So, Herr Regulator
You do not know of the cron job?
A regulator in Germany says websites must only offer downloads of sexually explicit ebooks between 10pm and 6am. Essentially, the Youth Protection Authority in Bavaria says 2002-era rules that protect kids from blue movies on TV also cover digital books, publishing trade mag Boersenblatt reports. Telly stations in Germany can …
I thought "The Index" was just for people with super-powers? I think SHIELD are exceeding their mandate here.
For those who want to go hunting for the index, this wikipedia article is a good place to start.
I've had similar thoughts back when I was a kid with television. The channels would block all the explicit stuff before my parents went to bed, so they remained unaware of what is broadcast late at night on the movies channels, but I sure wasn't.
I found it quite ironic that the thing set up to protect children did exactly that, except it was protecting young boys from their parents...
> So, what will children be doing after 10 in their bedrooms?
Perhaps the Germans idea of the "children" who need protecting is different from the simplistic American idea that the law is the be-all and end-all of existence.
Perhaps they just don't want porn mixed with "bob the builder" books for six-year-olds. The teenagers aren't going to be fussed or limited, which is probably fine by all.
Nice that children will be protected from downloading smut stories. After the government managed to ensure they wouldn't be able find porn from the web, that was the last threat to their young and impressionable minds.
I mean, it's obvious that porn web sites are not letting anybody download porn until after 10, right?
…Right?
It could well be this is just a judge wanting to highlight a really badly written law by sticking to exactly what is written when this came to him. Generally judges don't get to determine what the law actually is, just whether a case is in breach of the law, so this is one of the few ways they can create pressure to fix things which are broken
The lawsuit was only started by the youth protection authority because they received a complaint about a particular ebook. As there is no special regulation for ebooks and other adult media content can only be shown after 10pm (like in movie theatres or on television), they applied that particular regulation here. But as the Boersenblatt article says, they are also searching for a less stupid way to regulate ebooks.
My Gernan isn't wonderful, but I think "Schlauch" might be a more common-or-garden hose, rather than the stocking type. Especially since this appears to be a book about a male-to-female transexual stripper.
Either way, artist Ute Stender-Killguss who has an exhibition entitled "Schlauchlust" in Hamburg on the 15th August might have to push the opening times of 13:00-17:00 to later in the evening, lest children be exposed to her rubber fetish [SFW]...
Schlauch is "hose" in that sense. The word "Schlauchgelüste" itself is a compound word – germans have about 100 words, the rest is compounds of those, usually prepending "ge", "ver" and often appending a lot of "heit", "keit", "bar", "en". There is phlegm to add more gravitas in front of a non-german audience, but I digress.
As nonsensical as the word seems to me, it may just be a dumb neologism: let me create a new word for ya, because I can. For example, Weltschmerz (old one, never dying), Fremdschämen (2009, get used to that one), Zeitgeist (not even you know what it *really* means), which have an established meaning, usually (and only) by repetition. If you take a closer look, most of those words have the stench of intellectuals clinging to them; usually, to invoke instantaneous head-nodding at dinner parties.
Wieauchimmer, Schlauchgelüste may just be like Fahrvergnügen (credit Volkswagen ad campaign). A word created for the purpose to be unique.
Just because it's german doesn't mean it has to make sense.
"Schlauch" *could* also refer to penis (think "trunk"), which makes sense with the lusting part, at least.
So, to answer your question: A definite maybe.
Caveat: This is the first time I have come across that word, and I cannot find a reference. Words can also be rather local, where someone in Munich knows a word that is not in use in Hamburg. So, I can be my usual ignorant/dumb self as well.
You're missing the part where other languages, including english, do exactly the same thing - create phrases using different words. The only difference is that in german they skip the space when a noun modifies another. (the pre- and post-fixes that you mentioned are unrelated to compounding: heit and keit just turn adjectives to nouns, bar turns verbs into adjectives, ge forms the participle, en at the end is just how all verbs end, ver is a modifier historically more or less equivalent to pre/pro)
+1 for that. MANY years ago at university, my Foreign Languages professor explained the German "ch" sound thusly:
"in Munich, you simply pronounce it like 'sh', but in the north... hock up a big ol' loogie." It should be noted that hearing more or less correctly pronounced German from someone who otherwise speaks with a distinctly Southern [US] drawl is very amusing.
One thing that has always confused me in the UK, my 10 year old son can't go buy a 12 rated Guardians of the Space War on DVD as someone says "shit" in it, but my 13 year old niece can walk into Waterstones and pick up 50 Shades of Unimaginitive Bondage in paperback and read graphic depictions of barely passable sex.
