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Dutch Judge Cracks Down on Hyperlinks
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.
A few points.
1) The linked to articals where about derailing Nuclea Waste Trains, not passenger trains
2) Would you rather have ppl discusing how to do this with out killing any one, or just let the carnage begin
3) The links where to the main page of the site, not the artical. So this now means that in the Netherlands you can not link to anywhere that may link to these articals. I hope Google.nl is watching
Wouldn't it be nice if schools got all the money they wanted and the army had to hold jumble sales for guns
...otherwise it's trivial to circumvent the prohibition on direct links only.
For instance, suppose linking directly to document A is banned. Then the hosting site could simply create a page with a "wink wink" link to document A, and the site against which the injunction is placed could link the the page with the "wink wink" link, with identical intent as with a direct link.
In other words, it's perfectly reasonable for a ban to also include indirect links OF WHATEVER LENGTH (arbitrary numbers of pages of "Are you sure? Are you really sure? etc") so long as intent is clear (e.g. putting up silly links to Disney on each of the "are you sure" pages should not absolve them). One can even make a case for neglect if the linker should have known better according to a reasonable-person standard.
Of course, even if the ruling notes this justification -- I don't read Dutch, and I'm leery of trusting a web translator on legalese -- Indymedia isn't exactly an independent with regards to their own case, and probably wouldn't mention this.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Underneath all of this is a silly premise. Does anyone need instructions to figure out how to derail a train? Let's see, it runs on two rails which are attached to ties in a certain way. So you either move a rail, or undermine the roadbed, or foobar a track junction or switch, or put something on top of a rail that's big and strong enough to send the wheels off. If the German government is counting on keeping trains secure by not having instructions up on the Net, they must estimate that the people who'd derail them are unusually stupid - and yet they expect they'll know how to read?? Reminds me of an article in yesterday's NY Times about how the Germans are following around a guy they know financed Mohammed Atta, but won't arrest him because they have such a respect for individual rights there. Maybe Germans really are stupid enough to need a manual to figure out how to derail a train?? If you live in Germany, feel very secure.
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"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton