from

Wikipedia

Not saying this is necessarily true but it does seem to represent what I’ve personally heard anecdotally over the past few years.

A search on google about German video game censorship seems to also reflect this.

I seem to recall Germany outright banning certain violent video games (and not just ones with Nazi imagery).

Am I mistaken?

And yes, while there are some laws against display of special symbols, nudity or better what an american audience considers to be nudity is not.

That tells you right there that’s a local regulatory issue and not a Flickr descision to single out German (or other) users for censorship.

Germany is somewhat notorious for censorship (as compared to other western countries).

Nothing to see here.

Moderation is a very tough subject though and I don’t envy Flickr on this one. The larger your user base the lower the common denominator of what people consider “acceptable”. Pictures that would make me yawn could probably get other’s blood boiling.

That being said Flickr’s system for moderation is very poor. A photo should be rated as “may offend because:” and then you should be able to easily and quickly get to the photo if you aren’t as sensitive as some people seem to be. Instead of the “This photo is unavailable” it should say “This photo may singe your eyebrows off because it contains female breasts, click here if you can handle it”. The heavy handed approach flickr has been taking is going to cost them in the end or turn them into nothing more than a collection of pictures of a church bake sale.

Note: If your Yahoo! ID is based in Singapore, Germany, Hong Kong or Korea you will only be able to view safe content based on your local Terms of Service so won’t be able to turn SafeSearch off.