From: Jerome Thorel <thorel@imaginet.fr>
Newsgroups: alt.censorship,comp.org.eff.talk,alt.sex,soc.culture.german
Subject: HOW BAVARIA PUSHED COMPUSERVE FOR CENSORSHIP
Date: 29 Dec 1995 15:54:37 GMT
Organization: none and non profit
Lines: 58
Message-ID: <4c12vt$1mp@avalon.imaginet.fr>
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-URL: news://news/alt.censorship

Act 1. Compuserve Internet Service has closed more than 200 newsgroups 
(adult and sex-oriented ones) last Friday, Dec. 22. 

Act 2. CIS "Feedback" officials first stressed on the Decency Act to 
explain this decision -- although the CDA is not a law yet. 

Act 3. On Dec. 28, CIS released a communique (published in 
alt.censorship these days) in which it says that "German government 
officials, as part of an investigation of illegal material on the 
Internet, ordered CompuServe to do what was necessary with respect to 
specified newsgroups in order to comply with German law.  German 
authorities are investigating newsgroups and other Internet content that 
may contain child pornography, other pornographic material illegal for 
to adults, as well as content that although not illegal for adults is of 
such an explicit nature that it is illegal for minors."  

Act 4. This bulletin has learned today that this declaration is 
partially false. No "German government officials" were implicated in the 
"order" to block newsgroups access. Some German sources said that, 
however, it was a Bavarian Police investigation that lead 
Compuserve-Germany, with its HQ based in Munich (Bavaria), to 
"cooperate" with Bavarian Police and shut down "indecent" services. No 
other CIS comments were obtained.
Kurt Jaeger, from the Computer Center of the University of Stuttgart, 
told Netizen that no jugement were released yet, "no court has decided 
as of now on that issue. It was a state police investigation, not 
federal," he said. "It seems the bavarian police came and visited the 
CIS Germany bureau in Munich and forced them to "cooperate". CIS wanted 
to shut down newsgroup access for the german users, but it seems it was 
not able to limit access for US users only (that's my interpretation of 
the problem ...). The State investigation was confirmed by other reports 
in the German Computer press.
Ulf Moller, another academic source in Hamburg, added that "The Bavarian 
police have been shutting down FidoNet BBSs and seized the operators' 
hardware for some months. As far as I know, none of these cases has been 
decided by court yet." It seems that in a recent civil case, Ulf added, 
"a district court has decided that network operators are not responsible 
for individual articles. In criminal law, many (including the federal 
ministry for post and telecommunication) believe that the situation is 
similar, but it has not been ruled by court. It is unclear, in how far 
ISPs can be held responsible for carrying newsgroups with predominantly 
illegal contents."

Epilogue. So Compuserve -- Germany is the biggest Western European 
market, with 150.000 subscribers -- seems to have decided to cut down 
worldwide usenet groups after a lonely local German investigation. With 
no court order to justify this.

--> See the CIS Communique published in the alt.censorship group
--> Read the December 27 Issue of The American Reporter for further 
details : http://www.newshare.com/Reporter/today.html. (Other reports 
will appear. The AR did not mention the German investigation on Dec.27, 
released by CIS the next day.)
---------
netizen, the lambda bulltin #1.10
http://www.freenix.fr/netizen/