[Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content

[wiki-list at phizz.demon.co.uk]

Andreas Kolbe wrote:
> I was not aware of the Flickr situation in Germany. Are some of their
> servers based in Germany?
> 
> As far as I am aware, the German Bundesprüfstelle für
> jugendgefährdende Medien[1] and the Kommission für Jugendmedienschutz
> (KJM) are limited in what they can do about internet offerings
> registered abroad. This is information which I received from them
> upon request.
> 
> They told me all they can do is contact their counterparts in the
> respective country, express their concern, and ask for their support.
> 
> 
> A.
> 
> [1] http://www.bundespruefstelle.de/bpjm/information-in-english.html
> 


Yahoo have a physical presence in Germany. The issue was as that soon as 
flickr provided a German language interface, then the lawyers took the 
view that such an internationalization could be taken as providing 
content targeted at German users. The servers as such are mainly in the 
US. In any case I'd be very surprised if German porn websites could get 
around the law simply by hosting the content in the US.

In any case its been 3 years and flickr/yahoo have not seen fit to relax 
the rules. The head of the KJM said that flickr simply had to *delete* 
any content that they were informed about. They chose to ban German Y! 
ids from accessing the restricted content.

A number decamped to ipernity but found the rules on what was allowed 
there even tougher. Most are back on flickr with non German Y! ids.


One might want to check out what one's liability is if one happens to be 
in Germany and are editing or Admining porn page in German.