Wikileaks published the censorlist of a German provider named Lycos, which ceased to exist in November 2008. It is quite interesting what Lycos all filtered, as it’s quite clear to see that it definitely does not only include outright criminal websites, but also legal sites, or at some points in a forum only a certain thread. Keep in mind though that the list is almost a year old.
While the title sounds like a computer game, a song by Sepultura or military plans, this is rather about ‘internet territory’, ‘cyber territory’. While every person can have some territory on the internet for themselves, be it a fancy personal website / blog (such as this one), twitter,facebook, etc. page, so do companies, organizations as well as governments. It is the latter who is more and more waging war on cyber territory. As usual with governments, the inherited bureaucracy and red tape all over prevents them usually from picking up new developments, especially in the technology area. So also with the internet. While government bodies, politicians and others affiliated with governments do have their web sites, info letters etc., they have failed so far to make a mark on the internet.
And again Zensursula (German Federal Minister for family, youth etc.) hits the news with rubbish. After her FUD campaign regarding legislating internet censorship in Germany on basis of fighting child pornography on the internet, she now wants to set up a rule book of behaviour on the internet.
First and foremost, the internet is not dead in Germany, but it has been significantly shot last Thursday, the 18th June 2009. And this could lead to its death. What happened is following:
A politician named Ursula von der Leyen campaigned to install web blocks against child pornography. While the name of that package sounds honourable, if you look behind the proposed system, it is nothing else than a huge internet censorship infrastructure.
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