IP: Re: German government orders censorship of CompuServe -- a

[Dave Farber <farber@central.cis.upenn.edu>]

To: farber@central.cis.upenn.edu (Dave Farber)
Date: Thu, 28 Dec 1995 18:01:16 +0100 (MET)
From: "Cees de Groot" <C.deGroot@inter.nl.net>


> 
> COMPUSERVE(R) SUSPENDS ACCESS TO SPECIFIC INTERNET NEWSGROUPS
> 
Did not surprise me... I have lived in Germany, and among other things
ran a BBS connected to ``Xnet'', supplying quite explicit material to
my users. In order to comply with the very strict German regulations about
not giving access to pornographic materials to children, we (the Xnet)
thought that we would be safe when we would ask for a copy of a driver's
license of each applicant. Until some prosecutor in Bavaria started raiding
BBS'es last year (Bavaria being the most conservative state in Germany...).


It seems that now all these have been cleaned up, so they are attacking the
next easy target. I wonder how long it will take for them to go on to 
Universities, then to ISP's, and finally to the international gateways
in order to try to block off intl. NNTP access to these groups (they're
German civil servants trying to implement a law, so these guys are _serious_).


I also wonder how long it will take for the average civil servant to realize
that the Net does not know about state borders...



-- 
Cees de Groot, OpenLink Software		     <C.deGroot@inter.NL.net>
262ui/2048: ID=4F018825 FP=5653C0DDECE4359D FFDDB8F7A7970789 [Key on servers]
 -- Any opinions expressed above might be mine.