Thanks for linking the article, unfortunately it contains a lot of misinformation. Denial of classification by the USK would most likely lead to it being put on the index by BPjM which doesn't mean it would prevent a retail release it would only mean it can't be advertised or displayed in stores and that's that. Saying they would deny it to exist is ludicrous. I would say publishers don't want to go through the hassle of setting up distribution channels for a product they aren't allowed to advertise.
It kinda is yes, it even has government representation on but again, I don't see the problem with that and it doesn't mean it's not voluntary. Media that would not be turned in by publishers to be rated / classified will not be denied access to the market, however, it will only be able to be sold to adults as a precaution.
As I've said before there's a second federal institution that places certain media on an index which is what restricts advertisement and display and doesn't even deny access to the market.
Harmful to young persons is a pretty broad legal term over here which is supposed to literally contain everything that's harmful to underage persons including alcohol, cigarettes, glorification of violence (legal term), or porn. This is specific to the German market and I don't know why you would bring Europe into this. As for science, the video games industry and particularly its ability to create games that contain graphic violence is still very young. You wouldn't have expected scientists to have researched its effect on the development of young persons well enough by the time Wolfenstein, DOOM or Mortal Kombat was released.
My Opinion is that clamping down on this as a precaution rather than just allowing free access is favorable. I'd rather have it this way than have childs smoking which was literally the case to the point there were brands specifically targeting children here. Again, it seems to loosen up now that things are better understood.
Making things "harmful to young persons" accessible to them is illegal, literally every possibility you listed for an underage person to gain possession requires a person of age to commit a crime. Let my give you an even more extreme example which I learned as an IT professional
I agree that the system falls short when it comes to online distribution, technically it falls under broadcast regulations which I haven't looked into how that works with games specifically. This is because laws usually mention media (text, audio, video, games, everything) and not games in particular.
- As an employer, if you employ underage persons, you are liable if they are able to access media harmful to young persons because you are obligated to care for them, essentially giving you comparable duties to a teacher or kindergarten teacher. This means every business that employs underage persons is required by law to block sites with stuff like gore or porn.
If I'm not mistaken the law doesn't even mention Nazi imagery but it's often conflated. Technically it's symbols representing organizations that are a threat to the German constituion i.e. any terror organization, nazi imagery, etc.
For an organization to be deemed a threat to the constitution is a very lengthy and difficult proccess. There's been two proccesses to ban what's essentially a Nazi party (and I don't use that term lightly) and both failed to do so.
The only thing that really sticks out to me that has to do with Nazis specifially is that holocaust denial over here is illegal, which considering our constitution was established in 1949 I'm fine with.
I would agree that we have pretty robust protections of speech.
If you prevent advertising and display that is tantamount to denying things from where I sit. "I only beat them into a coma, did not kill them".
If it works for you then so be it -- your risk tolerances and things you will accept may well be different and that will probably be where any interesting conversations end up. Again though it was more that Germany was put forth as some kind of model example of the government not getting in the way of speech (with the proviso) and that sat in stark contrast to that. By some technicality it might not be a law but it is a de facto law, one put forth and enforced by the state, and at that point you are splitting hairs.
I would probably agree the rest of it pretty good (for now at least, some of the stuff I saw proposed for various social media type setups was a bit scary. I am also not a fan of some of the religious stuff, Section 166 if a search is accurate, but different discussion there), however the games thing I am not inclined to let slip by, especially as it has had knock on effects for the rest of Europe.
I would also say no group voluntarily organises a setup like that and grants it any power (while some might choose to follow your recommendations you get taken out by people willing to provide more cool things to see, see also how Sony and Sega variously took down Nintendo from their once lofty position). Such things are almost inevitably the result of some politicos rattling a sabre.
Computer games and research at the point of enacting the laws. Maybe not. However we had panics over radio, film, TV, comics and such before then (not sure about the German specifics of each of those as much as those in the English speaking world but I am not expecting anything radically different, and what little I do know here is pretty similar). Just in case "but they are different and so much more realistic"... guess what you can find almost word for word for those other (older) mediums in that list? Maybe it really is the case this time.
"to commit a crime"
Ignoring my misgivings on whether it should be a crime, or something even close to it (especially not the siblings, parents and such stuff), that was not where I was heading there.
I was saying that regardless of the laws it is available to anybody that made even the slightest effort (bypassing restrictions when we were kids being an ever popular topic), and everything is still just fine and no regression studies or anything say your local psychos would have been fine without access to games or whatever, or that there are more of them than there would be without access.
This is also skipping over how silly I find it to conflate media with fags and alcohol (both addictive chemicals with negative effects) -- I would be willing to listen to an argument but the harm profiles are so very different that to compare them that way is silly. If the government finds it expedient to group such things under one working group and body of law then so be it (I can well see it avoiding duplication of services and related problems with having parallel systems), however to read anything more into it than that would be illogical from where I sit.
I was bringing Europe in for if there was some basis in said sciences for such things they would all broadly align*, but they don't. If there is something other than science/evidence based reasoning involved I tend to perk up and question it and as these differences exist it stinks of puritanical busybodies and I dislike such things. Why a kid in Cologne should be subject to different things to a kid in Brussels (same latitude, same weather give or take a couple of days, both in technologically advanced countries, similar styles of education, both countries have a fairly shared history... dress them the same and get them to shut their mouths and you will have a hard time telling them apart is what I am saying, and you can repeat that trick for most of Europe) if there was a demonstrable basis for it all rather than people stabbing in the dark. If you can't show reason for your decisions then get out of my laws. Do your own thing if you want but laws I am supposed to follow as well.. No thanks.
*go anywhere in the world and car crash deaths taper off for males at about 25, many military doctrines and insurance company estimates reflect this as well. Psychology also notes a drop off of risk taking behaviours around then as well. You can base things on stuff like that.