
Germany is pressuring Neocities to censor a disclosure of their censorship - kyledrake
http://neocities.org/blog/german-censorship
======
grecy
It's interesting the German government publishes this list publicly in it's
hashed form, but when someone reverses it they deem it illegal.

Is there any legal basis to this?

If I publish a list in pig-latin, can I deem it illegal to translate that into
English?

If I publish something in 8-bit ASCII, can I deem it illegal to "translate"
that into English?

How far does it go?

~~~
gst
IANAL, but many European countries have something called "Database copyright"
(see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_European_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_European_Union#Database_rights)).
Basically if you build a database of something you can get a copyright for the
database as a whole, even if there's no copyright for the individual items. I
wouldn't surprise me if the German government claims that their list falls
under these database copyright laws. But even if that's the case there would
still be the question how copyright treaties affect such a copyright and if
this copyright is enforcable in the United States.

~~~
DanHulton
Hm. Would that still apply given that - if I read this right - the list of
hashes are distributed publicly?

~~~
gst
What is the license under which those hashes are distributed? Just because
something is distributed publicly doesn't mean it can be legally
redistributed.

~~~
grecy
Then don't redistribute it, just distribute the step-by-step directions
required to reverse it [1] (as is done on a site linked by the original
article)

[1] - of course, directions could be just source that does it for you, a la
DeCSS

------
bpjm
Here is the censored plaintext list:
[http://pastebin.com/NgZRSJ54](http://pastebin.com/NgZRSJ54)

And here is a zip of the neocities site, including the censored lists:
[http://pomf.se/dbhmba.zip](http://pomf.se/dbhmba.zip)

~~~
werid
> 01c62dc977afbbe6e5f3367cbe178d91 tag/anders-breivik

> 032136816da36d1cd24f67eb8d404ea2 schuelercd

> 034bf0787b9eaca0a73110b0e0250c59 news/96/62/Srebrenica---Die-Buehne-des-
> Genozid

> 0666f0acdeed38d4cd9084ade1739498 fp

> 068b3740462938d378ffcb768714a366 video/view/

Not sure what's going on here.

Interesting to see Breivik listed though among all the porn.

------
gioele
In contrast, the Italian site of censored sites (DNS domains) is public.

The bad thing is that it is "published" as a series of faxes to ISPs. Luckily
those have been digitalized and put in a database:
[http://censura.bofh.it/](http://censura.bofh.it/)
[http://censura.bofh.it/elenchi.html](http://censura.bofh.it/elenchi.html)

------
legulere
This article does a poor job at explaining the situation.

This is about a group of lists called index. They're created by the BPjM
(Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons). They're kind of the
strictest level of an age rating.

You're still allowed to publish the stuff to people that are over 18 years
old. However you're also only allowed to advertise to people over 18 year old.
There are lists where they suspect it's actually illegal to publish (child
porn, porn with animals, hate crime like the game KZ Tycoon, ...), however
it's up to the courts to decide if it is illegal if someone publishes this
stuff.

So what does this mean for websites? You can still go to them if you type in
the addresses, there's no DNS blocking or something else in place. Links to
those websites however are considered as advertisement and thus not allowed
for websites reachable by minors. This is the reason the list of URL's is
separate from the other lists and is kept secret.

Also note, that websites doing a real age check (not just clicking yes I'm 18)
shouldn't be on the list.

~~~
pgeorgi
What they desperately try to prevent (since about forever) is that the index
becomes a "shopping list" among minors.

The offline index was effective while being locked up in their office or other
places where age controls can be ensured: publishers and stores mostly try to
avoid the fines that they get for advertising index-material "to the youth"
(ie. outside adult-only areas).

The online index needs to be installed to routers to be effective and thus
have to leave the BPjM's control. That's why they veiled it, and why they're
now so furious that the descrambled list is available on the net (and in the
news, too).

------
patrickg
To make it clear: these sites are not blocked, you can still acess them. They
just don't turn up when you search 'sick forbidden sex with animals' on search
engines.

How far does censorship go? Where does 'protecting our kids' start? Some of
these sites contain stuff that is clearly illegal here in Germany. Is
prohibiting something always 'censorship'? I'd say no, it is a matter of fine
adjustment which has to be carefully established and controlled.

~~~
JoshTriplett
Prohibiting or limiting access to information is _always_ censorship.
Censorship of third-party information by governments is universally wrong. If
you want to protect your children from certain types of information via
censorship, that's not necessarily wrong, but it's entirely your own
responsibility.

There would be absolutely nothing wrong with this censorship list if
maintained by a private entity and voluntarily applied by individuals to their
own Internet connections.

~~~
cyorir
You believe that censorship by governments is universally wrong, but that view
is not universal. German laws have been oriented to allow censorship since the
allied occupation of West Germany. It is perfectly legal by German law as it
is practiced where there is no contradiction with civil or European law.

The German populace was generally supportive of this censorship in the post-
war period to mend the ideological rifts that drove society apart in the early
part of the cold war. While views are certainly changing in the "information
age," if the German populace changes its views on censorship then it needs
only to change its own laws.

~~~
rosser
There's legal, and there's moral. The two sets are not coterminous.

~~~
cyorir
True. We shape laws to approximate a vision of what should be moral. As views
of morality change, the laws often fail to keep pace.

------
danielrhodes
If you go through the list, 99% of them are porn sites.

However there are some glaring exceptions I saw:

DailyMotion, a popular YouTube competitor with more lax content rules.

main.htm - Not sure what this accomplishes!

Ogrish - A shock site dedicated to gore and other types of extreme content.

A relative link to a page which appears to be on a torrent site where you can
download an Xbox game.

And quite a few neo-Nazi or nazi sympathasizing sites (e.g.
[http://ihr.org](http://ihr.org)). Germany has banned all literature and
symbols promoting national socialism, but the sites in this list are certainly
not exhaustive.

------
Sami_Lehtinen
Secret censorship list, just like one whe got in Finland.

~~~
werid
But that's a DNS blocker I assume, which is used in many countries. ISPs use
them "voluntarily"...

------
WildUtah
It just goes to show: You can cargo cult ban anything with a swastika on it,
but if you can't change the culture, the Naziism remains in the hearts of your
government officials.

And remember that it was the refusal of major Weimar parties to allow any
discussion of aggressive reform and relief measures that lead to the rise of
German Nazi and Communist parties in the 1930s. It's all self-inflicted wounds
from the fundamentally illiberal ruling intellectual and bureaucratic class of
the country.

And when the next downturn with a murderous evil dictatorship moves in, which
country is ready to prevent you from even discussing it? That country is just
asking for it to happen again.

~~~
patrickg
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law)

~~~
lotsofmangos
Is hardly out of context with the article being commented on.

 _" You don't get rid of history by blacklisting people from viewing it, you
don't convince people that Nazis are bad by, literally, stooping to their
level and censoring (okay, I went there). And, as this leak clearly proves, it
doesn't work anyways."_

~~~
patrickg
Please show me how this first post makes any point in the discussion.

~~~
lotsofmangos
It is a follow up to a position taken in the article.

It is slightly heavy handed maybe, but the idea that a society through fear of
its own past may create the tools that allows for a repeat of the very thing
it is trying to avoid, is clearly a reasonable concern.

The fact that we happen to be discussing Germany, doesn't suddenly stop you
from being allowed to make historical comparisons.

