Traffic control

The decision has been made: The German government passed a law, that requires all major ISPs to block suspicious web sites with a stop sign.

The BKA, the German Federal Criminal Police Office, provides a list with current web sites that have to be blocked.

At the page with the stop sign the user will be informed about the reason of the lock and he will be informed about the serious consequences of child pornography for abused children. At the same time the law outlines, that a bypass of the lock is illegal. The law is supposed to come into effect this legislature period.

All providers agree, that child pornography has to be banned. But is censoring single web sites and making them only partly accessible the right way?

The official statement is to stop all users accessing such sites by accident.

Have you ever seen a child pornography site by accident?

It’s also very interesting, that a bypass of the lock is now penalized in Germany. Basically the locks are working with the domain name system (DNS), which resolves domain names. The list of pages that have to be blocked are applied on the name servers of the access provider. But technically it’s not required to use the providers name servers. Each user can easily configure his own name servers. Therefore the user has the possibility to chose which name servers he would like to use. A custom configuration can be made for different reasons; not only to avoid locked pages. Such a configuration should be a crime?

Proponents of such locks argue, that the Internet is legal free space. This argument lacks, since the Internet itself is not its own space, it is a medium used in our society. In society there are rules and laws that apply, whether virtual or real.

The Internet does not cause child abuse. The Internet is used as medium to show child pornography, and also other crimes and perversities. There is no doubt that children must be protected from sexual abuse and we have get rid of documentation and publication of it. However, the most important thing is to find the perpetrators to stop child pornography and to protect children.

The difficulty to access such sites neither stops child pornography nor prevents the web site operators to run their dirty business. An other wide spread argument is, that a lock would cut the producer’s business base. However, if a real “customer base” exists, it is not necessary for these people to use the Internet to share their dirty content. That means child abuse does not stop if these web sites are blocked, it will merely move back to the underground. Is that the goal to protect children? How honest is the desire to protect children?

The Internet is just a medium. Censoring a medium does not prevent the causes nor does it eliminate a social evil.

If users should be protected by law from such content, what is the next harmful content, where the user should be protected?

emerion’s position on the censorship question is quite clear:
The internet should not be censored in any way, the perpetrators must be found and be held accountable.

Why emerion think that locking pages does not make any sense:

1. Who is the target of the network lock against child pornography?
Actually “real” child pornography can be found on the internet only, if you know exactly where to look for it. A click by accident, even on legal porn sites almost never happens, because the legal porn industry dissociates strictly from the child porn scene due of its own legal interests. Blocking sites is only against people who are consciously searching for child pornography. However, even if “curious” people were prevented from looking at such material, it would be irrelevant for the prevention of child abuse, since those people would not pay for that material.

2. Are network locks effective?
Network locks could be bypassed easily in any form, for example through the use of other name servers, open proxy server or through freely available anonymizing services. Instructions are available on the Internet and easy to find. The installation or configuration of such a bypass strategy only takes a few minutes. Most likely are consumer of child pornography capable of such modifications, even despicte the fact that this is now made punishable.

3. What are the side effects of network locks?
Because of the mandatory introduction of network locks through the provider, he is forced to separate the internet in “good” and “bad” sites. Due to the necessary infrastructure it is virtually inevitable that the data provider sees, who tried to access “evil” sites. Although if this data is initially neither stored nor released, it would be easy to force the providers by law to disclose user data (for example, prosecute child-consumer). It does not need much imagination to guess what democratic political consequences almost inevitably arise, because this type of infrastructure is also able to record and evaluate other type of user behavior.

4. Why should there be a connection to the music industry?
The music industry has a keen interest in the prosecution of child consumers. Once the infrastructure works for the providers, it is foreseeable that they will start massive lobbying to block file-sharing sites. The German University Professor, Dr. Thomas Hoeren from the Institute for Information, Telecommunications and Media at the University of Munster said in an interview: “I have the impression that the Family Minister does not know whose interests she represents. For the music industry, which tries to criminalize users for private copying, what happens now in the minors, is the the best thing that could happen for and the Minister is instrumentalized by the industry.”

This relationship is also supported by the music industry by itself: Dieter Gorny, Chairman of the Federal Association Music Industry, followed the Minister: “The thrust of the Family Minister for the prohibition of child pornography on the Internet is a correct signal. It is about regulation in the social internet, including the protection of intellectual property.”

5. What other democratic political consequences are predictable?

Soon after the introduction of the network lock it will turn out, that it is largely useless. Thus the next logical step is to prohibit the bypass of the lock by law as described above. The consequence is that every Internet user who wants to be anonymous in the Internet – completely legitimate – due to any reasons, will be criminalized. Ultimately this will lead to a massive restriction of fundamental rights to information and freedom of expression, as well as the protection of privacy. In other words: The usage of the Internet will only be possible if the user accepts, that access providers and the government know, or are at least able to determine, which web sites the user visited.

6. What can we really do against child pornography?
As with any crime the most sensible option is to prosecute the criminals, as it has already been done successfully on the basis of international cooperation between authorities, Internet service providers and child protection organizations (for example see eg https://www.inhope.org/).

Additionally the effect of blocking the sites can be achieved with less effort, by asking the provider hosting the material, to remove it.
A German child rights organization, invested 1 day and wrote emails to 20 providers which hosted sites, found on the Danish lock list. 16 providers shut down the affected sites immediately. This is another way, not the only one, but more successful than Internet blocking.

7. Conclusion:
Network locks are largely ineffective against spread or production of child pornography. In further consequence the music industry benefits from the locks, however the democracy and socio-political consequences, are unpredictable.

Special thanks to Michael Eisenriegler.