Date: Fri, 6 Sep 1996 12:40:18 +0200 (MET DST)

From: Felipe Rodriquez <felipe@xs4all.nl>

GERMANY CENSORS DUTCH WEBSITE WWW.XS4ALL.NL, WITH 3100 WEBPAGES

German internetproviders, joined in the Internet Content Taskforce (ICTF), started censoring the Dutch website www.xs4all.nl, containing 3100 personal and commercial homepages. This act of censorship is caused by the webpage of a magazine that is banned in Germany, Radikal (http://www.xs4all.nl/ ~tank/radikal/).

Providers in Germany are already blocking packets to and from the host www.xs4all.nl. The 3100 websites on this server include the Kurdistan Information Network (http://www.xs4all.nl/~tank/kurdish/htdocs/), the popular Internet Charts (http://www.xs4all.nl/~jojo/) and the award-winning Chip Directory (http://www.xs4all.nl/~ganswijk/chipdir/).

XS4ALL has not received any request from the German Government regarding the homepage of Radikal. Without any prior contact the German prosecutor decided that the XS4ALL website needs to be blocked for German Internet Users. XS4ALL is awaiting legal advice, and will investigate if legal procedures against the German government are possible.

Censorship on Internet usually has the opposite effect. Internetusers consider it a sport to publish censored materials. Many users have already published the Radikal website on other Internet hosts. Xs4all Internet will rotate the IP-numbering of the website www.xs4all.nl to ensure that it's 3100 userpages will all remain available for any internet-user.