Talk:Network Enforcement Act

Clearly illegal
Nothing is clearly illegal, not even for 115 years old judges. They need 3 years of research for almost everything, so this is just a fascist claim to legalise something massively illegal to the Grundgesetz freespeech paragraph — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:DC:CF37:1500:25D7:A913:D965:B70D (talk) 14:16, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

Cleanup
There are 3 sections with criticism. Zezen (talk) 06:05, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

The Economist
There is an article in The Economist that might be worth using. January 13th 2018, "Freedom and its discontents," pp. 21~22 (no author given). Kdammers (talk) 13:45, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

One sided
This article is very one sided.

You clearly get a very bad opinion over the NetzDG by reading it.

Violating human rights....

Tbh. I question the intellect of someone who says that.

Hence I think there should be other opinions as well to balance the article. Grgurel (talk) 11:08, 11 February 2021 (UTC)


 * I agree. The article clearly and obviously pushed a negative POV, and more worryingly, has large swathes of controversial but uncited claims. I think we should delete the unsourced criticism as it violates WP:NPOV. Harry585 (talk) 01:06, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Unsourced criticism of this Act
Dear Wikipedians,

This article includes various harsh criticism of this Act which are unsourced. Even if they are sourced, they would, in their current form, push a strong POV against this Act as there is a lack of an opposing viewpoint in support of the law. I have removed the following criticisms. Please note that the burden to demonstrating verifiability lies with the editor who adds the material as per WP:PROVEIT. I believe these criticisms should not be restored until they are cited, and from the talk page, it seems they have been left as-is for over a year. Harry585 (talk) 01:16, 6 January 2022 (UTC)


 * Unsourced Criticism:
 * Draft law and reactions:
 * At a hearing on the bill in the Bundestag, eight of the ten invited experts expressed considerable concern; most of them saw a threat to freedom of expression. Bernd Holznagel, head of the Institute for Information, Telecommunications and Media Law at the University of Münster, explained that to avoid high fines, networks may also tend to delete legal contributions; the draft was thus called unconstitutional and unable to withstand a review by the Federal Constitutional Court. Reporters Without Borders CEO Christian Mihr warned that the methods are reminiscent of autocratic states and the law creates the danger of abuse. Totalitarian governments would also follow the debate in Germany with interest at present to follow the draft and stated that a precedent for censorship must not be set. Meanwhile, according to an Augsburger Allgemeine report, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko had already referred to Justice Minister Heiko Maas in his fight against the opposition in restricting freedom of expression, and he justified his own measures by Maas's bill.
 * The new law aims to facilitate enforcing personal rights and property rights on online platforms. Anyone wishing to assert legal claims against a user should be able to demand the surrender of data from which the identity of the claimant can be deduced. If "for example, a person or company feels offended or inappropriately criticized by a comment in an Internet forum, they could in future not only demand that the comment be deleted from the forum operator, but also that master data be issued in order to warn the author and demand a cease and desist declaration". According to critics, that would affect not only social networks but also platforms such as Amazon or eBay. According to the IT lawyer Joerg Heidrich, anyone who gives a bad rating there must expect "expensive letters from lawyers". According to net activists, the draft would de facto lead "to the end of anonymity on the Internet". Critics saw "an instrument of censorship contrary to constitutional and European law."
 * Criticism/Journalists and journalist groups:
 * Experts expect the short and rigid deletion periods and the high threat of fines to lead the networks to prefer to remove contributions in case of doubt, even if the freedom of expression guaranteed by fundamental rights would require a context-related consideration, such as in the differentiation between prohibited insult and permitted satire. In April 2017, an alliance of business associations, network politicians, civil rights activists, scientists and lawyers joined forces to protest against the law. In a manifesto, they warned of "catastrophic consequences for freedom of expression".
 * After the Bundestag passed the law, the German Association of Journalists called on President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, among others, not to sign the law because freedom of expression was not sufficiently protected.
 * The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung uses the term "censorship" in connection with socio-political contributions by an artist that were deleted by Facebook.
 * Criticism/European Commissions
 * According to a regulation issued in 2001, the EU Commission must make internal documents available on request. Wirtschaftswoche wrote: "This confirms the suspicion that the law violates EU law, but Brussels does not want to offend Germany".
 * EU Justice Commissioner Věra Jourová has also criticised the Network Enforcement Act as a source of annoyance to the German government. Harry585 (talk) 01:21, 6 January 2022 (UTC)
 * More Unsourced criticism: Harald Martenstein of the newspaper Der Tagesspiegel called it "Erdoğanism in pure culture" and explained that the draft law reads as if "it came from the 1984 novel" that it was an "attack on the principle of the separation of powers". Harry585 (talk) 02:59, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Under Advice and Adoption:
 * Petra Sitte (The Left) warned against serious collateral damage to the freedom of expression. Konstantin von Notz (The Greens) warned against pushing large network providers into the role of judges. The scientific services of the Bundestag expressed concerns in an expert opinion that the bill violates the German constitution and European Union law. Harry585 (talk) 03:07, 11 January 2022 (UTC)