Google: exposing kids to porn
p2pnet news view Advertising | Kids & Kartels:- Google is being accused of an infamy often disingenuously levelled at P2P f
ile sharing applications by the vested interest corporate entertainment industry: that it’s exposing children to online porn.
“Huch Medien GmbH has filed for expedited proceedings at the first-instance District Court of Frankfurt to force Arcor to block Google.de and Google.com in order to prevent pornographic texts from being displayed without age confirmation,” says Heise Online.
Interestingly, Huch operates erotic site Amateurstar.de but says it refuses to sit back while “Google’s image search display hundreds of pornographic images for users of all ages who enter such terms as ‘porn’, ‘fuck’, or ‘oral sex’.”
Mind you, how many ‘innocent kids’ are likely to be searching ‘porn’, ‘fuck’, or ‘oral sex’ on Google or anywhere else?
Anyway, “In a sudden turn of events concerning the battle for the protection of young people from exposure to erotic content on the internet, Huch Medien GmbH has filed for expedited proceedings at the first-instance District Court of Frankfurt to force Arcor to block Google.de and Google.com in order to prevent pornographic texts from being displayed without age confirmation,” says the post.
Arcor is the number two telecoms provider in Germany.
Heise goes on:
The filing, which has been made available to heise online, speaks of the suspicion of “systematically committed felonies on the websites www.google.de and www.google.com”. Huch then charges that Arcor can be reasonably expected as an access provider to be aware that these websites are widely used. As a result, Huch claims that Arcor is at least aiding and abetting Google in its “horrible breaches committed on these terrible websites”. The plaintiff says that it reported the matter to Arcor on November 20 and gave the company time to block the websites of the world’s largest search engine. Huch says it received no response, nor did Arcor react to a formal demand from their lawyer to cease and desist. Huch then simply took the matter to court.
In October, “the first-instance Court of Frankfurt ordered Arcor to block erotic site YouPorn.com when it handed down a temporary restraining order,” says the story.
“Back then, the plaintiff was Kirchberg Logistik of Hanover, which argued that YouPorn.com, which was on the blacklist created by the German Oversight Centre for Adult Media, did not conduct any age checks as required by German law, thus violating the requirements for the protection of young people in Germany,” it says, adding:
“In the past few years, Huch has fought a long court battle so that age verification would apply for access to all pornographic content on the Internet. But the BGH recently ruled that the method Huch developed and later optimized, “ueber18.de”, did not fulfil the legal requirements; initially, it mainly checked ID numbers to see if they matched the location of the issue.
At the moment, the company is also involved in a court case being heard by the German Constitutional Court concerning Section 184c of the German Penal Code (StGB); Section 184 prohibits the dissemination of pornography in Telemedia without age verification. Huch maintains that this stipulation is out of date in its current version.”
Might Huch, or someone else, also claim by virtue of the fact Google has porn pix on its servers, it’s making them available?
It’s an argument used by the RIAA as it tries to sue Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG customers into becoming good little consumers.
Nahhh.
Also See:
Heise Online – Arcor to block Google, December 5, 2007
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December 10th, 2007 at 4:36 pm
will young kids who see those pictures really understand what its about?
December 10th, 2007 at 4:55 pm
They will go out and stab someone. Stop this travesty before another columbine happens.
December 10th, 2007 at 7:08 pm
Look, when I was a kid I looked up new rude words in the dictionary; so sure, if I’d had google, that’s the very first thing I’d do. But is it up to google to do the censorship? I don’t really think so. Of course, if they want to follow the “do no evil” mantra, they could supply parents with an applet to disable unsuitable hits.
December 10th, 2007 at 8:48 pm
Google already provides filtering options. Parents who are concerned should take responsibility and use that filtering. Blaming google for all the worlds problems is narrow minded and naive.
December 10th, 2007 at 8:59 pm
Wake up, people. This is how freedom is destroyed. We start making distinctions between “good” speech and “bad” speech, and the “bad” speech category being legally infringed upon is the tip of the crowbar pushing through the door. Demanding that Google, which is basically a giant indexing robot, be blocked for reporting unbiased results from its indexing that happen to show what SOME PEOPLE consider to be objectionable content is absurd.
Let’s take a ride down the slippery slope. Consider the methods by which children (or teens) can be prevented from viewing “objectionable content” online. The perfect way to do it? No more Internet, period. The next less drastic step? Massive oversight of the entire Internet, requiring that all content be published through, say, a government entity, and even then there is no guarantee that objectionable content won’t be published. Next we would have designated third parties that do the regulation management instead of the government, which opens more holes for bad content but makes it somewhat easier to publish content. Now keep following this inverse traversal of the slippery slope we’re on, and where are we? We’re at the part where some assclown can come along and demand that an ISP *VIA GOVERNMENT ORDER* block out some form of content because “kids might see something bad.” Granted, they trump up the “threat” by using typical lawyer exaggeration such as “systematically committed felonies” and “horrible breaches.” That’s not too terrible yet, but how far does it have to go before someone stands up and says “to hell with this censorship?” Don’t people have a right to self-censor? If someone sees that Google is spitting out porn to their kids, don’t they have the right to take measures to keep them off of it and have them use other search engines? Why is it that governmental bodies are parenting the general population more and more as time goes on?
Have we really degraded to the point that we can’t make decisions for ourselves? Or is it that some people wish to exact their individual morality and beliefs upon others, using the government as the tool to bring about that goal of fascism?
I wasn’t aware that a government would “blacklist” websites; it seems that the free market is the place for such “blacklisting” to take place to me. But then again maybe not, since governments have proven for centuries that they can surely manage things better than the private sector, like healthcare. Yep, government-run healthcare makes free market healthcare look like a joke, especially since the government-run healthcare doesn’t have waiting lists and rationing out of live-saving operations. Oh, wait…
(Remember who said “the government that governs least, governs best?” Hmmm?)
December 11th, 2007 at 3:26 am
Doesn’t google have a filter for image searches that you have to turn off? They day they make me give them a credit card to change that setting is the day I quit using google. Seriously why do these people make crap up and then go on the warpath? Must want his name in the news or something…
December 11th, 2007 at 4:22 am
Because little johnny got caught looking at pron and now he’s scarred for life.
December 12th, 2007 at 9:11 pm
BOTTOM LINE: It’s the damned parents’ job to supervise their offspring while using the Internet, and if they can’t do that simple thing, they shouldn’t have had kids.
January 15th, 2010 at 3:18 am
To “The Angry Offender”, you could not have said it better. When are parents going to start being parents again and set the rules around the house and control the kids, not the kids control the parents. I do not need the government to tell me how to run my family and what is and is not appropriate.