Germany’s funniest guy on the internet

Probably you have never heard about Axel E. Fischer, as most Germans didn’t until November. He postulated a ‘Vermummungsverbot’ (ban on wearing face coverings, usually at political demonstrations) on the internet. Every surfer should be obliged to write in chatrooms and elsewhere under his full real name, he said.

According to Mr. Fischer’s believes, a democratic society needs people to be publicly responsible for their actions. On the other hand he wants a ‘digital eraser’ to make it possible to delete one’s comments afterwards.

What is less funny: Mr. Fischer, Christian Democratic Union, is the chairman of the Bundestag (parliament’s) committee on ‘Internet and Digital Society’. In March, when he was interviewed by Breitband-dradio, he had severe problems to answer the question how he obtains information on internet politics. Via the internet, he said. The interviewer kept asking, and Mr. Fischer answered that there is Wikipedia, and search machines, and that there are so many sources he couldn’t name a single one. He obviously also did not know what ‘open data’ or ‘net neutrality’ means. It sounds like Sarah Palin and foreign politics (that Bush doctrine…).

People commented on his ideas with jokes similar to the ‘Chuck Norris’-sentences. Here a small sample from Norbert Hense’s collection and other sources (my translation):

• Axel E. Fischer demands severe weather warnings for cloud computing.
• Axel E. Fischer demands stopping restrictions on the data highway.
• Axel E. Fischer demands ritalin against ADSL.
• Axel E. Fischer demands Chambers of Crafts for WoW guilds.
• Axel E. Fischer demands phishing licences.
• Axel E. Fischer demands escape routes in chat rooms.
• Axel E. Fischer demands gasoline tax on shell access.
• Axel E. Fischer demands better fire control in VPN tunnels.
• Axel E. Fischer demands to lock OpenOffice in the evening.
• Axel E. Fischer demands condoms for bluetooth-pairing.
• Axel E. Fischer demands sunglasses against Flash.
• Axel E. Fischer demands electric fences against server migration.
• Axel E. Fischer demands regulated shopping hours for online shops.
• Axel E. Fischer demands counter-terrorism units against Google bombs.
• Axel E. Fischer demands tilt protection at browser windows.
• Axel E. Fischer demands biometric avatars.
• Axel E. Fischer demands the introduction of a penalty fare at the Universal Serial Bus.
• Axel E. Fischer demands pledge of secrecy for .doc-files.
• Axel E. Fischer demands ISBN for Facebook.
• Axel E. Fischer demands new toilet paper for W3C.
• Axel E. Fischer demands a low fat policy for cookies.
• Axel E. Fischer demands daycare facilities for script kiddies.
• Axel E. Fischer demands preventive detention for killer-applications.
• Axel E. Fischer demands fishing quota’s for social nets.
• Axel E. Fischer demands machine-readable captchas.
• Axel E. Fischer demands real meat in spam.
• Axel E. Fischer demands reservations for digital natives.
• Axel E. Fischer demands vaccine protection for computer mice.
• Axel E. Fischer demands a census in Second Life.
• Axel E. Fischer demands followers being banned by anti-stalking legislature.
• Axel E. Fischer demands requirements to wear helmets at data mining.
• Axel E. Fischer demands drug-sniffing dogs for data packets.
• Axel E. Fischer demands anti-rabies inoculation for Firefox.