A German adult website operator has filed in the district court in Frankfurt to force the German ISP Arcor to block Google.de and Google.com in order to prevent the display of adult images without age verification, which is prohibited under German law.
The request was filed by Huch Medien GmbH, the company that owns and operates AmateurStar.de.
In its filing, Huch Medien reportedly said it would not simply sit back and watch as Google's image search displayed pornographic images to
users of all ages, including “clearly prohibited animal pornography.”
Huch Medien Executive Director Tobias Huch said that he's merely trying to get the German legal system to clarify the scope of the liability exemptions offered to ISPs under
the German Telemedia Act.
Huch asserted that since Germany blocks sites like YouPorn.com — as the court ordered Arcor to do in October — then the country theoretically should block all websites that violate relevant German and/or European Union
law.
If Germany is going to maintain such a legal posture and engage in blocking sites in widespread fashion, then we should not complain when China blocks a large number of websites, Huch said.
According to German attorney Daniel
Koetz the German law requiring age verification applies to all websites that can be accessed from Germany.
Koetz told XBIZ that the Telemedia Act requires all sites bearing content presumably harmful to minors such as pornography to have an
age-verification system. Such an age-verification system has to ‘secure that minors cannot access the site. Koetz said that under the law, German authorities and courts only deem an age-verification system to be secure if the system forces end users
to have personal contact with a third party who verifies their age.
One of the problems with that system, Koetz said, is who wants to go through all that hassle to enter a porn site, and who wants postal clerks to know you're a pervert
watching porn? Koetz said that as a result of the law, traffic to German porn sites is low because everybody goes to other countries' sites.
Those foreign sites, however, are subject to being blocked by German ISPs by order of the
courts, Koetz said — as Huch has requested that the Frankfurt court to Arcor to do with Google.
Koetz said that Huch's request was filed in order to demonstrate the perversion of all this.
New German law requires websites rate themselves with an age rating
Just
as a mental exercise, would anyone like to suggest what rating MelonFarmers should be. It features items generally supportive of adult entertainment without having any 'turn on' sex material or violent imagery or whatever.
In Germany, a few blogs and websites have already decided to throw in the towel before a new law comes into effect from January 1, 2011.
The so-called Jugendmedienschutz-Staatsvertrag (JMStV) will task anyone operating a .de domain with adding an
age certificate to his or her website.
Sounds like a dumb idea, doesn't it? Unfortunately, it is set to become reality due to politicians ratifying the law in the parliaments of Germany's 16 federal states.
Age verification processes are
already in place for German porn sites, which require users to have their age and identity checked to make sure they're not simply using dad's credit card. Verification using Deutsche Post's Postident identity check is the preferred method.
As a
consequence, popular German blog VZlog.de has said it will go offline on New Year's Eve. VZlog.de states it doesn't have the resources to check all of its content and comments, nor does it have the technical resources to slap an 18 certificate on it,
make certain its readers are 18 and above using Postident, or simply put the site online at midnight and take it offline again in the early hours.
It seems the only people set to profit are lawyers, who are going to have a field day next year.
Lawyers are expected to start sending out cease and desist letters to websites, telling them they're breaking the law and have to pay a couple of thousand euros.