So Germany is considering banning Telegram. How are you feeling today though?

What? Why?

@NickyBones not complying with german law.

@stop Hmm. I don't have very good associations for the term "German law".

They cheered for Telegram when Russia didn't get that under control not too long ago. You know, freedom of speech, evil censorship and shit.

Now of course in Germany, that's something totally different - no attack on freedom of speech like in Russia, it's just because of illegal contents. :-)

@NickyBones they always had problems sending them the letters.
so they found an loophole. Its now published in the same medium official laws are published and big companies are forced to publish their numbers for the stockholders.

@stop My grandparents had to hide for 6 years from the "German law", so I'm instinctively siding with Telegram here :)

@NickyBones at most they will block it through dns. Ip blocks like russia will be too much trouble the the gouvernment.

@NickyBones German logic: crack down on freedom of speech to protect freedom and democracy.

Even bloggers in Germany need an imprint so that authorities (or anyone else) can easily grab them if need be. I don't have a blog, but a website, and I host in Iceland because they don't have such shit there.

The provider has a track record of telling German authorities "FU - get an Icelandic court order if you want something, and no, you won't get that because someone exposes your youth protection router censorship list."

@Fast-Nop tf you talking about, you need an imprint if you sell stuff, nothing more.

But let's not even get started, there are 2 Germanys right now, like back in the days. We don't like each other. I don't give a fuck why, love y'all, just shut the fuck up (both sides).

@nitwhiz You're confusing "geschäftsmäßig" with "gewerbsmäßig". The former sounds like selling stuff, given that "Geschäft" means "business", but what it actually means is some permanent activity.

Also, the exception for private websites is interpreted extremely narrow in Germany. What that means is no public website, but actual access protection except for your private buddies. Which means that publicly available private websites are not private websites.

@Fast-Nop It's funny that they invest effort in this while in the meantime Germany is turning to Texas, where 18 year old get their hands on 2 shotguns and go hunting in a uni lecture hall....

@NickyBones I wonder where he got that from. It is possible to own firearms in Germany, but it's a long legal process. Like, sport shooters or hunters. But such weapons at 18 are normally not legal. Btw. "owning" does not mean "carrying". That's yet another level of permit that is basically impossible for normal people.

Then again, illegal guns don't require any permission, of course, and can't be regulated because they are already illegal.

@Fast-Nop irony

@NickyBones For insisting freedom of speech is a thing that should be protected. Fuck oppressive german laws.

@Fast-Nop

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

There are quite a lot of gun-owning households in Germany.

To some extent, I think civilian gun ownership makes sense in countries where you can end up isolated from society -- If I'd buy a farm in rural Finland, I'd most likely buy a rifle as well.

@bittersweet Yeah, but law requires guns to be stored in a safe, unloaded, and ammo in a separate box. Basically so that you cannot easily use a gun to defend yourself in your home. That's why "gun ownership" in Germany is highly misleading.

You can transport the gun to wherever you need it (sports, hunting) - but again in a locked case, unloaded, and separate from ammo.

@stop so what you're telling us is everyone should host their own DNS cache?

@bittersweet good luck trying to get your hands on a (legal) firearm here… as far as I’m aware we have some of the strictest gun policies around. Though if you can clear the background checks by the national security intelligence service, a psych eval and are an active member of an established hunting or (sports) shooting club, you might get an owning permit in 3-5 years. Carrying a loaded gun anywhere anytime is illegal unless you are hunting (in which case you are still not allowed to load it before arrival to the hunting site) or it’s part of your job description (i.e. police, customs or army).

Edit: and what @Fast-Nop said regarding Germany, applies here, too.

My opinion is this: private gun ownership (in the sense Americans understand it) does not make sense. Period.

@sariel an foreign dns server is good enough.
An recursing dns server is not that hard to set up.
I just set up an recursing dns server with the powerdns recursor.

Fine? Cause I dont use it lol

Fuck german politicians. I want to leave 😖

@100110111 And what's more, German authorities have the right to show up at your house without anouncement and inspect whether your gun storage complies with the laws. No warrant required. If you refuse, your gun ownership licence is gone.

@Fast-Nop yup, same here. While I’m not really an advocate for a police state, when it comes to guns, I ’d rather take that than laxer gun ownership laws.

