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Deleting porn

April 6, 2011

After a year of using mixed tactics to combat the spread of child pornography online, politicians from the governing coalition in Germany have agreed that deleting child porn sites works better than simply blocking them.

https://p.dw.com/p/10o70
A delete key on a keyboard
The German government decided to delete child porn sitesImage: picture-alliance/Ton Koene

Leading figures in Germany's governing coalition agreed on Tuesday to permanently adopt a policy of deleting online child pornography sites from the internet rather than simply blocking them.

A law from the previous coalition of Christian Democrats (CDU) and Social Democrats stated that Germany would fight the spread of child porn on the internet by blocking sites with pornographic content involving children.

The current CDU-Free Democrats (FDP) coalition believes deleting the sites is a better way to solve the problem and had previously announced it would test out the policy over the course of one year. Now, the old policy is to be lifted and the new one implemented.

The FDP was against merely blocking material because the party believed that could open the door to wider censorship on the internet.

"Blocking online content is something that rightly elicits mistrust and challenges," said the FDP's Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger.

She said the FDP had convinced the CDU that "deleting forbidden material like child-pornographic content is really the best and most effective way."

Author: Matt Zuvela (Reuters, dpa)
Editor: Nicole Goebel

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