German digital industry scolds anti-internet politicians

Mar 1, 2010, 13:36 GMT

Hanover, Germany - Germany's top lobbyist for the digital economy scolded politicians who want to limit the reach of the internet, saying Monday they were out of touch with public use of the world wide web.

Speaking just hours before the inauguration of the CeBIT trade show in Hanover, Germany, August-Wilhelm Scheer said, 'They've not fully grasped it if they only talk about the dangers from the internet.'

Scheer heads Bitkom, the computing industry federation which is one of the sponsors of the annual software and digital equipment fair.

On Saturday, Chancellor Angela Merkel had urged concerned Germans to write letters of complaint to US search giant Google, objecting to their homes being photographed for Google's Street View panoramas of roadside frontages throughout the country.

Merkel was to inaugurate CeBIT on Monday evening, with Spanish Prime Minister Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero as her guest. CeBIT opens to visitors on Tuesday.

Scheer said the computing industry was explaining its views to the German government and hoped Berlin would be more internet-friendly when top ministers meet industry leaders this year in Dresden.

'The internet reflects how we live today, with all its advantages and disadvantages,' he said, adding that the industry needed to educate politicians about how the world wide web functioned.

Germany's government has leaned heavily on Google in recent months, backing German news media complaints that the search company is not sharing the revenue from its news sites, and forcing Google to abandon plans to digitize copyrighted German books.

'The public have a different attitude to the internet, which does not gel with the political controversy going on here,' said Scheer.

Earlier, Scheer accused Merkel's consumer affairs minister, Ilse Aigner, of whipping up public fear of the internet.