Slashdot Mirror
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.
Nothing for you to see here. Please move along.
For a second there I thought they had gotten to Slashdot too. But seriously, does anyone know how to download and make a copy of wikipedia? I have a severely underused hosting account that I wouldn't mind using as a mirror for everyone's favorite free encyclopedia.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
the german wikipedia (which is under Jimmy's control) was never down, only the site www.wikipedia.de (under control of a german club), which normally redirected to the former, and is still down now. So, everybody who remembers the "real" wikipedia address can still use wikipedia without any problems.
"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.""
MCP is trying to delete another program.
http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/trurl_pag econtent?lp=de_en&url=http%3A%2F%2Fde.wikipedia.or g%2Fwiki%2FTron_(Hacker)
Wikipedia is (mostly) hosted in the US. The German court does not have jurisdiction. End of story. They can do whatever they want to the wikipedia.de domain, but de.wikipedia.org as well as the actual content is totally unaffected.
The site ( http://de.wikipedia.org/ ), along with the other language Wikipedias, is located in the US, and it's still up. Only the redirect ( http://wikipedia.de/ ) is affected by the injunction, since it's under German jurisdiction.
t _controversy to find that..
I only had to look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tron_(hacker)#Curren
It's not like the German wikipedia is taken off the net. It's just the popular domain wikipedia.de that's unavailable. de.wikipedia.org works just fine, and has all the information ready that is being debated.
It more of a side-effect of the german justice system that you're experiencing here. There are "act quickly" court orders that you need to obey, until the real case is being discussed in court. I'd bet they'll just reject to even start debating the case. Freedom of press is valued highly _in Germany_, you know.
ALLES WEBBENSURFERS!
Das Wikipagen is nicht fur gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist easy pissen off der blogbereich, libellen und slanderen mit lawsuitspawnen. Ist nicht fur editten by das dummkopfen. Das rubbernecken kourtjudgen musten keepen das cotten-pickenen hands in das pockets - relaxen und watchen das flammekrieg.
So what is their actual complaint here? Are they just mad that wikipedia posted easily findable information in an article? Or are they mad that their name is linked to a convicted criminal? Seems like wikipedia is the wrong place to divert that anger.
Damn, I need my own wiki page.. Promise i wont sue
You can download database dumps and you can find some help with importing into a fresh Mediawiki installation. You can try Wikifilter for converting the dump data into HTML.
So basically, because they want to stop some guy from using the name for a fictional character they're trying to stop Wikipedia from using it to refer to the actual, original person.
W. T. F?! -- and, more importantly, why don't they sue the publisher?!!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Can't wait to see someone run this through the Encheferizer
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I was pretty confused today when I tried to access the German version of wikipedia through www.wikipedia.de, because they merely stated that some court in Berlin ordered them to abandon this URL. After a brief moment of shock I just went to www.wikipedia.org and clicked on the link for the German version (which worked). It's just a small detour and actually it's just fair if you take into account that the .com URL always redirected you to .org (if you type in www.wikipedia.co.uk you end up on the English version directly on the other hand).
I don't read replies by ACs.
Just go here and download the database.
But still I don't see why calling Boris Floricic by his name, Boris Floricic, should be a crime! I mean, I've said Boris Floricic three times in this post, and I doubt I will only say Boris Floricic three times (Or four? I mean, Boris Floricic rolls off the tongue! Boris Floricic! Boris Floricic! Boris Floricic! Boris Floricic! Boris Floricic! Boris Floricic! Boris Floricic! Boris Floricic! Boris Floricic! Boris Floricic! Boris Floricic! Boris Floricic! Boris Floricic! Boris Floricic! Boris Floricic!)
With global news markets, the prohibitions of publishing a suspect's last name is getting a somewhat pointless. In the Netherlands, you have to say Muhammed B., but you only need to check the BBC website to find out that it's Muhammad Bouyeri. In the Netherlands, you read "Joran van der S.", but every website in the US prints "Joran van der Sloot."
IANA(G)L, but is there anything stopping www.wikipedia.de from explicitly telling viewers how to get to the real German wikipedia site... e.g. a direct link to de.wikipedia.org
Suing the wikipedia.de site seems ineffective. By the way, there's more background on the case at the English wikipedia entry.
My bicyles
So instead of having his family name in an obscure wikipedia entry that no one ever reads its on the frontpage of slashdot now. Way better...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Benjamin_Parker and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider-Man both link/redirect to the same page, clearly giving away his secret identity, if the Parkers can put up with it, then it shouldn't be a big deal for Tron/Boris F./Boris Floricic 's family.
You forgot to mention that your expert's name is 'babblefish'.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
No better way to divert attention than to trying to shut down an international site. I'm REALLY sure nobody will know, from now on, who Boris Floricic aka "Tron" is!
Oops, what did I say? *shuts mouth*
From the Wikipedia article:
The order prohibits the Foundation from mentioning the full name on any website under the domain "wikipedia.org".
