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German attempt to censor internet failing thr
Jan - 17.04.2002 14:35
In a preliminary judgement made on Monday, the district court of Amsterdam has ordered ISP "XS4ALL" (Access for All) to immediately block any access to a members homepage showing "radical" left-wing political content. The site showed articles of German activist magazine "radikal", on how to delay nuclear waste transports. Mirrorring campaign initiated on local IMC´s now catching Dutch and German media attention. In response, frantic German railway company Deutsche Bahnen is now sueing Google for it´s cached copies next wednesday and has threatened Alta Vista and Yahoo by sending them letters with ultimatum.
This latest ruling meant a new chapter in a 5 year attempt to silence german radikal activists by the German government. The German Secret Service first wrote a special paragraph in their interim year-rapport 1996 because of the existence of the site, which among others, shows details on the workings of technical railway systems and how they might be used to delay nuclear waste transports. Nor the paper or digital version of the magazine however were ever illegal in the Netherlands.
On the morning of the 11th of December 1996, ten local police officers, a high-ranking officer from the Maastricht-court, two German officers and two BKA (Bundes Kriminal Ambt) German officers raided a house in the village of Vaals (The Netherlands) In a report, German and Dutch police refused to explain the reason for this raid. German authorities referred to the Dutch ones for explanations, and the Dutch authorities referred to the Germans. After repeated questioning, the raiders finally explained that the search warrant came from the German authorities in Karlsruhe. During the two-hour raid, two personal computers, floppy-disks, photo´s, a pamphlet and some Radikal stickers were seized. The raid caused questions to be asked in the Dutch parliament by left ánd right-wing parties´ members. Shortly after the raid the digital censorship started.
Behind these German censorship-attemps are the BKA/BAW (Federal Criminal Investigation Departement). They told the German ISP´s that they were "possibly making themselves subject to criminal prosecution for aiding and abetting criminal activities if they continued to allow these pages to be called up via your access points and network crosspoints".
On 11th of april 1997 one of the biggest german ISP´s, the DFN (university-network in Germany), started a ip-filtering blockade against www.xs4all.nl. It only lasted a few days as many protest letters were sent, mirrors appeared around the world and the complete issue of radikal 154 was posted in de.soc.zensur - and because of that mirrored at dejanews. It was not the first time this site was blocked. Last year september members of the german ICTF (Internet Content Task Force) also blocked www.xs4all.nl for about a month. The attempt caused great public criticism and made it to the international press.
But only blocking this site was not enough. After the first censorship-attemp the Prosecutor at the court of Berlin indicted Angela Marquardt, vice president of the socialist party PDS, for providing a hypertext link to "radikal no. 154".
A week ago, after a period of calm, without clear action on the part of Deutsche Bahnen, XS4ALL was demanded to direclty remove the website. The ISP did not answer to this call: "We have a standard complaint procedure if any party should object to website content", a spokesperson stated. "In this process we ask the demanding party to make an argument for removal. Deuthsche Bahnen did not do this, they immediately issued a supoena". XS4ALL had one weekend to prepare the case. Why the sudden rush, the spokesperson did not understand. "The site has been up for four to five years now". In the past even the founder and director of XS4ALL has been informed by a journalist he might be arrested if he ever travelled to Germany.
Immediately after the Judges ruling, and in sync with previous censorship attempts, a mirroring campaign has been initiated on the Dutch (2), German (3) and International (4) IMC´s, which are proving succesfull. In the past few days, 14 mirror sites have been reported worldwide and the campaign has received coverage in the "straight" Dutch and German media. (5)
Alarmed by the counter actions, Deutsche Bahnen has sent letters to the major search engines, as they found out that even they cache copies of indexed pages. (6) Google has refused to remove the pages archived in their cache and therefor Deutsche Bahnen in return will have subpoenas be issued on wednesday. The case will be presented in Germany. AltaVista and Yahoo have also received a letter. They were presented with an ultimatum. They should respond by Friday or be sued too.
In the European Directive for E-Commerce of 8 June 2000 the liability of internet service providers is defined in a precise way. This directive should have been implemented in Dutch law by 17 January 2002. Now that the implementation-term has passed, the judge needs to explain current law according to the Directive. This is a perfect example of how "globalization style" European legislation, silently and gradually overrules local law, even in issues of freedom of speech and press.
The dimension of the cooperation within the framework of the new "European Security Policy" is also shown here in a very clear way. It shows that an attempt is being made to completely redefine the persecution, across all borders, of politically unwanted people and criminalize their views. But as it seems, there is just one internet fundamental they have overlooked:
+++ THE INTERNET SEES CENSORSHIP AS DAMAGE - AND ROUTES AROUND IT +++
(1) -  http://www.xs4all.nl/uk/news/overview/radikal.html (ISP comments on affair)
(2) - http://www.indymedia.nl/2002/04/3281.shtml (dutch)
(3) - Link verwijderd wegens uitspraak rechter
Link removed because of court ruling |
(4) - Link verwijderd wegens uitspraak rechter
Link removed because of court ruling |
(5) - http://www.webwereld.nl/nieuws/10911.phtml (news - headline: "Radikal Mirrors appearing everywhere")
(6) - http://www.webwereld.nl/nieuws/10912.phtml (news)
(7) - http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/04/16/020416hngoogle.xml
Mirror Sites:
Link verwijderd wegens uitspraak rechter
Link removed because of court ruling |
 Website: http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=173139&group=webcast)
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