[governance] The dawning of Internet censorship in Germany

[David Goldstein]

Ralf,

Laws don't ever, or almost never, stop the problem they set out to do. They merely set out to reduce the problem to a certain extent. There are laws against murder, yet there is still murder. So you are wrong - it is analogous to speeding. Expecting any law to stop something 100% is naive.

As for Baptista, Dambier and their cast of fools, maybe you should first understand the difference between child protection, that is protecting children from unsuitable content online, and child abuse where children are actually abused.

And thank you Rui for a thoughtful contribution to the debate.

As for suggestions tens of thousands have signed online petitions. Really? So what? What minuscule percentage actually understood what they were signing?


David



----- Original Message ----
From: Ralf Bendrath <bendrath at zedat.fu-berlin.de>
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; David Goldstein <goldstein_david at yahoo.com.au>
Sent: Thursday, 18 June, 2009 12:19:55 PM
Subject: Re: [governance] The dawning of Internet censorship in Germany

I don't want to sound like a supporter of Joe Baptista or Peter Dambier
here, but I also don't want unfounded things to be said about the
censorship conflict in Germany. So:

David Goldstein schrieb:

> To use the argument that blocking child pornography is ineffective is
> nonsensical. People still speed in cars yet there are laws against 
> speeding. It certainly changes behaviour though.

No. It's about stopping cars that (maybe accidentially) head to a wrong
direction instead of just arresting the wrong guy at the endpoint. So
much for analogies.

> However given the childish arguments put forward by people like
> Dambier, I wouldn't expect there to be much knowledge on such issues.

Don't troll unles needed, David. Especially without knowledge about the
situation in Germany.

There have been many, many, and many more arguments raised in the Gernan
debate since April. Result: Total ignorance.

> The issue is how far does such a list such as proposed by the German 
> government, and also the Australian government, go. If it's used to 
> block content such as child porn, great. If it goes further, then
> it's a problem.

The fundamental problem is: We will never know. The list is run by the
German Federal Police, it's secret, and there is close to zero
oversight. No judge, no prescribed procedures for taking sites off the
(un-known black) list, no nothing.

Ralf



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