And how is Wikimedia going to carry that out? Censor the name from going into pages? That would severely hurt their credibility while being ineffective (there are so many ways around computer censors that it's not even funny).
Maguhn admitted that the true reason behind the incident is a fictitious work recently published by a German author in which the main actor has the same (civil) name as Tron. The parents sent a protest to the publisher but were turned down with the argument that the German Wikipedia is using the name as well.
In that case it was, as is clearly stated, fictitious. It could have easily misrepresented 'Tron', while Wikipedia is (or strives to be) factual. How can they tell us to stop telling the truth? More importantly, does this mean any old criminal can demand that his name be removed from Wikipedia? Who has the power here - a foreign country that Wikimedia isn't even based in, or Wikimedia itself? Where do freedom of speech/press end and let privacy and the whims of different countries begin to take control?
Sounds a whole lot like the internet control controversy again to me.
Thanks for the link! Here's one i found at the bottom of your translated page.
g econtent?lp=de_en&trurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.heise.de% 2Ftp%2Fr4%2Fartikel%2F21%2F21750%2F1.html
http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/trurl_pa
Stop saying Boris Floricic!
So you sue someone to stop them from mentioning your name.
That just brings up all kinds of odd questions. Like: Is wikipedia allowed to talk about the fact they got sued? And if they do talk about being sued, are they allowed to mention the names of the people who sued them? Since, you know, it's apparently banned to mention these people's last names, that's why wikipedia's in court in the first place. How does wikipedia report on the court case? Do they have to just say "we have been sued by somebody, we can't tell you who, but their name begins with F"? Are they allowed to publish documents, like court summons and such, from the case but only so long as they black out the names of the plaintiffs with a magic marker?
Actually there is a reason for that: According to the German court corder they are not allow to link to the content that provides those "information" (i.e.: the real name). Otherwise it might almost be the same then forwarding, only less automated. Some news sources in Germany say, the earliest the site could be up again is in about 2 weeks.
What is a racial opinion? What are races anyway? The concept of "human races" has a long and dark history, it has never done any good to anyone, except that some people can claim themselves superior and others inferior. It only serves to de-humanise whole nations or other groups followed by the inevitable extermination campaign. Pretty much every nation, past or present, that has or ever has had lust for power and domination, has used this strategy. Now if you don't mind, Germany does not want to repeat this horrendous mistake by letting demagogues rise. There is a lot of evil hiding inside every population, and it's called indifference. This evil is going strong in Western nations nowadays, and the more important it is that such people need to be stopped in their tracks. And you, Anonymous Coward, wherever you live, just hope your country never needs to get its own Hitler to realize this.
"Alternate versions" of the Holocaust are to the actual Holocaust what Intelligent Design is to Evolution, only infinitely worse.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
"No-one is to stone anyone until I blow this whistle. Do you understand? Even--and I want to make this absolutely clear--even if they do say Boris Floricic."
I looked at the page, and I don't understand what the fuss is about. In fact, I don't understand a word of it -- it might as well be in another language!
I was editing on Wikipedia when the legal notice started to surface on the English Wikipedia entry for this individual, which was quickly deleted by English Wikipedia Administrators. Last I checked, all Wikipedia entries do not include Boris's last name, and though our opinions differ on the matter, most of us refer to Boris as "Boris F---" or something of the like in Discussion and Talk pages. The main dilemma, of course, remains as to whether Germany has jurisdiction over our content. Legally, they do not, as the Wikimedia servers are hosted in Florida. However, there is precedent that any individual involved in writing this article can be immediately detained upon ever setting foot in Germany. I can't remember the details, but an Australian man writing revisionist Nazi theories was arrested for publishing his works elsewhere. We can continue to post up "Floricic," or however it's spelled, on Wikipedia if we wished. However, I think that the Administrators were justified in making the page deletes due to legal threats. Where do we draw the line, though? If Iran ordered us to not write about something, I'd seriously doubt most administrators on Wikipedia would take drastic action. I seriously doubt the U.S. would ever consider extradition (not to mention the public outcry) if an American was shipped away because of an anti-free speech German law. The bottom line is: legally, Wikipedia has no need to listen to Germany. However, what will happen when one of the article's editors, or a member of the Wikimedia foundation, sets foot in Germany?
Wow, this post shows that the Germans have really made a lot of progress in modernizing their language! When I took German in high school (many years ago) it seemed like they had a different word for everything...
Calm down, it's just a preliminary injunction. These are relatively easy to get pretty much everywhere, and it doesn't say anything about what the final decision will be.
And for that matter... the whole case is clearly ridiculous, so it will get thrown out quickly enough. There's no need to rave about how "no single country can shut down information on the internet" and how "some Germans still want to rewrite history" - in fact, the last statement seems to be borderline Godwinesque, although I may be misinterpreting it.
