[registrars] FYI: German State Alters DNS To Censor Web Sites

["Ross Wm. Rader" <ross@tucows.com>]

Who says that the DNS is purely a technical exercise?

"Rabenwolf writes: "In the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, the first
ISP (ISIS Multimedia) has given in to pressure from the state government and
has started to block foreign websites with supposedly "illegal content" by
changing the corresponding DNS entries. ISIS customers trying to access
these sites are redirected to the website of the local government. ISPs in
North Rhine-Westphalia will have to pay a fine if they continue to provide
access to sites with "illegal content" through their DNS servers. It's not
as bad as China or Saudi-Arabia, but it makes you think... An article from
the heise newsticker is here, and if you don't sprechen Deutsch, Google
might help."

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/11/22/1415218&mode=flat

If anyone has a reasonable translation of the Heise article, I would love to
give it a read.

Thanks,

-rwr