

3 days before elections, largest German state censors Pirate Party from the net - im_dario
http://falkvinge.net/2012/05/10/three-days-before-elections-largest-german-state-censors-pirate-party-from-the-net/

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lispm
this headline is misleading. The website was blocked in some schools due to an
incompetent configuration of a filter software. The filter configuration has
been changed.

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jlgreco
Don't forget the corollary to Hanlon's Razor, Grey's Law: _"Any sufficiently
advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice."_

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oskarth
This ought to be counter-productive, considering that most students either
know or potentially know about the Pirate Party. All this does is making
people who didn't care enough become interested. I think the Pirate Party will
probably get more votes from this, as people like to feel they are sticking up
to the man - voting on a censored and a non-non-sensical party seems like a
good way of doing it, especially since their views are aligned with most
students views.

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nextstep
This isn't censorship any more than blocking porn in high school libraries is
considered censorship. This wasn't a move by rival political parties. The
school in question used some third party web filter which flagged the pirate
party's website as drug-related.

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Joakal
There is a possibility of censorship of the Dutch party since yesterday.

Dutch court bans Pirate Party links to The Pirate Bay
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18016819>

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sp332
What "list from IBM" would they be using? Can anyone confirm this
categorization of the site as "illegal drugs"?

Edit: any chance this was done by someone in support of the pirate party?

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wmf
As a general policy, censorware companies don't want people to be able to see
the lists of blocked URLs because they're so embarrassingly over-reaching.

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pilom
Sounds like it was just censored in schools with a NetNanny type internet
filter. What's the voting age in Germany again?

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im_dario
Based on this <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_age#G> and its references,
the voting age in Germany for state elections is 16 years old.

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mxfh
Its 18. In North-Rhine Westphalia. <http://www.wahlrecht.de/landtage/>

End yes, just this was most likely just one commercial filter going rogue on
drug related words in one school only, which blocked a completely legal and
g-rated drug politics statement on the website of the pirate party.
[http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&...](http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fnetzpolitik.org%2F2012%2Fnetz-
sperren-in-schulen-nrw-zensiert-piratenpartei%2F)

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FredericJ
Where is the democracy ?

