Thread: Germany is trying to block GOOGLE!!

>I didn't realize being likely to do something was a crime.<

That's just the thing Sadam emailed me.

Originally posted by JoeSixpack
That's just the thing Sadam emailed me.

What in the hell does that mean?

Again I do not agree with censorship.
But from the link at prohosters to an article on MSN.

"In October 2000, the Chicago Board of Elections won a court order shutting down VoteAuction.com, a Web site in Austria that claimed to allow Americans to trade their votes in the presidential elections that year. It soon popped up under the new name Vote-auction.com. "

and from the link to news.com at prohosters
" "I've never heard of a case where a registrar can disable a domain over content," said Ted Hickman, who runs Virginia-based ProHosters.com. "I certainly won't be registering any domains at Joker.com...We'll host anything that's legal in the U.S. It's not our job to determine whether content is acceptable to others." "


But it is their job to determine if the content is legal in the US and if its not legal in the US they won't host it or they will censor it.

The difference is?

If the site was registered with a US registar could another government shut it down?
I don't think so.
But I understand the loss of the domain name would hurt the site. Of course the registrar could be liable for the loss (just as the registrar could be liable for prosecution if it sites with illegal content (in the registrars country).

We are into the minefield of what laws apply to an internet site.

Where it is hosted, registered or viewed?

Ok...here's part of the deal with Germany....

Constitutionally the government has the right to shutdown any organization that threatens the regieme (this means the govermental system). They can't shut it down, so they block it.

I personally don't agree with this, but I'm not german. Diffrent culture and political climate. For example, I've been told (credible source, expert, not guy I know) that many germans think it's proper and even good to have a lot of regulations that Americans would find insane and intrusive. This includes things like when you can mow your lawn, what hours a store can be open etc. Personally I think this is nuts, but it isn't there...

Just a thought to keep in mind.

This includes things like when you can mow your lawn, what hours a store can be open etc. Personally I think this is nuts, but it isn't there...

There are a lot of laws and regulations. You may not mow your lawn or do anything loud before 10:00, after 22:00 or between 13:00 and 15:00. You won't get busted if you do, but if someone complains, police has a reason to make you stop. We do have laws for opening hours of stores. Stores open at 8:00 or later and close 20:00 or earlier. No stores open on sundays. A lot of exceptions for different stores apply. I think that's dumb, but I would need a majority to change it, and the majority thinks it's good because it protects workers from working on sundays and long hours.

If US Registrars can disable sites that are illegal in the US, I guess German Registrars can disable sites illegal here. If it were on me to decide they would all stay up, but it's not. This is not some arbitrary block, but a law that was passed by the democratic ( nitpickers would say republican ) majority of the german people.

Germany already bans videos and video games that have titles and content they find "immoral" - it is illegal for a german to even look at a nazi symbol...

Uhm... no. It's illegal to use a sign for entertainment that stands for torture, death, war and evil. Any adult ( 18 and above ) can buy whatever s/he wants. We just don't give gory games to under age persons. Not everyone can live in such a free society like yours, where I can see kids with gunwounds on tv daily. Maybe our laws are a bit stricter. But a shot kid is a national tragedy here, not a number in another gunshot statistic. We like it that way.

If the german govt., specifically this prosecutor doesn't like what is being discussed on this board he could very conceivably ban www.cprogramming.com as a whole.

If the name was registered with a German registrar and this site were breaking German laws, I guess the registrar has the right ( or duty ) to cancel your contract and the owner has to look for someone else to provide the site with a name. The site is still on the net by IP, because it's not hosted in Germany. Germans don't break their own laws just because some American thinks it's free speech. If it's legal in some backward country to molest kids, would your registrar host that sites domain name ? I hope not.

I'm sure the admins of the sites banned by the German government really don't care about a few Germans who might
be deprived of their web site's content or the German government
per se. And if ####.com wants to circumvent the silly German
attempt at censorship, all they have to do is spend a few dollars
and add another domain name--same site, different name. Emails
are sent; subscribers informed; and ####.com is back operating
under a new name unknown and unobserved by mean old
Mr. Schroeder's censors. Censoring the Internet is an excersize
in futility. What next? Build another wall to keep out the verbotten?

>mean old Mr. Schroeder's censors.

To be fair, it was the opposition that started that blocking thing. Schroeders party has nothing to do with it. It's a federal state law and that state is governed by the CDU ( while Schroeder is SPD ).

Just to let y'all know...

Good news! ####.com is back to were it belongs... ONLINE! Thanks to the overwhelming public support and the help of our lawyers, the #####.com domain has been unblocked and will be transferred to a US Registrar..........
Let the freedom of speech rule!

We'll see if the german govt. takes further action - the particular site was not even considered illegal but "immoral" by MR. Bussow or whatever his name is...

There is also such a thing as name recognition that a site has and it goes to the question of whether the name has anything to do with the content within the site, that was what the whole uproar was about - Prohosters.com who hosts that site could conceivably lose title to its name based on the content of sites it hosts... that is the precedent the German govt. set here.

All this discussion has done nothing to the fact that 6000 sites are on the list for banishment in germany or for germans one of them being google.com - maybe u should be marching in the streets for that instead of IRAQ.