So, just relax.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
As several posters before you have pointed out, there was no injunction whatsoever against any US-based organisation; TFS is misleading. The injunction was brought up against a german website, not wikipedia.org.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
Second of all, on the pages where users vote on whether or not to delete a page, only registered users may have their votes counted. Anonymous users can engage in debate, but not vote, I suppose like Puerto Rico and Guam's delegates to the U.S. House of Representatives.
Third, this is to prevent users from going to their LiveJournal and rounding up hundreds of their online buddies to vote on an Article for Deletion page to keep their no-name garage band or other non-notable things from being deleted. Registered users that vote in AFDs, or Articles for Deletion, have their votes counted based on how many edits are sufficient to tell if they've registered specifically to vote in that AFD or not.
When an anonymous user creates hundreds of registered accounts to vote on a Wikipedia AFD to prevent it from getting deleted, the jargon for this is "sockpuppeting." The jargon for an anonymous user getting hundreds of their friends to vote on an AFD to keep an article they created from getting deleted is called "meatpuppeting."
Fourth, there is no 50% threshold where entries on AFD become deleted. If an article has around 50% deletion votes, the default is to keep the article because it the community is too uncertain. Most administrators I have talked to say it's clear the community has decided a certain way when around 66% vote a certain way, while some have put it around 80%, or, most wisely, judge it on a case-by-case basis.
These are very good mechanisms to help prevent Wikipedia from being overwhelmed by neo-Nazis and beastiality connaisseurs who want to create 500 Wikipedia articles on self-invented terms for man-on-sheep sex positions.
Mostly it's to eliminate idiot comments like the one you just made.
I went and looked at your link. Here's the submission:
Obviously this story was submitted by a moron. Let me help him: 's/Admin's/Admins/' will do the trick.
Second, your very own quotation puts the lie to the idiotic headline on the submission:
If we read this sentence carefully, we may be able to extract its actual meaning, not the meaning you erroneously believe it contains. I suggest you look up the words "traditionally" and "may".
I can give you the basic flavor of the message without you going to such trouble, however. "If you have not demonstrated your commitment to Wikipedia, we may ignore you." Seems entirely reasonable to me...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Laywers often don't understand the internet. They probably worded their motion in a way that taking down the redirect satisfied the injunction. --Michael
Want to see every step I took to start my company? http://www.rowdylabs.com/blogs/pitchtothegods
What the heck does this to do with WW2?
It's a bit hypocritical to talk about telling the rest of the world what to do given the current state of the USA's foreign "policy".
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
As much as I support the freedom of information, you have to admire German privacy laws (Datenschutz). Selling your cell phone calls with location? Not a problem in Germany, for good reason.
Basically, the man has a right to have his identity protected in Germany. No, they can't censor the internet, but they can make their position as clear as possible, and I kind of support them standing up to the constant stripping away of privacy that occurs on the internet.
Slashdotters, you always care so much about privacy - is it only when it's your own? And what do we gain by knowing his full last name, instead of the inital? It is a violation of the dead man's privacy and that of his family, with no gain whatsoever to us. The only way to walk the line between freedom of information and invasion of privacy is to be pragmatic in this regard, and recognize that we deserve to protect that information which is not of public interest.
Because only the UN is above the politics and special-interest pushing and pulling that might cause a domain record to yanked for making someone upset.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
It's amusing that you posted that comment on /.
We're not telling anyone anything. Our jurisdiction covers the wikipedia.de domain (as it's registered with the DENIC, which is, you know, German), everything past that is outside the reach of Germany's courts. Don't think that our judges aren't smart enough to know that. Theoretically they could try to make a move against Wikimedia, but they are amart enough to know that this case doesn't warrant an international lawsuit, too. Besides, the injunction does not go against Wikimedia as a whole but against the German chapter. Which happens to sit in Germany.
Trust me, we won't attack Poland because someone posted the name of a dead hacker on Wikipedia. Really.
Oh, and we tell other countries what to do all the time. Like that one time when we told you to stay the fuck out of Iraq if you don't have to defend yourselves from them (I don't want to comment on that war now, but it's a good example of us telling you what to do). We're quite good at bossing around people bigger than us - good thing that it's not the bossing around that always got us into trouble but the bad habit of causing epic world wars to occur... And we're clean of that now.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Arguably it would have been a better translation if, perhaps, it wasn't written in pseudo-German. Good work missing the joke though.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
"alternative accounts"
holy shiat when did holocaust denial get it's own PC term?
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
They sent legal papers to the offices of the Wikimedia Foundation in Florida, demanding they appoint a representative in Germany to defend the case.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
"the short version is that the family of "Tron""
Anybody else fist thought of the Dave Chapelle Show before thinking of the Disney movie?
