Our Federal Minister of Family Affairs, Ursula von der Leyen, has enforced a new law, that allows a mandatory blockage of child pornography in the internet through Internet service providers via a block list conducted by the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA). While fighting child pornography is good, doing it by blocking websites is bad and a danger for our democracy. Why? Because those who want to access a blocked website, just need to enter a foreign DNS server, so the blocking is without effect (Note: it already is possible and very effective to shut the websites down). But to block the websites, an infrastructure is created that can easily be used to block other websites as well. The past has taught us, that the inhibition threshold to extend censorship and surveillance is very low once the technical infrastructure is available. Members of the CDU are already fighting to extend this new law to block “Killerspiele” (ego shooter games).
During the debate about the law, von der Leyen has got the nickname “Zensursula” which combines the German word for censorship (“Zensur”) and von der Leyen’s given name (“Ursula”). Oliver Kels, Rob Vegas and Diana Leder have made a nice song about the whole problem. It’s of rather good quality and could become a summer hit. If you drive a German radio station, please play this sond so that more people get advised.