Germany’s Undersecretary of Culture Bernd Neumann wants to adopt a three strikes policy against file sharing similar to the one recently enacted in France. “We can’t say that this is out of the question,” Neumann told the audience of a media policy event of the German Christian-Democratic Union (CDU), according to heise.de.

The CDU is currently the majority partner in a coalition government with the Social Democrats (SPD). Germany’s Secretary of Justice Brigitte Zypries, who is an SPD member herself, had previously voiced strong objections against three strikes, calling the idea to boot suspected file sharers off the Internet after three cases of infringement “a completely unreasonable punishment.” Neumann did however get strong support for his position from Germany’s music industry, and he vowed to get Zypries to talk to the major labels about their position.

Three strikes isn’t the only Internet-related issue that’s currently keeping Germany’s politicians busy. The country is also in the midst of a heated debate of how to fight child pornography online. Germany’s conservative Secretary of Family has proposed a country-wide Internet censorship that would have to implemented by ISPs on the DNS level.

Internet activists and civil liberties advocates are outraged about this idea. They have started a very successful online petition drive against it, which has currently more than 100,000 co-signers. One of the concerns that activists have is that child porn will only be the first of many unwanted forms of content to be blocked. They have certainly reason to be concerned: The music industry has already proposed to put file sharing sites like the Pirate Bay and Mininova on these block lists as well. Read more »