quake2 and german youth protection law

[Michael Below <mbelow@antithese.de>]

Hi, 

today I filed bug #313159 against the quake2 package, because of a
possible violation of the german Jugendschutzgesetz (youth protection
law). The bug report is attached below.

I'm not sure in how far the same applies for the doom-alike packages
(prboom, lxdoom etc.), since Doom I and Doom II have also been put on
the official list by the federal government as "endangering
youth". But AFAIK, these packages are less identical to the original
Dooms than quake2 to Quake II.

The federal institution responsible for assessing media with regard to
their youth-suitability can be found online at:
http://www.bundespruefstelle.de

They also provide the relevant laws there:
http://bundespruefstelle.de/bpjm/arbeitsgrundlagen/index.php

But the list of youth-endangering media seems to be off line for some
reason, so I have not been able to confirm the listing there first
hand. Using google one finds a lot of references to the fact
though.

Ciao
  Michael Below

-snip-

The official Quake II CDs have been put on a list of media
"endangering youth" by the federal government in Germany, for
glorifying violence. I.E. they may not be offered / distributed to
people below 18 years of age, and they may not be advertised. 

This limitation applies also, without need for notification, to
media that contains wholly or essentially identical content (§ 15
Abs. 3 Jugendschutzgesetz).  Now it doesn't seem far-fetched that
the quake2 binaries are essentially identical to the Quake II game
as distributed by ID and banned by the federal government.  One
could try to deny this, because the game data is missing. But I
don't know how convincing this is towards german officials.

If one accepts that quake2 and Quake II are essentially identical,
the distribution limitations apply. For violation of these
limitations, one can be fined or (less likely) sentenced to prison
for up to 1 year (§ 27 Abs. 1 Jugendschutzgesetz).

So I think quake2 should be removed from CDs and servers in
Germany, just to be sure. Sorry to bring these bad news after the
release...