German Wikipedia Threatened w/ Injunction

TheEagleCD writes "Wikipedia.de, the German version of the popular Wikipedia Encyclopedia, is currently closed due to a German court order. A detailed account of the current controversy [en.wikipedia.org] is available, the short version is that the family of "Tron" (Boris Floricic) - a German hacker and phreaker - is trying to force Wikipedia.de from removing the family name from his entry." As I write this the site is back up, as is the tron entry that caused the whole mess. However it does appear that the entire domain was briefly shut down over one entry.

Comments

If they can do this over the issue of a name

[Nom du Keyboard]

If they can do this over the accurate issue of a name, then Wikipedia will just be shut down every other week over some trivial issue or another and essentially become useless.

What I don't understand is:

1: Why didn't they just ask to have the offending reference removed, instead of the forwarding domain?

2: Don't these fools realize no single country can shut down information on the Internet. Sites absolutely thrive in posting information banned on one country or another, and it's a Whack-a-Mole to try and ever get them all.

And btw, IMHO these parents really offend easily. Too easily! Judges shouldn't give in so easily to hurt feelings or nobody will be allowed to say anything. As it looks now, some Germans still want to rewrite history -- which is a very bad habit to get into.

"From"?

[Finnegar]

"...is trying to force Wikipedia.de from removing the family name from his entry." Shouldn't that be: "...is trying to force Wikipedia.de TO removE the family name from his entry." (Highlights mine) Was the submitter a German? If so, I can understand how he got these minor things wrong, because otherwise this sentence makes very little sense, and is something a native speaker should spot easily. Did anyone read this again before posting it on the front page?

considering his real name was in WIRED magazine...

[voss]

Doesnt that make him a public figure under US law where wikipedia is located?
He also was a convicted of a crime so his name was a matter of public record in germany.

I couldnt imagine any US court enforcing
an injunction of that nature.

I just imagine the judge saying "Do you also want us go around and collect all the issues of Wired Magazine with his name in it?"

Message to all Germans...the last time Germany could tell other countries what to do was 60 years ago...there was also a court that settled that issue it was in Nuremburg.

Heres the Wikipedia link

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Trials
or the german one
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%BCrnberger_Proze sse

U.S. Still the Shining Light of Free Speech

[mike2006]

The entire German .de site shut down for just a few mentions of a name out of 341,000 articles. Thank God we could not imagine this happening here in the US. Those that love to bash the US both here and abroad should take note.

Re:Legal Status

[Lehk228]

it's only really a threat to the wikimedia foundation, as the NAZI government has no way of identifying the real name of american posters online. they can neither find the IP address related to the wikipedia pseudonym or associate the IP to an ISP customer.

beyond that even with a name they have no way of getting social security, passport, or Driver's license ID numbers to correlate the multitude of people with the same name to a specific person.