German law on Internet blocking challenged in Constitutional Court

By EDRi · February 23, 2011

This article is also available in:
Deutsch: [Verfassungsbeschwerde gegen Internet-Sperr-Gesetz in Deutschland | http://www.unwatched.org/EDRigram_9.4_Verfassungsbeschwerde_gegen_Internet-Sperr-Gesetz]

On 22 February 2011 the German Working Group against Internet
Blocking and Censorship (AK Zensur) submitted their complaint against
the German law on Internet blocking to Germany’s Constitutional Court.
The law is directed against online child abuse material and had come
into force on 23 February 2010, setting a one-year deadline for the
complaint.

AK Zensur and many others had fiercely opposed the law and announced
that a complaint would be filed when the law was enacted by Parliament
in June 2009. An online petition against the law collected 134 000
signatures in May and June, the highest number ever achieved at the
German Parliament’s online petitions system. A curious situation emerged
when the government changed after the elections in September 2009,
taking the liberal party FDP into power in a coalition with the
conservative CDU/CSU. The FDP had opposed the blocking law in their
election campaign, and before the law came into force, it was agreed
that it would not be fully implemented. In a legally dubious move, a
“non-application directive” by the Interior minister stipulated that
initially, only take-down was to be attempted, and the governing parties
agreed that a review would be held about a year later.

This created something of a legal absurdity as the consequences of the
law are not fully felt at the moment when the deadline to complain is
expiring. But AK Zensur and its lawyers are confident that even now,
many aspects of the law are in clear violation of the German
Constitution, and several experts had voiced similar concerns at a
parliamentary hearing before the law was enacted. While political
support for the ill-fated law has widely diminished, the governing
parties have not found the will to abolish it in a new Parliamentary act.
AK Zensur is hopeful that with its complaint, it will be able to do
the politicians’ homework for them. A website collecting signatures to
support the complaint in the political debate will be started soon.

German press release: German Free Speech Working Party issues constitutional
complaint against censorship law (only in German, 23.02.2011)
http://ak-zensur.de/2011/02/verfassungsbeschwerde.html

German Free Speech Working Party issues constitutional complaint against
censorship law (23.02.2011)
http://ak-zensur.de/2011/02/constitutional-complaint.html

EDRi-gram: Germany’s President signs an Internet bill against his own
government (24.02.2010)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number8.4/german-president-adopts-internet-childporn-law

(Contribution by Sebastian Lisken)