Some court decisions that happened this week that exemplarily show how political developments in the name of legal protection for children, competition law, and, of course, war on terror will cut civil rights stealthily.

• A web site (typical porn portal with several links to adult sites) has been banned because it didn't provide an age verification system (AVS) compliant with German laws.
• The German Court of Justice decided yesterday in a legal proceedings against a German adult hoster who has been accused by a competitor because of the defendant's insufficient AVS. Both companies were struggling against each other for years. Company A uses the so-called Postident procedure, that allows personal identification of natural persons, carried out by employees of Deutsche Post AG (Germany's snailmail provider). If one wants you to use Postident to prove that you're above 18 years, you have to go (physically!) to the next post office and show your passport in order to get an affirmation of your age.
  Company B doesn't use Postident but the passport number and a small bank transaction (like the one Paypal does when one wants to verify his bank account). Company A considered this a competitive distortion, accused Company B and has now finally won. Company B's AVS is way too simple, judges say.
  If you're living in a western country and not in Germany then I'm sure you don't know what I'm talking about. In short: German lawgivers and judges treat every web site that can be seen in Germany in obedience to German law. In their eyes, every adult site must have an AVS as prescribed in Germany. Just because foreign companies are outside the access of German executive forces, no further legal action is taken. Company B's protest, claiming that foreign companies have competitive advantages in Germany because they won't use the elaborate Postident procedure, has been declined by the judges. In the end, according to German law, every adult site that can be accessed in Germany and that doesn't use an authorised AVS is considered illegal.
• The German FSM, an "organisation for the voluntary self-control of the internet" celebrated its 10th birthday. One of their self-imposed tasks is the establishment of a G-rated Internet by enforcing AVSs and acting upon politicians through heavy lobbying. Cleaning the Internet from filth for them is the problem of this century. Even harmlessnesses like Second Life for them is a big challenge that urgently needs regulation in order to protect minors from bad influence.
• In a recent court decision one of Germany's Internet provider is forced to blacklist free porn sites like porntube. This case has some history: some weeks ago, a German porn producer (Company C) considered AVS-free access to international porn sites a competitive distortion. Trying to make foreign porn inaccessible they addressed IVD (a German professional organization of video store owners) and KJM (an influential organization for legal protection for children and young persons). Since Company C didn't get any response, they then addressed Internet providers directly and demanded to ban some of the most important international competitors of Company C, threating with legal measures. All but one Internet providers plonked that letter into the bin. The remaining provider P updated its blacklist and blocked several porn sites (sex.com among others) for its customers. Of course, this caused much confusion and some days later provider P made the sites accessible again. Company C immediately sued provider P for performance and won. Now provider P has to block several porn sites again!

These events are just the beginning of further developments to cut our civil rights and I think they are not exclusive for the German political landscape. But it's not only about porn: "Online monitoring" measures were passend in Austria recently, and, most likely, will be established in Germany, soon. Where will this lead to? Gouvernmental proxy servers filtering all our Internet traffic and protecting us from bad influence - as in China? I would be interested in other people's experiences about all this and potential measurements of concerned companies to protect themselves from over-protective gouvernments.