Why am I writing here? -detailed-
I began blogging using a german bloghoster. I was kind of happy there, but after a while I discovert some problems.
In the U.S. freedom of speech is – among others – guaranteed by the first amendment of the constitution. It is most essential to your democracy. In Germany it is.. well.. different.
Our constitution “Grundgesetz” ( ~ “basic law”) starts with:
Human dignity is inviolable.
And our right to freely say what we want is pushed down to article 5. And instantly limited by “protection of minors”, a diffuse “right of personal honour” and “other common laws”. Most of the time we are fine with that. Until you want say something unpleasant about someone who is abled to pay a lawyer and you yourself are not. This bullshit has recently gained a new alltime high. A german court (one of a state [Bundesland], not a federal one) has made a decision that not only the one who is making a statement that is violating any of this rules is punishable, but also the owner of an internet bulletin board, where this statement was made. To avoid this, every owner of a board (or website or weblog or …) who is making it possible for a third person to write a comment or any other statement, has to check EVERY post/comment/… before letting it go public.
Another point is the culpability of hyperlinks, e.g. to sites, explaining how to get rid of DRM and copy protections . For example: there is a corporation succesfully sueing german websites linking to Adressbetrug, a site that – among other things – lists corporations selling (in almost criminal ways) entries in useless yellow-pages-lookalikes.
All this – along with the fact that our government is now going to save all internet-, (mobile) phone and other connection data, making it impossible to stay anonymous in the future – makes me come here. As worpress.com is hosting its servers in Dallas and San Diego, I am feeling much more secure here. For the moment I am coming here by a normal internet connection. But with the above mentioned plans of my government, I am already considering to use anonymity-networks like TOR.
Thats it for now. Have a nice weekend :)
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PS: I owe USA erklärt much credit for its work, because it gave me really useful information about Americans, their freedom-of-speech and the differences to ours here in Germany. Maybe i will use it as a blueprint to do it the other way around – telling how things are, here in germany.
