Democracy or Censorship?
Critics of the new draft legislation for the closure of Web pages in Germany, which are in relation with child pornography, were successful by setting up an online petition against it last week. In record time of just four days 55.000 votes could be collected to protest against the law. Main tools for spreading the message were again blogs and twitter.
But what could possibly be wrong about a law, which tries to combat child pornography? Well, that was my first thought as well when I read about it in the news.
Looking on the law a bit more in depth makes it a bit clearer I think.
The law would allow the Federal Criminal Police Office in Germany (Bundeskriminalamt) to list every webpage they consider as dangerous in terms of child pornography on a daily basis and the provider would have to block these pages. Lots of Internet providers in Germany already confirmed their approval.
The thing is that that would not solve the actual problem, as the culprit could still operate on other pages or outside the web. This means that the actual problem would not be solved at all.
If the law would be processed probably similar regulations would follow, which would undermine the democratic character of the Internet.
I think it would be better to start at the source of the problem and first of all educate people how to protect themselves from this kind of criminality.
And I think the success of the online petition tells its own tale: it showed that the web really is a very democratic place and that the potential for fighting against something exists.
May 11th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
You make a good point.
Is the spread of child pornograhy on the internet the real problem, or is it the act of abusing and recording children in the first place?
Censorship will achieve next to nothing and ends up stifling creativity, freedom of speech and awareness.