This time I am doing a blog post in English. It’s not my native tongue, but I hope you can bear with it. The reason I am writing this blog entry in English is the current censorship law proposal. You might have heard about the German federal government planing to establish a censorship system for the internet. Superficially speaking, they tell you it is to fight child pornography, but they are already thinking out loud about expanding this instruments. Sites about Ego-Shooters have already been announced to be the next target. File sharing sites will surely follow.

A lot of people stood up against it, by signing a petition to the German Parliament („Deutscher Bundestag“). It was Tuesday I realized, that the right to sign a petition is granted to everyone by our constitution. This means there is no restriction to age, citizenship or residence. So even you people out there in the other countries can sign it, if you want to show, that you do not want a democratic state to employ instruments of censorship. Sadly it’s not that easy, since the e-petition-sytem ist only in German. But if you want to give it a shot, read on. We have some information in English here.



The petition can be found on the website of the Bundestag. It translates as follows:

Text of the petition

We demand, that the German Bundestag declines the amendments to the telemedia law according to the proposal of the federal government of the 22nd of April 2009. We consider the proposed procedure of letting the BKA [remark: „Bundeskriminalamt“, German Federal Police Administration] index websites and providers blocking them untransparent and uncontrollable, since the „block lists“ can not be inspected, nor are the criteria for putting a web site on the list properly defined. We see a danger for the civil liberty of informational freedom.

Explanation

The overall goal – protecting children, preventing them from being abused and stopping the spreading of child pornography – is not questioned by us. On the contrary, it is in everyones interest. But the proposed methods are totally unsuitable, which was confirmed on many occasions by experts of a lot different areas. Blocking of websites has no remarkable influence on the physical and mental integrity of abused children.

For everyone willing to support us, one of our members has made a screencast tutorial on how to sign the petition: