Since yesterday I’ve had a cursory look on the proposed text to that German censorship law, and as far as I could see, there is no obvious cancellation of the presumption of innocence. It was quoted as having been said by Attorney General Brigitte Zypries on the press conference together with Ursula von der Leyen, but according to Sueddeutsche Zeitung, there was much open disagreement between the two about the actual consequences of the law and of how it should work in practice.
Unfortunately there seems to be no video of the press conference (how’s that in our digital age?). Zypries is quoted more than once, but all quotes link back to my original source, the news site of heise.de. At least someone from Heise, Germany’s most prestigious technical news publishing house, has obviously been present, as they are on the forefront of resistance against censorship. There is at least a chance that they may have got the quote wrong, I doubt it though.
Anyway. That’s how it looks today. The problem is, that this in itself is only a piece of a puzzle. There are strong forces lobbying for a regulated Internet, modeled after the regulations imposed upon broadcast media like TV. How about having certain violent or sexually explicit content available only at certain times of day? As stupid as it seems in a net spanning a whole planet: It was proposed and is actively pursued by some law making initiatives. Oh my, stupidity is boundless!
The Song of the Day is “The Future” by Leonard Cohen. The censorship in the original video was intentional, and it works so well here. See it on YouTube.