In the U.S., for example, a preliminary injunction prohibiting publication of material alleged but not actually (yet) found to be illegal is called "prior restraint", and an a high bar must be met for a court to issue such an injunction.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
What has the "whole WWII thing" to do with this particular Wikipedia problem? Utter lack of freedom of speech? Germany does not discuss its Nazi past and is trying to bury it? Have you ever been to Germany, watched at least some German television or read a German newspaper? We're talking about the same Germany that ranks a lot higher on that world press freedom ranking than almost everyone else, including the US? That constantly discusses its Nazi past? And what do you know about the German legal system and this particular case?
You have no idea what you're talking about. And why is this moderated Insightful? Seriously, moderators, get a clue or refrain from moderating.
There's an easier way, you know. Click the language link to switch to the English version: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tron_(hacker)
They did sue someone as the first reaction, though. Only, instead of suing the publisher, they sued someone completely unrelated.
How is that better?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
>Arguably it would have been a better translation if, perhaps, it wasn't written in pseudo-German.
Given the quality of babelfish's typical translation, pseudo-German is just as good as the real thing...
It's vaguely related in that Germany has, along with some other European countries, made an overall decision to "balance" free speech rights with what they consider equally important social goals. This is mainly targetted at neo-Nazis and whatnot, but also results in cases like this one.
If, instead, Germany had strongly-enshrined free speech rights similar to the U.S.'s First Amendment, this case would never have even made it to an injunction.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Suspects still are entitled to sue for slander (or libel) if it in fact takes place. However, accurately reporting that so-and-so was arrested and charged with [x] is not slander---it is simply stating verifiable facts.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
...would be if someone just posted that name on other Wikipedia pages. Sure, there's nothing they can do about it, but if a Wikipedia page could be shut down over something like this, an international parallel would either shut down Wikipedia entirely, or force it closed.
sorry, but this is flamebait at best. where does all this offensive attitude come from? Its not "the germans" against the the wikipedia/US...? All that happened is, as lots of other people have pointed out already, that a an order to "instant / temporary action" was given, by a regional court. That does not mean anything to the final judgement, its not even clear the case will get accepted at the court at all. This is getting alot of (critical) media coverage at all the major news pages (could not watch tv today) here in germany. Its definately not "the germans" against wikipedia but more another fight between personal rights for privacy and public rights for information, and this particular case just started. So in this context your reference to the Nürnberger tribunal is not "informative" but tasteless and silly at best -k
It's a bit more complex than that. One of "Tron" (Aka Boris Floricic)'s old friends, "Andy Müller-Maguhn" -- who was in the same hacking club as Tron (Who's real name was Boris Floricic) and was also a director of ICANN -- is suing for Boris Floricic (Who went by the alias "Tron")'s parents, because a German author used Tron's real name -- Boris Floricic -- as the name of the main character in a book.
The publisher said they had no case, because Wikipedia also used the name. Rather than point out to a judge that there is a distinct difference between an Encyclopedia using a name and a work of fiction using a name, they decided to go after Wikipedia.
Well they originally sent the injunction to St Petersburg, Russia, rather than St Petersburg, Florida...
As it looks now, some Germans still want to rewrite history -- which is a very bad habit to get into.
Well... Its not as if http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/holocaust keeps getting submitted to http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_deletion
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Yes, in the US it would take at least a nipple. ^_^ The US has, all around, the best freedom of speech laws, but there's plenty of room for improvement.
Perhaps groups like Wikipedia should move the various groups around. That is keep most if not all of the none english ones in America and then move the English group to some other country which has laws that make it difficult for the gov. to interfere with them.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
*knock knock*
Hey... Would you let reality in?
Reality
Also who _DID_ ask you?
Firefox 2.0 - Spell Rightly.
Because the editors (not just the admins) are people who actually contribute to it. But the reason for this policy is so that a person can't just create 50 new sockpuppet accounts and have them all vote.
English is easier said than done.
What can easily be explained by a good old fashioned slashdotting...
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
Why did Wikipedia feel the need to shut down entirely? Christ, it's a wiki. How hard is it to edit it out and revert later?
Oh damn.
They're supposed to read these before posing them?
Someone, get a hold of the slashdot admins....QUICK!
Firefox 2.0 - Spell Rightly.
> He also was a convicted of a crime so his name was a matter of public record in germany.
The thing is this: The people's right on privacy is highly protected. This includes their identity. Media is not allowed to disclose the identity of some random guy without his consent. This includes anyone in a trial and also convicted people. The only exception are public figures. And a person will not become a public figure because the media says so or report on him. It does not matter that his name is in the court files.
You will not find any newspaper article about Tron's trail that does not refer to him as Boris F. You will not find his full name in the media.
Now, wikipedia has his full name in the article. They were asked to change this by Tron's parents. They declined, partly by stating that Tron is a public figure, so they are allowed to do this. Obviously the parents disagree.
They ask a judge for a preliminary injunction until this matter is decided upon in court. He grants it as he values the negativ impact off revealing Tron's identity higher as wikipedia's interest in giving the full name.
The injunction orders wikipedia.de to not show the name. The german wikipedia chapter decides to turn of the redirection from wikipedia.de to wikipedia.org. They could have edited the article in question, but did not.
