And it continues...

According to this article (German), a satirical website criticising the German government was taken off-line by the BMI (German Ministry of Internal Affairs) and BVA (German Office of Administration). This was done due to the usage of "Hoheitszeichen" (national insignia) and because of the similarity to the original website.

This shows us a point or two:

- The BMI and BVA are actively trying to censor critics. (Using the "Hoheitszeichen" may be used in different locations by different people without problems).

- It is easy to block and remove websites from the Internet (In this case by simply asking!). So a logical conclusion would be that this would work even better for criminal and illegal websites.

- The BMI and BVA did in no way try to reason with the publisher of the page but instead simply asked the domain hoster to shut down the domain. I find this questionable, since the website itself is not illegal except for using potentially copyrighted material, so there is probably no legal basis for the shut-down, but instead the BMI/BVA may have abused their power as a government institution to achieve this.

The website is back up with some changes and can now be seen here.

Also, this website is supposedly facing legal action from a company that created the original "Du bist Deutschland!" campaign. Source: Here at netzpolitik.org. In my opinion, yet another attempt to cripple free speech.