Hallo Bernie!
>In Germany the ISPs (atleast CompuServe) got into trouble for letting
>pornographic material pass through the system to the end users. I even
Well, that was a very strange case.
The german HQ of Compuserve is in Munich, Bavaria. As Bavaria is a
strong catholic and most conservative state from all the german states
there are some opinions floating around not found elsewhere. (By the way
I live in the northern part of germany. Far away from bavaria.)
In Munich, being kind of germanys high-tech capital, the police started
to scan Internet for criminal acts like child pornography and they
actually found a place to download it. And afterwards they thought about
who to bring to court and as Compuserve (unknowingly) provided access to
that site, they were sued.
Everybody in germany who knew about how the internet worked was
extremely disrupted because in their (and my) opinion it is the wrong
thing to sue the access provider instead of the content provider. And in
my opinion the outcome of this case was illegal as there is (and was
then) a law in germany stating that ISPs have to block access to
"illegal" sites IF THEY KNOW THESE EXIST ONLY. And if they don't know,
they can't be sued. Compuserve didn't know, I suppose.
I hope this is correct as I do not really remember that issue. If
somebody can correct me, do that. And if somebody wants more info, ask
me, I can dig up some newspapers then.
Bye Gunnar
--
Gunnar Th�le
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