If in the US people's right on privacy is valued less, then be it. I rather like the german version.
The injuction is against wikipedia.de, not any US entity. So spare us your cant.
I've seen some malicious trolls in my day, but you, sir, are the worst. They took down the entirety of de.wikipedia.org for user content containing those words. Do you hate Slashdot so much that you're willing to risk the same fate for it?
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
Just because Jimbo is a godking over there doesn't mean he makes all the decisions. The Wikimedia Foundation has a board that includes Jimbo.
~Ilyanep
To get message, take amount of carrier pigeons at each stage mod 2. Then decode binary.
The DMCA, although a crappy law, does not permit prior restraint of speech. If someone receives a DMCA notice, and replies asserting that the material in question is not a violation of copyright, the material stays up and the complainer must take them to court to get it taken down. So your description of how it works ("don't even need to get a court involved") is simply incorrect, unless the defendant simply acquiesces.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Actually you can become a public figure involuntarily by being reported in the press. So yes "Tron" was at least a limited public figure. An article about him was published in "Wired" magazine a magazine with a circulation of over half a million subscribers that is sold in germany among other countries.
The distinction between wikipedia.de and wikipedia.org is a semantic one justifying it because it only happened inside of germany. The article in question is on a NON-GERMAN server editing the article even if only because of fear of the court ruling in effectively extends the range of the german courts beyond germany.
If it was the reverse my opinion would be exactly the same, US like German courts have no business telling websites in other countries what they can publish.
There is no privacy right here except the embarassment of the family, well too bad it was
BORIS FLORICIC not wikipedia or wikipedia.de that caused the embarassment to his family through HIS crimes, and HIS behavior. If his parents were embarassed by him they should have talked to HIM while he was alive.
Excuse me for saying this but modern Germans seem to scream for human rights around the world while excusing any infringement of personal liberty done within germany as long as its done for politically correct reasons. I say that as someone whos great-great grandparents sailed from the german port of Kiel to america in 1856.
If I offended some people by bringing up nuremburg(thats the english spelling)...oh well. I consider free expression a universal human right more important than the privacy rights of a dead person or the embarassment caused to his family because of his own actions.
The auditing process of wikipedia editors and admins is in question. Editors have the ability to remove other editors comments or pages without counsel. Also, wikipedia has two editorial camps. The first camp is more communicative and adheres to the policies of wikipedia. The second camp is referred to as "janitors" due to the "cleanup" of pages and supression of vandil attacks. It's the second camp or janitors that are in question. There have been incidents of page alterantion without comments. This disregard for process his the center of many problems within wikipedia.
I don't speak German, so I put that through The Fish:
NOTE! EVERYTHING WEBBENSURFERS! The Wikipagen is not fur gefingerpoken and mittengrabben. Easy pissen off is that blogbereich, spirit levels and slanderen with lawsuitspawnen. Is not fur editten by the dummkopfen. Rubbernecken kourtjudgen musten keepen the that cotten pickenen hands in pockets - relaxen and watchen that flaming war.
Slashdot is generally an English website, and it's rude for you to go on like that in German. If you continue, we will be forced to reply in French, then immediately surrender the argument to you.
>>Arguably it would have been a better translation if, perhaps, it wasn't written in pseudo-German.
>Given the quality of babelfish's typical translation, pseudo-German is just as good as the real thing...
Reason for the latter might be that already most of the Germans aren't German-proof anymore. They mixed up German and English just for a too long period.
Redirection just points to de.wikipedia.org - does this mean that it is now illegal to link to de.wikipedia.org from within Germany? Sounds pretty bizarre.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
... kind of. Nothing happened due to Seigenthaler's comments. We are still around, albeit somewhat embarassed by the vandalism.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
If you do not remember the details, and are too lazy to look them up, do not post. The author, David Irwing, is British, and was arrested in *Austria*.
Actually, there is some more background info on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Tron_(hacker) and (less noticable) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Boris_Floricic
I was trying to figure out what they meant, and, after reading several of the postings, eventually came to the conclusion that the intended meaning is:
A typo/spelling error is one thing, mixing up homonyms is another, but picking a completely wrong word that doesn't even sound correct conversationally is an impressive feat of slashdot-ism. In this case, it does a particularly good job of confusing the meaning of the sentence.
-- "This world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel."
Or you can get static HTML dumps here.
I don't see the problem. This information was already public. (or so i'm told in translation).
So the lawsuit would be baseless, no?
This is really silly. The family wants to force Wikipedia to remove tron's real name from the article?
Here's a couple of thought experiments: if Kevin Mitnick's family tried to get Wikipedia to remove his full name, and replace it with "Kevin M." or just "Kevin", should Wikipedia do so? Or a member of the Kennedy family wanted to ammend the JFK article to use the name "John F.K."? For whatever reason???
- Convicted criminals shouldn't have their full names shown in articles? HELL NO!
- Convicted criminals who claim they are innocent shouldn't have their full names shown in articles? HELL NO!
- Famous people more commonly known by their nicknames shouldn't have their full names shown in articles? HELL NO!
- People who died from suicide/murder shouldn't have have their full names shown in articles? HELL NO!
- Dead people who's families are mourning shouldn't have their full names shown in articles? HELL NO!
- Dead people who their families don't want to be associated with shouldn't have their full names shown in articles? HELL NO!
- Spies with secret-identies, the compromising of which might harm government agents and endanger national security, shouldn't have their full names shown in articles? Well, maybe....
Wikipedia, stick to your guns and don't back down!
---
Here's to the crazy ones
Good thing the mods seem to know of the blinkenlights, because the rest of these fucking cretins don't.
FC Closer
I'm going to fucking bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to fucking kill Boris Floricic!
The parents of Tron calling for a temporal decree at a german court and having his real name deleted from Wikipedia are being silly. Tron is, by definition, "a person of public interest" (german legal term) and any legally optainable information on him may thus be published.
A temporal decree in german law is exactly that: temporal. A decision by court that needs to be followed until the real court rule is out. No judge in his right mind will prohibit an encyclopedia from publishing details about Tron.
This case does emphasise though that writers to wikipedia are bound by german publishing law and are liable for any damage they cause by deliberately publishing lies or such. Just because the server with german content is outside of germany doesn't mean you'll get away with causing public unrest (Volksverhetzung), denial of the Holocaust ('Auschwitz Lüge') or anything else that is illegal in germany. If the indended audience evidently is in germany the courts won't fall for cheap excuses. Which makes perfect sense.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Harharhar ... das ist kein deutsch ;-)
Oh well ... ok --- the translation of my almost-sentence:
harharhar ... thats no german ;-)
Ave you ad enough, English kerniggits, or shall we taunt you one more time?
"The US has, all around, the best freedom of speech laws" Ever been to Scandinavia? We tend to be pretty liberal, up here... even with respect to nipples.
- Frans.
For all those what didn't get the joke (*), why not look on Wikipedia...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blinkenlights
(*) My uncle used to say "Whoosh above their heads and Splat against the wall"
Not confused enough? http://translate.google.com/translate?u=www.slashdot.jp&hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=ja&tl=en
sig: Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I'm sure your signature is less humorous if you explain it, but I still don't understand it.
Defining Statistics and Social Research
Being reported by the press is not enough in itself to make you a public figure. The press does not have the right to reveal your identity in the first place, and they do not gain the right simply by continuing to report on him.
:-(
It does not matter that a publication in some other jurisdiction did reveal his name, it does not matter how many subscribers Wired has in Germany.
It was up to wikipedia.de to provide a way his name is not revealed when accessing wikipedia through wikipedia.de. They choose to do it the way they did. Technically, it would be possible to do this in a way that does not affect the view from outside germany, but this would have required changes in the way wikipedia.de operates.
It is also not of the courts business how wikipedia.de operates internally, where it gets its content from. That is entirely their own problem.
> There is no privacy right here
Bullshit. There is. By law. If Tron would be still alive, it would be his rights. Now, his parents act on his behalf.
I realise that your life is not considered private in the US (thous al the "my telco sells my phone data" stuff that is not possible in germany). Here, there is a balance between private and public interest. And by default, it is on private.
> while excusing any infringement of personal liberty done within germany as long as its done for politically correct reasons
You mean like PATRIOT, secret searches, secret courts, the CIA spying on its own citicens et al? No, we don't have that. Not that the german system is perfect, mind you.
And we have a high pressure from the RIAA/MPAA equivalents to hollow our world-leading data protection laws. and it f* looks like the government will bend over
> If I offended some people by bringing up nuremburg
Well, for one, is has relevance, and for two, it devalues the Nazi crimes by bringing them down to the level of this legal dispute.
IMHO, there are several reasons, the most trivial being that everywhere you will notice history lessons focus on the country they are taught in. In Germany the Third Reich is a dominant factor in history which is important to be educated about in order to understand not only general public opinions (e.g. strong opposition against wars), but also our current constitution. The Federal Republic was founded directly after World War II, and the then recent experience had a very strong influence on its characteristics -- one of the implications is the very topic of this thread, that the protection of the individual generally has priority over Freedom of Speech. Article one (the Basic Law, which serves as the constitution, has articles instead of paragraphs) states that "Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority", Freedom of Speech is article five.
Germany had gone from a young democracy (end of World War I until 1933), which had a very liberal, by most measures more democratic than the current, constitution, to a fascist dictatorship that murdered millions of its own people by industrial means and started the most devastating war in human history -- all within a few years, and (technically) without violating the constitution (lawyers can be surprisingly creative sometimes). On top of that, this transition had been supported by the majority of the population for a variaty of reasons, and finalized when it passed a vote by the remaining members of parliament. Based on that experiene the Basic Law of the new republic was written to include several security mechanisms, one of which is that you can't abuse Freedom of Speech in an attempt to overthrow the democratic system.
