Damit soll der Zugang zu Internetseiten erschwert
werden
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Wednesday 25 March 2009 22:47

Germany is currently setting up some internet
filtering. In The Netherlands there were also plans
like that, but the thing I don't understand in the
German situation is that they seem to be more
honest about that it's not aimed at absolutely
blocking those sites. The filtering is mostly just
a list of domain names that the name servers of the
cooperating ISPs won't resolve to their original ip
number, but redirect to a page explaining why it is
blocked. In The Netherlands that system is
presented by politicians as that they are blocking
access to those sites, while in Germany they say
they make it only harder to get to those sites.
It's good that they are honest about that, but I
think they misunderestimated how easy it then still
is. Since it's goal is to jam the commercial
market, won't that commercial market just release
some software package that makes it trivial to get
around the filter? Isn't a significant part of the
customers of that market already using TOR or
Freenet? And if the general public isn't already
smart enough to figure those things out, does a
system that only works as long as the government
keeps the general public uneducated about those
things really help society?

Do politicians really want to say something along
the lines of "We almost solved the problem, at
least our stupid Burgerinnen und Burger won't be
causing anymore trouble, and we therefore can only
hope most of them are stupid."? Well, isn't that
why those politicians got elected in the first
place?

by Roland van Ipenburg
http://www.xs4all.nl/~ipenburg/blog/posts/dull/2009/03/25/erschwert/