Date: Sat, 27 Jun 1998 16:13:45 +0200 From: "IBS / Andre Oppermann" <andre@pipeline.ch> To: FreeBSD Chat <chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Cc: Ken McGlothlen <mcglk@serv.net>, Arne Woerner <arne.woerner@tu-clausthal.de> Subject: Re: "Child-endangering sites" (was: Arne Woerner) Message-ID: <3594FE18.59A362B@pipeline.ch> References: <199806270737.AAA13074@ralf.serv.net> <19980627183814.I23035@freebie.lemis.com>
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Greg Lehey wrote: > > (Removed John Fieber from the list; he's not responsible for the web > site any more. Wolfram Schneider is). > > On Saturday, 27 June 1998 at 0:37:02 -0700, Ken McGlothlen wrote: > > Mr Woerner's complaints have to do with the following links on the > > www.freebsd.org/cgallery.html page: > > > > http://www.freexxxvideo.com/ (All Free XXX Videos) > > http://www.netpics.com/ (NetPics) > > http://www.persiankitty.com/ (WWW.PersianKitty.COM) > > > > He feels that the links should be removed because they are "child-endangering." > > > > Personally, I feel that (a) the FreeBSD site isn't really designed for children > > anyway, (b) the guy is just an overzealous moralizer out to gripe, (c) they are > > FreeBSD-powered sites, and it's not the job of freebsd.org to make judgments. > > In case you don't know, a German court recently came to a verdict > which I consider completely ridiculous: ISPs are responsible for *all* > data passing through their network. Interestingly, the phone company > isn't: another judgement has loosened the requirements for phone > monitoring. Please don't mix up the stuff that is going on in Germany. There are several things going on: 1. A new telecommunications law - it contains requirements for monitoring any telecommunication by law enforcement agencies [It seems that the integration of the former East Germany is success- ful, we all get now the intelligence system they had to control their people.] 2. Some court cases - one against the former Compuserve German boss for not filtering / controlling the access to the USENET via Compuserve as access provider [The former Compserver Germany boss, Felix Somm, was found guilty by the jude. This case was based on the law to protect minors from pornography.] - one against a member of the german parliament for a link to a terroristic magazine on a dutch server [Not guilty because the offending articley about 'how to unrail a train' was put online after she made the link.] - one other case against someone who linked also to a site with (in Germany) unlawful material [Guilty, "you are responsible for the content of pages you link to"] 3. Plans to restrict the use of cryptographic systems [Faces some opposition from the German Internet community] The problem with all that judges and state attorneys is that they have no clue about the nature of the Internet, not even a computer. The rulings of the judges are still typed on old IBM typewriters with 3 or so real carbon copies... The best case of all was a man who found a cild porn site and walked down to his local police station to make them aware of it. He was told that they can't do anything without the actual pictures, so the men copied everything on a floppy and walked again to the police station to give it to them. After that they throwed him into jail for owning child porn because that's not permitted by law... > I consider this the latest in a line of stupid, short-sighted and > ill-informed judgements by German courts. I don't condone that kind > of site, but the expectation that ISPs should monitor all traffic is > not just ridiculous, it infringes on other basic rights of privacy, > which until recently was regarded very highly in German society. Yea, but things changed after the merger with the former East Germany. They changed lot of things, even the constituion, to 'fight the against organized crime'. At the same time the police can't buy new computers (they have some 286 boxes with DOS) because of budget cuttings... It's really short sighted... The 'concept' of the law enforcement agencies seems be to catch the 'distributers' (eg. ISP's) of the material because it's easier than tracing down the emitters of that stuff (who are often outside of Germany). > I would guess that: > > 1. Arne is complaining more out of a sense of obligation than any > real interest in the matter. Most Germans I know aren't too > worried about pornography on the net. Many German "family" > magazines frequently have photos of half-naked women. Yea, naked people on the covers are fairly standard. Try for example www.max.de, a livestyle magazine. This cover features the stars of a popular daily soap. This type of nuditiy is considered not to harm minors. Try to put this magazine on the front layouts of any US news stand, you'll probably find yourself in jail after 5 minutes. > 2. He seems to be relating to www.de.FreeBSD.org, not > www.FreeBSD.org; at least he has now complained to the people who > run www.de.FreeBSD.org. I suppose they'll be forced to take it > seriously, given the current legal situation. Thats true. The allegation would be that they did not protect minors from clicking on those links. > 3. He's complaining about links, not content. Not even the German > courts can expect people to follow all links through to the bitter > end to ensure they don't have any multiple indirect pointers to > subject material which may at some time be indecent. No, they complain only on the first link, not everyone that follows than (at the moment, but that might change...). > > Perhaps a disclaimer at the top of the page that says > > > > Some of these sites contain material not suitable for children. Please > > consider yourself forewarned. > > > > and not removing the links would be enough. I hate seeing people cave into > > hypermoralists. > > I think that would be too much already. I see no reason to change > things unless somebody decides to remove the links altogether. Removing the links would be the only thing that helps, simple warnings are not suficient. -- Andre PS: I'm german, but live and work currently in Switzerland (here we don't have such problems) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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