NationStates Jolt Archive

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/24/1445225&tid=153&tid=217

Philipp Lenssen writes "Heise reports the German search engines Google.de, Lycos Europe, MSN Germany, AOL Germany, Yahoo.de, T-Online and T-Info today in Berlin announced the forming of a self-regulating organization (Babelfish version) under the hood of the German FSM (the "Voluntary Self-Control for Multimedia Service Providers"). Their combined goal is to streamline the process of censoring content ruled illegal under German law, so that a user's search results are stripped from such items."

Two of the search terms blocked 'nazi germany' and 'Hitler'. Also 'Good stuff Bush has done'.

Pfff.
That reminds me of that one event in Greece some years ago, where the goverment had ban all kinds of electronic games completely.
I wouldn't give a big deal on it.

Bumpity bump bump, bumpity bump bump, look at Frosty go.

Are you serious? They're going to disallow searches on Nazi Germany? What about people looking up information for legitimate purposes?

Are you serious? They're going to disallow searches on Nazi Germany? What about people looking up information for legitimate purposes?
No no, see that was sarcasm. But you never know.

No no, see that was sarcasm. But you never know.
I figgured the "Bush" part was, but since it's illegal in Germany to be a Nazi, I thought you were being serious about banning searches for Nazi Germany.

yay for the corporate 1984 Big Brother.

Doesn't this contravene the European Union human rights agreement which they signed up to? Freedom of speech? And they're censoring websites?

Also 'Good stuff Bush has done'.

Nothing would have come up, even without the block. :p

It's sarcasm. Entirely untrue. Censorship exists to a limited degree, but Nazi is not censored, neither is Nazi Germany or anything else relating to the Third Reich or Hitler. Censorship is mainly limited to games or other media which contain excessive violence. Some games or movies which are extremely gory or show extreme violence, etc. may be "indexed" and cannot be sold publicly in Germany. But as an adult, I can pretty much watch whatever I want, if I can get it :P