Re: German Internet Censorhip: http://www.xs4all.nl

[um@c2.net (Ulf Moeller)]

The ICTF is putting an English version of their press release on the
web at http://www.anwalt.de/ictf/p960901e.htm

> Yesterday I bounced mail through a German university to xs4all.nl back to
> EFF, and it came through just fine. I also tried golden-gate.owl.de and
> wserver.physnet.uni-hamburg.de, both of which have no problems talking to
> xs4all.nl. From those tests, I can say there's no complete ban, though I
> can't confirm or deny any partial ban.

Basically, all commercial Internet providers are members of the ICTF.
However, the "online services" (T-Online, CompuServe, AOL) are not, nor
are the universities. owl.de is one of the many non-commercial Internet
providers using a university connection.

Also, the commercial ISPs have blocked the HTTP port only, so you
can still send mail.

Rich is correct in that this action by federal authorities is more
threatening than the previous ones at state level. It is *not* a
legally binding order, but the Bundesanwaltschaft threatened to
otherwise take their "usual measures" (i.e. police action. See the
ICTF press release for details, once it is completely online).

A short note on why "radikal" is illegal in Germany:

The magazine has been publishing letters from various terrorist
organisations, which was considered as illegal "promotion for
terrorist organisations" by the Bundesanwaltschaft. As a
consequence the "radikal" editors themselves been classified as a
"criminal organisation".

The current issue contains a description of the railway signalling
system intended for sabotage.


Thank you for putting up the mirror.

> However, just in case the German government is successful in this
> censorship gambit, I've mirrored the three embattled web sites at: 
> 
>   http://www.well.com/~declan/mirrors/
>
> This is a quick grab of the files in question; I'll work on a formatted
> intro page later. 
> 
> (As background for more recent subscribers to fight-censorship, this isn't
> the first time the German government has tried this. A similar move came
> early this year when German prosecutors tried to cut connections to
> webcom.com in California, where some of Ernst Zundel's Nazi "Holocaust
> Revisionist" propaganda was hosted. I and a few other folks including Rich
> at Stanford and Blake at Penn held our noses and mirrored it around the
> country, prompting the Gemans to lift the ban. I had thought the German
> prosecutors smarter than to try this again. I guess I was wrong.)
> 
> My global Net-censorship roundup is at:
> 
>   http://www.eff.org/~declan/global/
> 
> -Declan