If not the Third Reich by itself, but the war it started (along with several previous ones), is also important to understand the history of the EU.
Another reasons why it's important to educate children born after 1945 is their immediate environment. Imagine grandpa telling the kids the Nazis efficiently solved the unemployment problem (a huge problem back then, as it is today), that they weren't as bad as everybody makes them to be, and then proudly pointing at a picture of him in a SS uniform. Then I believe it's important they get independently educated about the Third Reich at school, go and visit a concentration camp with their class and so on.
Finally, we must learn from history. Of course this is equaly important in other countries, but that part of German history stands out, and no matter what you say I feel there is some sort of a special responsibility for Germans to have at least a basic understanding how it happened. I agree with you that I don't share a responsibility for the Nazi's actions, but "to bury the past" would be to deny what is a part of my heritage, and of what happened just outside the city.
Societies can change rather quickly. It doesn't have to be as extreme as in Germany, but it would be foolish to take our current way of life for granted. As Hermann Goering put it:
"Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is th
According to the Heise-Online Newsticker ( http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/68586 ) the court has approved wikimedias request for enforcement protection. That means they are allowed to reestablish the redirect, at least until the court decides about their objection against the injunction.
The judge said at this point of time wikimedias interest in providing all articles seems more importand than the postmortal name rights.
Blueplane
Although the english translation option right on the Wikipedia site is probably better, there's also a google translation available if you want to try something different.
Signatures are a waste of bandwi (buffering...)
Congratulations. You finally got it. Now slashdot.de will be banned from Germany.
Vee hav vays ov making you not talk.
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
Even if it flew over the heads of most readers, I thought you'd like to know I appreciated it (though my work colleagues wondered what the giggling was about).
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
Did he win wikipedia.de in a hot hand of dice? Three hours straight, clickity clackity!
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
I am sincerely interested any examples of speech that you wish were legal in the US.
Well, I may be wrong here, not being US national and not knowing your laws by heart, and if so someone please correct me, but... Doesn't the DMCA make it illegal to tell others how to bypass effective copy protection mechanisms ?
Kinda sick actually: the nazis can celebrate genocide openly, but woe be to anyone who's talk might possibly decrease potential profits of a corporation.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
You should really find out why they are so pissed about what the Admins on Wiki are doing, Before you blast them for speaking out against the process on Wiki. Here are some links to give you both sides. First Wiki's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_fo r_deletion/Wehatetech
Now there side
http://www.wehatetech.com/index.php?name=PNphpBB2& file=viewtopic&t=444
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_fo r_deletion/Podcasts/We_Hate_tech
I would also like to point out that in the Wikipedia:Deletion policy states:
"If an article is repeatedly re-created by unassociated editors after being deleted, this may be evidence of a need for an article. Conversely, if an article is repeatedly nominated for deletion, this is not in and of itself evidence that it should be deleted. In some cases, repeated attempts to have an article deleted may even be considered disruptive. If in doubt, don't delete."
See here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_po licy
I would also like to point out that many of us who have just registered with Wiki did so to participate in the AfD conversation. We have not had any reason to register with Wiki before this debate. On top of all that some of us who have been to the site before have not found anything to edit. If editing for no good reason is what it takes to have your voice heard and considered that's ridiculous. I find the whole thing preposterous that the Admins should go to such lengths to quash such a small page so many times. It's painfully obvious that the Admins don't give a crap what people who actually care about and would edit the article have to say.
Haha, *you* said Boris Floricic!
You know, Microsoft's street address also says a lot about their mentality.
...that (it sounds like) in Germany, it is illegal to even discuss certain topics in an academic context.
As in US law, I'm sure it is forbidden to cause immediate harm by your words (Yelling "Fire" in a theater), or to incite people to riot or kill (Telling teenagers about how bad "the other people" are, repeatedly, and encouraging them to "do something (physical) about it"). But it sounds like in Germany, in a University, you couldn't even write a paper about the benefits of Nazis or what Hitler did to unify and build up Germany. 'Cause if you did, you'd be breaking the law...
Is this true?
coding is life
For the record, this is a post by someone from wehatetech, a reasonably non-notable site that we have deleted from Wikipedia after determining that we don't really need an article about their organisation. They been trying to recreate the article, and have been doing other... interesting... disruptions to the site. What can we say? Either we do add material, and we get crapped on, or we don't add information, and we get crapped upon. You just can't win.
TBSDY
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
As of January 20, Wikipedia.de is allowed to redirect to the German Wikipedia once again. While formally the previous court interdiction is still valid, for the time being Wikipedia -- who paid 500 to the court -- are not bound to act on it. Or so Wikipedia.de says at this time.
That's true, although not enacted by Bush as many would have you know. But it does satisfy my question.
