[Chapter-delegates] Input Request: DNS Blocking

[Hans Peter Dittler]

Hello all,

we here in Germany have a law in place which requires that larger ISPs to provide the ability to do DNS-redirects to a specific "Stop-Site".
This law was put into place in February 2010 and immediately suspended a few days later. 
After some changes in the ruling parties of the government it is now still "under consideration" and neither obsoleted or put into working.
It was intended by the law that a special group at the central police (Bundeskriminalamt) defines and delivers the list of targets to be blocked.
As the list was to be kept confidential there was no obvious way to check the list or go against wrong listing before court.
The law is still under discussion and will either be taken away completely and replaced or modified considerable before being put live again.

And yes, all the arguments seen on this list were brought forward, and yes all the problems were known - but still a sufficient majority of the politicians decided in favor of the law.
And there are several laud voices still requesting the blocking or something similar put to work.

And one little point at the end:
The law is titled:
" Gesetz zur Erschwerung des Zugangs zu kinderpornographischen Inhalten in Kommunikationsnetzen"
Which roughly translates into:
Law to rise the barrier in accessing child-pornography in communication networks.
- which shows clearly that the makers of the law did understand at least that DNS-blocking is rather easy to go around


Hans Peter Dittler
Member of the board
ISOC.DE
Internet Society German Chapter e.V.