This April our government brought a draft bill into parliament that introduced internet censorship by police authorities. Since the draft bill uses the fight against child pornography as a fig leaf to cover it’s tremendousness I was very much concerned that no one would have the heart to do something against this law bill. In the beginning it seemed like my doubt were absolutely right. When even our economics minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg defamed people who opposed and some politicians started to talk about expanding this law to copyright infringement, radicals and various other things they dislike I kind of resigned. A brave new world where the police authority controls what average people are allowed to read, play or look at seemed to be within grasp – and as a child of the the GDR that scared me a lot.
But as matter of fact the public opinion changed in the last few days and weeks; more and more people stand up for our basic rights and the separation of powers that is fixed in the German Constitutional Law. Today more than 108.000 people have signed a petition at the Bundestag to overrule this bill.
Please support this petition by signing it! It will stay open until the 16th of June 2009.