Copyright Law

German Parliament Passes Web Censorship Legislation

By DrewWilson

Controversial or not, the proposed web censorship legislation is now one step closer to becoming law in Germany. All this after one member decided to become a member of the Pirate Party because he opposed it. While the government argues that the legislation is suppose to stop child pornography, many international examples suggest that such censorship is also used to block political speech.

The news could only serve to push the deeply divided debate further into the limelight Germany. News is surfacing that points out that the controversial web censorship legislation in Germany has been passed by the German parliament. Already, a member of the Social Democrats, Jörg Taussig, defected from his party on this controversial issue to become a Pirate Party member – thus also marking the first time the Pirate Party managed to get a member into the German parliament in the first place.

Already, there have been protests on this very issue. An e-petition has been made to stop such legislation and gotten over 134,000 signatures.

The Pirate Party is against web censorship and made their opposition to web censorship a part of their election platform during the European elections. The German Pirate Party posted about the protests (Google Translation). They have a slogan about the censorship proposal saying, roughly translated to English, “Erase the Bocks Instead – Stop Web Censorship!”

The German Pirate Party argues that child pornography must be stopped, not hidden behind a bunch of stop signs. The argument appears to be based off of the fact that government mandated censorship can be circumvented through proxies. The currently proposed censorship legislation would put up stop signs if anyone were to access a banned website.

One thing is for certain, the way things are going in Germany, this issue is only going to get more people involved.
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Full post as published by ZeroPaid on June 22, 2009 (boomark / email).