It is depressing to read this WikiLeakS.org press release about the futile censorship of the WikiLeakS.DE domain name alias "cover name", which simply points to the WikiLeakS.org servers, which are not in Germany, but in Sweden.
April 9, 2009
Fri Apr 10 19:39:36 2009 GMT
WIKILEAKS PRESS RELEASE
On April 9th 2009, the internet domain registration for the investigative journalism site Wikileaks.de was suspended without notice by Germany's registration authority DENIC.
The action comes two weeks after the house of the German WikiLeaks domain sponsor, Theodor Reppe, was searched by German authorities. Police documentation shows that the March 24, 2009 raid was triggered by WikiLeaks' publication of Australia's proposed secret internet censorship list. The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) told Australian journalists that they did not request the intervention of the German government.
The publication of the Australian list exposed the blacklisting of many harmless or political sites and changed the nature of the censorship debate in Australia. The Australian government's mandatory internet censorship proposal is now not expected to pass the Australian senate.
On March 25 the German cabinet finalized its own proposal to introduce a nation-wide internet censorship system. Australia and Germany are the only Western democracies publicly considering such a mandatory censorship scheme.
While last week German police claimed to the news magazine Der Spiegel that they had been ignorant about WikiLeaks' role as an international press organization, this "excuse" is surely no longer valid. Despite being questioned by the press, German authorities have still not contacted WikiLeaks or its publishers to resolve the issue, or indeed, at all. The lack of contact is inexcusable.
[...]
WikiLeaks continues publishing on its other (non-German) domains. If the German cabinet's censorship proposal passes the Bundestag, presumably those WikiLeaks domains would be added to Germany's secret blacklist.
Germany and China are now the only two countries currently censoring a WikiLeaks domain.
[...]
What are the German authorities playing at ? Even the Australians are denying that they requested such censorship.
Who exactly is the petty official who ordered this censorship ?
This censorship probably breaches the European Convention on Human Rights, Article 10, which is enacted into the domestic law if each European Union country, and in some other ones as well.
It probably also breaches the European Union European Council Electronic Commerce Directive, which, very sensibly, exempts telecommunications and internet infrastructure providers from civil or criminal liability for the sins of their customers.
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