At Sun, 3 May 2009 15:52:48 -0700 (PDT), Joel Kahn wrote: > > > Here's a follow-up to my posting about the Great Firewall of China: > > http://cpj.org/reports/2009/04/10-worst-countries-to-be-a-blogger.php > > Note that China is only the eighth worst country on the list. > > Something to show students who complain about the Internet filtering > systems in their schools, I suppose. . . . :-) These things happen in many countries and while the cases on the list are much more dramatic than what happens in most western countries, IMNSO, we should not let these reports distract from similar issues in those countries (the ones most of us live in). For example, Germany just recently changed its "tele-media law" (Telemediengesetz) to require ISPs to block accesses to web pages that are listed on a blacklist. The blacklist is maintained and forwarded to the ISPs by the Bundeskriminalamt (comparable to the FBI in the US). The pretext to the change was the fight against child pornography. The law however is not in any way restricted to that topic and proponents of the blocking already have other topics like "first-person shooter" games (made in part responsible for a recent school shooting in Germany) etc. Of course, possession and distribution of child pornography was already illegal before the law was changed and what's more is that the (current) technical measures are easily circumvented. What's being prepared here is the legal infrastructure for censorship by the government. Best regards, Marko
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