From: Thomas Roessler <Thomas.Roessler@sobolev.rhein.de>
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 1996 05:50:15 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: [FACTS] Germany, or "Oh no not again"
Message-ID: <199601291710.SAA13359@sobolev.rhein.de>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


I had the prosecutor's spokesman on phone today.  The result is
that someone gave a hint to the prosecutors which explicitly
mentioned Zundel, T-Online and Compuserve.  Consequently, the
prosecutors *had* to start investigations against Zundel,
T-Online and Compuserve.  In particular, they are right now
*checking* whether providing internet access is a criminal
offence due to the possibility to gain access to `inciting
material' (the German word is `Volksverhetzung') via the Net.

This means that it is not even clear whether the investigations
against internet providers will be dropped or not; in fact many
people believe that these investigatinos *will* be dropped.

My personal guess about all this is that some net.citizens are
trying to have the prosecutors engaged in absolutely absurd
investigations (or, even better, achieve a court room clash on
this subject) to get some clarification of the legal situation of
the Net in Germany.  Quite similar to the RSA T-Shirt story in
the States. ,-)

tlr