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Dutch Judge Cracks Down on Hyperlinks

Posted by michael on from the deep-sigh dept.

The webzine Radikal (mirrored in Holland, because it has been banned in Germany) published several articles on disabling railroad trains (in the context of preventing shipments of nuclear materials); the German national railroad discovered it, and the fun has been going on ever since. Rejo Zenger writes "Today a dutch judge ordered Indymedia NL on the request of the Deutsche Bahn to remove some links from a page on their website. These links were pointing to the mirrors of Radikal sites. A few of these sites were containing two articles that have been forbidden in court before. The links were indirect links (surface links) instead of direct ones to the articles (deeplinks). So, none of the links was pointing to the offending articles directly! The judge "orders Indymedia immediately after receiving this sentence to remove and to keep removed the hyperlinks, which are placed on (a) website(s) under the control of Indymedia, if those hyperlinks lead directly or indirectly to the Radikal articles [...]". This is BAD. As almost all links indirectly point to the Radikal articles we can abolish the web now. The announcement, Dutch with English to follow shortly. The decision of the judge (dutch only)." Indymedia's press release (English) covers it pretty well. Update: 06/21 19:54 GMT by M : My summary in the first sentence has been corrected.

4 of 385 comments (clear)

  1. dutch != deutsch by bzzzt · · Score: 3, Informative

    The Deutsche Bashn is the german railroad. Radikal is a german newsletter. Only the website is dutch...

    1. Re:dutch != deutsch by paule9984673 · · Score: 5, Informative
      Just to complete this...

      The newsletter found a new home on a server in the Netherlands some years ago after publication in Germany was forbidden. The authors and also some "usual suspects" were facing criminal prosecution. Houses and offices were searched, etc.

      Since the German jurisdiction ends at the Netherland's border nowadays, Deutsche Bahn filed civil suits in the netherlands.

  2. Some more background by rigolo · · Score: 5, Informative

    Maybe it is good to have understand the whole story from the beginning ...

    It starts way back in 1997 when the German magazine places some of their issues online at a dutch ISP (XS4ALL). In these issues they describe how to derail german trains.

    A German Court rules that these documents are illegal and these publications are illegal in Germany. German ISP are orderded to block the URL to XS4ALL. Because blocking something on the internet is virtually impossible these blocks were lifted because a lot of people started to publish mirrors of these documents.

    Back to April this year ...
    The German Railroads suddenly notice that these documents are still online and available and through a (dutch) court order forces XS4ALL to take these pages down.

    XS4ALL is applealing this decision and they are still in court (you can check the XS4ALL pages at http://www.xs4all.nl/nieuws/overzicht/radikal.html )

    At the same time Indymedia plublishes a list with mirrors where these documents can be found ...
    and that is now illegal to. They want to appleal, but as always .. money is an issue ..

    I hope this helps.

    Rigolo

  3. Look at the verdict! by morie · · Score: 5, Informative

    The verdict mentions the sites as well and should therefore be illegal!

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