barely fatal

They did it again, a new law to become real next year: Protect our youth from all that terrible free speech, unbearable reality, and nasty corrupted non-controlled free-roaming blogs and web sites.

Come January 2011, content on the web in Germany – any kind – will need to be classified using the same categories the movie rating system uses. As they can’t hire a million monkeys to check everything on the web, every publisher has to self-classify his or her stuff: 0, 6, 12, 16 or 18+ years. If it will be enough to put a sticker or tag on posts, if you need an “age gate” american style (“Enter your birth date – and shame on you if you cheat!” – parody at best) or if you will need to integrate with “real ID” identification services that already exist (but are mostly horribly complicated and annoying to use) it will be a nuisance. And of course, if you should classify your stuff incorrectly, you can get sued. Which means the only way to be absolutely “safe” is to classify everything 18+.

Then there’s this great idea, you can show 18+ content between 11pm and 6am (or something) – but not earlier without an age gate. On the internet. I’m not shitting you, that’s already in place on some game sites.

The impact this could have on blogs – even small silly ones like this – could potentially be huge. Some already have closed down in anticipation (or protest) of the law. Practically, I won’t have to do anything – I don’t show violence or sex, and this blog is non-commercial. But hell if if know if something I write should be rated 12 or 16 or whatever. The least this law will do is again trigger a wave of uncertainty amongst the web community. The (technology-supported) classification is supposed to allow content filters to be set up by parents – a good thing – but won’t the youth always find a way around those anyway? And of course, this will work with German sites only.

Some FAQ can be found here (German): http://www.fsm.de/de/jmstv-2011