Germany to order ISPs to censor child porn

In a move to stop the spread of child pornography on the Internet, German officials will soon be asking ISPs to filter out Web sites they deem offensive, according to news magazine Der Spiegel.

German regulatory officials have been working with Google and other search engines, providing them with a blacklist of sites to block, according to the article, which was reported on Google Blogoscoped on Friday. Google already excludes from its German and French search results content that is pro-Nazi.

There have been other censorship efforts recently related to images of children. Internet service providers in the U.K. last month began blocking access to Wikipedia after Britain's Internet Watch Foundation took issue over an image of a naked young girl that appeared on the cover of an album by the rock band The Scorpions. Several days later, the watchdog group changed its mind after discussing the situation with the Wikimedia Foundation.

The Internet Watch Foundation's child porn blacklist also has resulted in some ISPs blocking access to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, The Register reported this week.
Related Links:

• Go back to category Internet & Networks to read more reviews and articles.
• Go back to Software Magazine's main page.