Federal Agency for Child and Youth Protection in the Media
These works are added to an official list – a process known as Indizierung (indexing) in German - as part of child protection efforts.
The presiding officers of the BPjS have been: The first session deciding upon applications requesting the indexing of materials took place on 9 July 1954.
Such works were supposedly "the result of a degenerate imagination", which is considered an insult to the comics' illustrator at the time, John Celardo.
Following the Erfurt massacre (a Columbine-like shooting at a school in Erfurt), the Jugendschutzgesetz was passed in June 2002, replacing the Gesetz über die Verbreitung jugendgefährdender Schriften and the Gesetz zum Schutz der Jugend in der Öffentlichkeit (Law for Protection of Young Persons in Public Places).
The BPjM has the following responsibilities: § 18 Paragraph 1 JuSchG (Youth Protection Law) defines jugendgefährdend as that which is harmful "to the development of children or young people or to their education as autonomous and socially-compatible individuals".
Under § 15 Paragraph 2 JSchG, certain types of content are subject to restricted distribution by virtue of the law on account of their obvious harm to young people, without the need to add them to the Index.
The Bundesprüfstelle has consequently indexed works which deny the Holocaust, which would be indictable as Volksverhetzung or as bringing the memory of the deceased into disrepute, when the public prosecutor's office was not able to proceed further at that point.
The Zwölfer-Gremium consists of: The hearing, which representatives of the work in question can take part in, is oral and not open to the public.
In the event that the Bundesprüfstelle holds a meeting with the legal quorum of nine people, a qualified majority of seven must vote to index or the application will be rejected.
At least one assessor on the panel must be a representative of art, literature, the book trade and publishing, or the video or telecommunications industry.
Pornographic content on the Internet is legal only if technical measures prohibit minors from getting access to the object (AVS = Age Verification System or Adult-Check-System).
The BzKJ sees it as its responsibility to use the decision to index works harmful to young people in order to raise awareness that there is content which is unsuitable and damaging for minors.
The critique that the BzKJ is an organisation unique to Germany ignores the fact that other western countries also have laws and mechanisms, albeit different in scope and practice, to prevent, for example, the sale of pornography to minors, Holocaust denial or racist literature and hate speech.
Since it seems to only just provide a thin veil of false security for youth protection, it leads to a disproportionate factual restriction of adults' freedom of information.
Works may also receive a confiscation order by a court when certain articles of the Strafgesetzbuch apply to them, such as glorification of violence or denial of the Holocaust.
Confiscation results in a nationwide ban on its sale even to adults; the mere possession of such material remains legal (with the exception of child pornography).
The web-based game Bundesfighter II Turbo was released prior to the September 2017 elections, which included parodies of the candidates fighting each other.
This included the portrayals of Angela Merkel as a reptiloid and Alexander Gauland, who had a special move that involved Swastika imagery.
The Attorney General declined to consider the game illegal under Strafgesetzbuch section 86a, stating that the 1998 ruling was outdated.
[6] As a result, the Supreme Youth Protection Authority of the Federal States adapted the Attorney General's ruling to be applicable for all video games within Germany and subsequently, the USK announced this change in August 2018.
The USK reviews all games to judge if the use of imagery under Section 86a remains within the social adequacy clause and deny ratings to those that fail to meet this allowance.
