This one time, at band camp, Michael Below wrote: >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...
Your premise that the quake2 binaries and the id software Quake II CDs are the same is wrong. The Debian quake2 package contains only the game engine. The game data, which is a requisite for *playing* the game, but which was never released as open source, is not shipped by Debian. I see no need for any action on Debian's part.
