Germany

[DE] Media authorities issue blocking order for the samidoun.net service

IRIS 2026-2:1/21

Sandra Schmitz-Berndt

Institute of European Media Law

In a decision dated 10 December 2025, the Commission for the Protection of Minors in the Media (Kommission für Jugendmedienschutz - KJM) ordered the blocking of the illegal website samidoun.net. Previously, on 2 November 2023, the then Federal Minister of the Interior, Nancy Faeser, had banned the activities of the international organisation "Samidoun – Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network" in Germany. The reason given for this was that the organisation's activities violated German criminal law and were contrary to the idea of international understanding within the meaning of Article 9 (2) of the German Basic Law (Grundgesetz - GG) due to widespread dissemination of antisemitic propaganda, calling for the use of violence to enforce its interests and rejecting Israel's right to exist in its public appearances.

The KJM is the supervisory body for the protection of children and young people in private broadcasting and on the Internet; it acts as a decision-making body for the 14 state media authorities in Germany. However, the individual state media authorities are legally competent to act in external relations, i.e. vis-à-vis third parties. Therefore, following the KJM's decision, the state media authorities had to take action to implement it.

On 8 January 2026, the Media Authority of Rhineland-Palatinate, the Media Authority of Berlin-Brandenburg and the Media Authority of North Rhine-Westphalia issued parallel and identical general rulings in implementation of the KJM decision, ordering the access providers based in their area of responsibility to disable access to the domain samidoun.net from Germany. In German law, a general public order is an administrative law instrument that is directed at a group of addressees that is or can be determined according to general characteristics. The group of addressees is not named individually. Therefore, the general orders issued here are directed against all access providers located within the jurisdiction of the respective media authority. The term "access provider" is defined more precisely as an undertaking that provides access to a public data network on a commercial basis and whose activities enable technical switching and data transmission between a user's terminal device and the Internet. The orders came into force on 9 January 2026 and require the access providers in question to implement the blocking by 5 February 2026. Domain Name System (DNS) blocking is explicitly mentioned as a possible and suitable blocking measure. The general rulings are valid until 8 January 2028. Shortly after the rulings of the aforementioned state media authorities, the Bavarian Regulatory Authority for New Media issued a similar general ruling on 12 January 2026 with an implementation deadline of 10 February 2026.

Legal action can be taken against the general orders before the relevant administrative court within one month of notification.

 


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This article has been published in IRIS Legal Observations of the European Audiovisual Observatory.