@Fast-Nop

Yeah but storing in locked boxes just provides a barrier against immediate, impulsive action.

For someone wanting to create a massacre, it still means that the chance of running into a loaded weapon is higher — sometimes all odds align in a bad way.

I see people often arguing that X or Y is the cause of a shooting.

In reality it's a whole bunch of odds.

It's the chance of a person having severe trauma or a mental disorder. Times the chance of being placed on a waiting list for psychotherapy because of an overstressed mental healthcare system. Times the chance of knowing the location of a loaded gun. Times the total population count. Times the chance a family member notices a red flag and intervenes. etc.

At the end of the calculation, you have a shooting epidemic in the US, a shooting once every few years in Germany, and a shooting once per decade in Belgium or the Netherlands.

@bittersweet It's not just a box. It's an actual safe, meant to safeguard the weapons e.g. in case of burglary, or prevent unauthorised family members from access. The owner is obliged to keep the keys always safe, not just having it hanging around somewhere.

Incidents with legal weapons are exceedingly rare. In most cases, the weapons were not legal to begin with so that no gun law, however strict, would have prevented access.

After all, people who don't care that murder is illegal don't care about the weapon being illegal, either. Plus that illegal weapon ownership goes for free if you also commit murder because both are concurrent crimes, and the sentences do not add up. The higher sentence just "wins" over.

@Fast-Nop and murder is in germany one of the few crimes that only have one possible sentence: lifelong incarcaration.

@stop I was always wondering, what's the point in a lifelong sentence? It's basically a very expensive and prolonged death sentence with extra steps.

@iiii First, if new evidence appears, you can appeal. OK, you've lost many years, but at least not all.

Second, Germany specifically banned capital punishment because the Nazis had used that at industrial scale.

Third, some people make the moral argument that killing isn't an appropriate way for a society to convey that you shouldn't kill.

@iiii an deathsentence has no preventive character and what matters most is an oneway street. You cannot revive an person after it died.
the deathsentence is since a few years forbidden in germany, it was allowed in Hessen but its overruled from the Grundgesetz, so its forbidden since the founding of germany.
The cause behind it is that no one should have the right to kill somebody, not even the state.

@Fast-Nop but having a 50 year long tax burden is. I can't see that as a win.

@stop what laws?

@stop military. Police. Both have the right in specific circumstances.

@iiii when an policeman shoots an bullet he has to write an report about it and it an person is hurt or died there is an investigation about it. Its also part of the training to shoot non-lethal. In the worst case they can loose their job for unnessary police violence or even murder.

@darksideofyay
Artikel 102 Grundgesetz
And in the Hessische Verfassung was it until 2018 the Artikel 21 for the death sentence.

@stop i don't know what that means? 🤦‍♀️

@iiii The constitution isn't primarily about cost reduction. Also, I'd argue that 50 years of prison are an even harder punishment. Lots of time to think.

Btw., military is used on the outside, that's an in-group vs. out-group distinction. Police only kills in self-defence, which is what even ordinary citizens would be allowed if they happened to have a gun in that moment. Only that they would get charged with illegal carrying or possession or something.

@Fast-Nop even if the person thinks eternally,it changes literally nothing on the outside. The person is still jailed and will not be a part of society. As well as society will have nothing to do with it as well. There's no point in a lifelong sentence, contrary to a long sentence.

@darksideofyay The federal constitution ("Grundgesetz") forbids the death penalty. The states also have their own state constitutions (federal republic), and in the state of Hessen, the death penalty was still in until 2018 as remnant of the past.

Obviously never carried out because the federal constitution overrides state ones, which is why people hadn't cared to remove it.

@Fast-Nop i meant the law that telegram is not complying to

@iiii That may be paroled in Germany after at least 15 years, but that depends a lot on the individual case. Namely whether the person is still a threat to society or not.

@darksideofyay I think the Network Enforcement Act: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Basically obliging large social media platforms to censorship, including the dubious passage of removing "obviously illegal" content within 24 hours. Which means that there's no court decision involved.

Well what they can do is ban telegram by vaccinating corporate sources of application and when vaccination level reach 60% of population they can declare success and national telegram immunity.
But I still doubt it won’t mutate into other encrypted messaging applications.