Forwarded from the www-security list. Germany seems to want to: 1. Require blocking of German-verboten material. 2. Mandate content labling (PICS?) 3. Ban 'cookies'. 4. Require Digital Signatures on all net traffic. -pt ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date: Sun, 15 Dec 1996 23:48:32 -0800 To: www-security@ns2.rutgers.edu Subject: Germany bans cookies! (and a whole lot more) From: nobody@cypherpunks.ca (John Anonymous MacDonald, a remailer node) web servers within Germany anyway... as of August 97... see below Germany Passes Sweeping Cyberspace Law The German government approved a bill Wednesday aimed at regulating the Internet and protecting user privacy while banning smut, pro-Nazi content and online fraud. The so-called "multimedia law" essentially extends current German laws to the dominion of cyberspace, placing responsibility for suspect content on suppliers, but without clearly defining whether a supplier could also be construed to make a carrier -- such as an online service like CompuServe or AOL Bertelsmann Online -- also liable. The law is scheduled to take effect in August 1997, prior to the 1998 deregulation of the European telecommunications market. Under the law, online services could be held responsible for illegal material if they have the technology to block transmission of such content, and after notification, still disseminate the objectionable content. The law also calls for content to be tagged electronically if unsuitable for minors to ensure it could be filtered out --similar to the V-chip television initiative in the U.S. The law would also prohibit "cookies" -- tiny programs that trace a user's path through the Net, recording what they visit, examine and purchase. Instead, the law would require that services give users the opportunity to use a site or service anonymously. The German law also puts into place the idea of so called "digital signatures" -- a string of coded information which would clearly identify the origin of messages, files and images shipped via the Net. Such signatures would use a central authority to prevent fraudulent commercial transactions on the computer network by matching a publicly accessible data string with a confidential string of numbers, also called a key. www.mediacentral.com/Magazines/MediaDaily/Archive/1996121207.html/634827