Germany to order ISPs to censor child porn

In a move to stop the spread of child pornography on the Internet, German officials will soon be asking ISPs to filter out Web sites they deem offensive, according to news magazine Der Spiegel.

German regulatory officials have been working with Google and other search engines, providing them with a blacklist of sites to block, according to the article, which was reported on Google Blogoscoped on Friday. Google already excludes from its German and French search results content that is pro-Nazi.

There have been other censorship efforts recently related to images of children. Internet service providers in the U.K. last month began blocking access to Wikipedia after Britain's Internet Watch Foundation took issue over an image of a naked young girl that appeared on the cover of an album by the rock band The Scorpions. Several days later, the watchdog group changed its mind after discussing the situation with the Wikimedia Foundation.

The Internet Watch Foundation's child porn blacklist also has resulted in some ISPs blocking access to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, The Register reported this week.

[Michichael]

Ugh. This is getting way too ridiculous... Look, I dislike pedophiles and pedosexuals as much as the next person, but wouldn't it be better to go after the producers of this garbage and let the pedosexuals have the damned content so they don't go out on society frustrated by lack of release?

Either way, censoring things is never the answer to the problem. "I can't see you so you don't exist."

[tm_anon]

Completely agreed. Stop it at its source.

[chuck_whealton]

What do you mean let them have the content?

Would you be so comfortable if that content included your innocent child? What the heck is wrong with you?

However, I will agree with you on one point - go after them and go after them relentlessly. But at the same time, don't make that stuff available to anybody. It's illegal and it's illegal for a good reason - it hurts innocent people.

Censoring DOES help in some instances, as long as you continue going after the filthy scum who are doing this to innocent children. It may not be the complete answer, but it helps.

[stuxstu]

And if that source is in another country where it is legal, then what?

I am not pro-censorship, but I am pro-law enforcement. Remember countries have borders, not the internet.

[pgp_protector]

So will this also include the Simpsons being counted as Child Porn For Germany ?
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081208-cowabunga-simpsons-porn-on-the-pc-equals-child-pornography.html

[unknown unknown]

Do government's not pay attention? I believe this will be as ineffective as New York AG, Andrew Cuomo's strong arming ISPs into scraping their customers newsgroup access.

This sort of hackish approach is probably subject to circumvention and will just make the consumers of such material move to less easily censored means.

[ihfwt]

All this "negativity"! I think it's a good beginning, after all someone has to take the lead and if other countries follow suit who knows the results just may be more positive than the comments "here".

[unknown unknown]

Except it's not new and other countries have tried it with negligible results. The UK has a system that is currently blocking the entire archive.org Way back machine over one or two entries and there is also the Wikipedia incident both mentioned in the article.

[Dalkorian]

Adults typically (but not always of course:)) have the mental capabilities to influence children into doing things they wouldn't otherwise be tempted into doing, so in that way Larianis has a point - once all participants say "yes" it's not "rape" anymore.

Of course this completely misses the point that children don't have the experience or knowledge to understand what the adult is getting to; the argument is designed that way. It's a deflection, a distraction, a plead to allow child rapists like Lerianis to do what they want to YOUR children.

I wish all child rapists would boast of their DISEASE like Lerianis does. Maybe it will wake some parents up to the fact that the world isn't all Disneyland and Hanna Montana and unicorns and rainbows - but there are dangers out there your children need to learn about so they can defend themselves against it!

Making Lerianis shut up only shoves the problem back in the closet, where it festers like an open sore.