News Will Germany's new law kill free speech online?

In October a new law comes into force in Germany that will impose huge fines on social networks if they don't delete illegal content including hate speech. It's touched off a huge debate over freedom of expression and has attracted an unusual collection of opponents.

The law is called Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz - NetzDG for short. It obliges the biggest social networks - those with more than two million German users - to take down "blatantly illegal" hate speech within 24 hours of it being reported. For material that's less obviously violating the law, networks such as Facebook and Instagram will have seven days to consider and, if appropriate, delete posts. Failure to meet these deadlines could lead to fines of up to €50m.

Critics argue the short timeframes coupled with the potentially large fines will lead social networks to be overly cautious and delete huge amounts of content - even things that are perfectly legal. But the law's supporters, and the German government, argue that it will force social media companies to proactively deal with online incitement and hate speech.

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How the heck can they enforce the law unless the servers are located in Germany? And how could they enforce it if someone like Facebook autodetects a geo-located German IP address and the reroutes it through a proxy in another country? or worse yet, filters contents based on geo-located IP addresses.