Your young professional in her Frankfurt city pad with no children within a mile radius picks up Kindle, searches the online shop, buys 50 Shades e-book via one click, and then finally lets her imagination run riot with "Bitte warten Sie 2 Stunden 44 Minuten".
Much like the original book I suppose.
Hmm, an admittedly quick search only found me the Multilingual Books site that's specifically set up for German-reading readers.
They do in turn have the list of books and magazines on Project Gutenberg in German.
"Telemedien", which covers e-books like movies and tv programmes, are regulated by time (after 2200 hours, german). The 'Murrican, puritan model does not apply (haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy - Mencken). IMHO, this is generic german obsession with rules than with morality.
The reason why Germany seems to have (a usually) balanced harmony of innocent grandma shows (pre 10pm) next to coprophilous rubber men orgies (10pm) is living with exactly those rules of separation. Protect the young, Jugendschutzgesetz. This did not stop me from watching Braindead when I was a teen, but it worked in general. Once you are 18, you are deemed capable to watch things like "Poopoo Platter, Part 8", buy furry handcuffs, and read all the smut until Mr Happy is rubbed raw. This is not to say that the JsG is always good, it has its flaws.
But morality is not the issue, here. Germans just just aren't technically savvy when it comes to the internet. Their obsession with HTML Frames suggests a systemic misunderstanding how it all works. It isn't too farfetched then, that they want to impose a window of time (germany has only one time-zone). A misunderstanding of technology, perhaps.
As to the (supposed) tranny smut, who knows. It may be the next 50 Shades or a Kafkaesque masterpiece. Odds are, it is rather saucy, and thereby verboten for youngens. And why wouldn't it be? Normal, abnormal, and questionable sexual material has an effect on an undercooked mind – so unpredictable, that it's worth protecting the young. Lest it creates a confused sexual deviant who makes problems for everyone else, down the road.
As to judging rules of timely access, let me take the liberty to paraphrase a retort to anyone living outside of Germany, having a problem with those rules: GTFO, we respect your silly rules, and these are ours, move along you tea-bagging whiners.
In other words, those rules may be incomprehensible to you, but germans have quite the history of being sexually aware in general. Kolle and Uhse paved the way in terms of sexual realization (it's just sex), and the fact the Reeperbahn and St Georg (both Hamburg) exist and thrive are testament to common sense morality.
I want to believe that Germany actually tries to precisely measure pornography – when it is, when it isn't. Americans punish you because "we don't know, but it probably is fun". And the Sand People kill you, because "no fun allowed".
Credit to @iSchluff for inspiration, above.
More than happy to oblige! My pleasure!
Please point me to the URL where I can get the list of things that are banned and why (and by whom, if the criteria are in any way subjective), tell me how often that list is updated, and also tell me how to recover the costs incurred in following your rules if I am not a German business?
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The article gives a link to an English translation of the rules.
http://www.usk.de/fileadmin/documents/Publisher_Bereich/JMStV_2003_EN.pdf
On a very quick scan - "children" and "adolescents" are respectively "under-14" and "under-18". There is some further division into several age groups for purposes of media proscriptions - under-12, under-14, under-16, and under-18.
The watershed for under-16s starts at 22:00 - but for under-18s it starts at 23:00. It ends at 06:00 for both.
Looking at the "Illegal content" rules - "Fritz The Cat" might be totally banned on grounds of sex, violence, animals, and virtual representation.
.....waits for the next article where Germany realises that the only possible way to make this work logically - is if the entire world was on German time - and hence starts insisting that the rest of the world switch to German time...... it's not as if the idea of ruling the world is a foreign concept to Germany after all......
SCHLAUCHGELÜSTE (2012 written under pseudonym Jacob Winter) is a fact-novel with autobiographical background an describes specially my times as transgender-striptease-dancer Gina de Senfal in nightlife of the 60th and 70 th yeears. De ebook was taken from market at the end of 2013 and was in june 2014 replaced by the in content nearly idemtical ebook ERREGUNGEN Champagner für die Transfrau (written by Johanna Kamermans). SCHLAUCHGELÜSTE is an euphemism für good anal feelings during analsex This kind of sexual activities was quite new in those "wild" years but I think absolutely no more in 2015 - and certainly the novel is therefore not "pornographical". The english translation from SCHLAUCHGELÜSTE ( inside the body) by "pantyhose cravings" (outside the body) is nonsense