Germany Opts For ISP Filtering Of Child Pornography; NGOs Warn Of Unintended Impact
Intellectual Property Watch – Several German ministries seem to be in a footrace to draft legal text for a filtering regime blocking child pornography from German users’ personal computers agreed by the government last week. Initiated by the Federal Ministry of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (BMFSFJ) the government has debated for months how to step up blocking of child pornography from servers outside of the country. Now the Justice Minister has announced a draft special law. The Economics Minister pointed to the already ongoing review of the German “Telemedia Law,” a law covering rights and obligations of telecommunication media content providers. The obligation to block access to child pornography sites listed by a government agency would fit in there.The German government pointed to an announcement by the European Commission from earlier last week that “systems to block access to websites containing child pornography will be developed” and to existing systems in Denmark, Finland, Italy and Norway. Read Article
The Historian – As with the Australian scheme however would it be much more effective to spend the money instead on the police resources to enable them to catch them, than creating a thin end of the wedge to censoring the internet?
Tags: Australasia, censorship, The 10 Steps
