Put Heiko Maas in Innocuous Desuetude

Fatzke Heiko Maas

When "hate speech" is a trope for free speech.

Germany passes law against hate speech.

There is absolutely no doubt this sick law will not stand long.

The Federal Constitutional Court will kill the Network Enforcement Act

By Prof. Dr. Marc Liesching , published on April 27, 2017

Law areas: IT-Recht Internetstrafrecht 39 | 25964 views

The draft of the Act on the Freedom of Expression (MfBG), which has now been approved by the Federal Government with minor amendments and which has been provided with the misleading term "network enforcement law", will not be subject to a constitutional review by the Karlsruhe judges. This results from violations of all fundamental freedoms of Art. 5 para. 1 Basic Law, but also from a disregard of the principle of equal treatment. In addition, the Government's draft bill clearly overlooked the fact that the incorporation of Section 184b of the Penal Code into Section 1 (3) of the MfBG obliges the operators of social networks to become punishable by the ten-week storage of child pornography (Section 3 (2) no. 4 of the MfBG) (Section 184b (3) of the Penal Code).

I. Preliminary remarks

1. The designation of the MfBG as "network enforcement law"

A) enforcement of criminal law is the responsibility of the judiciary

The designation of a law for the improvement of the enforcement of laws in social networks (Network Enforcement Act - NetzDG), which was chosen in the draft, has nothing to do with the then proposed legal regulations. The term suggests that the enforcement and compliance with criminal law is governed by someone other than the judiciary itself, in particular the law enforcement authorities and criminal courts as well as the Federal Ministry of Justice.

B) Unfavorable in the case of law enforcement and supervisory authorities

Against this backdrop, the regulatory approach of massive reprisals against network operators is not justified by law, which would not be able to comply with the law enforcement tasks of the criminal law. However, the government draft says:

"Still too few criminal contents are deleted. A monitoring of the eradication practices of social networks carried out by jugendschutz.net in January / February 2017 has shown that the complaints of normal users against hate criminality and other criminal contents are still not dealt with immediately and adequately.YouTube is now in 90 percent of criminal cases deleted content. Facebook, however, only deleted in 39 percent of cases, Twitter only in 1 percent of cases ".

This raises the question of the competence and the personnel responsible for the protection of minors' rights in the area of ​​youth protection. Even more urgent is the question of whether the judiciary has succeeded in compulsory enforcement in 10 per cent of the criminal cases at Youtube, 61 per cent of cases at Facebook and 99 per cent of cases at Twitter. The consequence of the communication "criminal contents" by jugendschutz.net results in the opinion of the Federal Government and, moreover, also according to § 10 TMG just a criminal responsibility. In order to avoid a criminal offense, the judiciary, in particular the law enforcement authorities, should have initiated at least preliminary investigations.

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