernst Zundel. (http://www.mccullagh.org/image/5/ernst-zundel-1.html). 
T-Online blocked Zundel's "Did Six Million Really Die?" screeds hosted at 
webcom, and lots of innocent webcommers in the process, but the German 
politicos reportedly backed down after mirror sites sprouted. 
(http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/z/zundel-ernst/press/canadian-press-0296.html). 
--Declan]

*********

From: soylent () rotten com
To: declan () well com
Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 16:06:59 -0700
Subject: New German law requires ISPs to block rotten.com and 3 other sites

Legal authorities in in Dusseldorf have required that all ISP's in
the German state of Nordrhein-Westfalen block access to rotten.com under
a controversial new censorship law designed to target "illegal content".

This is an article on the subject, in German unfortunately.

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/hod-15.10.01-000/

Of four sites ordered blocked in the United States, three of them
are Neonazi, and the remaining one is rotten.com

The 56 ISP's in Nordrhein-Westfalen are required to block access at
their routers.

Some Germans remain skeptical as to whether this action by
Nordrhein-Westfalen is legal or technically enforceable. But it is the
first time sites in Germany have been ordered blocked in this manner.

Tom

soylent () rotten com / Rotten Staff




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