Does anyone know if either the Democrats or Republicans have any good policies on that btw? Because even though I lean to the right, I would definately bend and bend hard for a policy that crippled copyright, patents and other intellectual property laws.
If someone sends your ISP a nasty letter accusing you of anything---claiming without evidence that you're a spammer, say---some ISPs will just shut you down rather than deal with it.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
1) The U.S. does not have "hate speech" laws. Such laws would be unconstitutional here, unlike in Germany.
2) You cannot get an injunction for prior restraint of speech in the U.S. in most cases; only in extreme cases. See the Wikipedia article on prior restraint for more on how U.S. law much more strongly protects publishers in that respect.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
TBSDY are saying for the record of wiki or a personal record? What's your evidence to show this slashdot is from WeHateTech.com's Josh or Glen? A user of WeHateTech.com has created this thread. But not WeHateTech.com. There's a signicant difference and should be recognized by all parties. There has been multiple listings of WeHateTech.com in Wikipedia. By Wiki records, some of been made in the "talk" others in "podcast" and one with a french name, and another as "we hate tech" and "wehatetech". What was the impact to Wikipedia from these multiple entries? If you are from Wikipedia, please explain why editors refer to WeHateTech.com users as "sock puppets" and why editors use descriptions like "resistance is futal"? If you aren't from Wiki then ... I'd like to here from Wiki these editor comments.
Having problems taking a side? Oh what is this:
The CCC describes itself as "a galactic community of life's beings, independent of age, sex, race or societal orientation, which strives across borders for freedom of information."
Does anybody else think that the spokesman of the Chaos Computer Club should espouse similar beliefs? Nice hypocrisy here, we really appreciate that you're using government to try to censor Wikipedia from printing the truth about this whole thing. You don't deserve to be called a hacker, and you obviously don't understand what freedom of information really is.
My point is now recorded on slashdot.
I am an admin on the site.
The reason wehatetech people are called sockpuppets is a bit confusing: really they were orginally being mistaken for sockpuppets, when really they were meat puppets, or those ring-ins who were brought to the articles for deletion page to try to keep an article, wehatetech.
It is not Wikipedian editors who are being unreasonable here: you guys just aren't notable enough for our website. However, we have numerous instances of vandalism from wehatetech - a lot of it proudly being noted on wehatetech's front page.
Resistance is futile, incidently. We will track down any nonsense and erradicate it. If you think wehatetech is notable, then you would have been better off going to articles for undeletion. Incidently, I've seen the original article, and to be frank it's crap. It would need to be severely modified if it was undeleted.
TBSDY
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
That's just it -- registering primarily or solely to participate in an AfD is counterproductive, since there's a strong likelihood you don't know how the system works around Wikipedia. Comments from the newly registered and anonymous are given less weight for precisely that reason. In this particular case, WHT is seen by those who were in on the AfD as being just another wannabe in the podcast world (as most podcasts are), and the arguments to the contrary have mostly taken the form of special pleading rather than a reference to actual numbers. The podcast world is extremely crowded, and since there's such a low barrier to entry there is not likely to be any serious shakeout. Even Adam Curry and Dawn and Drew are little fish in a big pond, and My Pet AudioBlog Podcast doesn't even rise to the level of plankton. WHT is, at best, somewhere in the middle.
I have been following the wehatetech side for some time as well, and the tenacity of WHT.com users is... well, a marvel to behold, in some sense. (I mean, this argument is, what, three weeks old now? Most everyone else would have given up and walked away by now.) The sheer vitriol of it all tends to obscure the fact that Wikipedia is a reference, not a promotional venue, and the fact that to everyone except WHT this is a tempest in a teapot.
Doesn't the DMCA make it illegal to tell others how to bypass effective copy protection mechanisms ?
Nope. It makes it illegal to help someone bypass effective copy proection. I think what you are refering to is the prohibition against marketing or selling devices or services (not information) which
! they are primarily designed or produced to circumvent;
! they have only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent; or
! they are marketed for use in circumventing.
Wikipedia has no advertisement value for us at all besides the fact someone could search for us and find us in wikipedia if wanted. I would suspect maybe what 2 or 3 visitors a month from them? This fight is more about the backwards system in reguards to anything that might be slightly controversial. It is clear there are people out there that do not like us, that is perfectly ok because the BS that spews out of our mouth might offend some people. However, if you want to take that up you should post it in the article not mark it for deletion. That appears to be wikipedia's problem right now in reguards to anything controversial. Just look at some of the religious and political battles going on now. There needs to be a way for both sides to get their opinion in instead of just locking it and letting only those who are willing to invest hours into their system a way to comment. That or they need to change their little slogon. --Josh
Encylclopedia Dramatica provides a saracastic point of view but, there's some truth mixed in. (excuse the profane link) http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/index.php/Bur eaucratic_Fuck/
Something along the lines of
Attention
All Web Surfers
This wiki page is not for finger pocking and hand grabbing. It is is easy to piss off the blog police and start libel and slander lawsuits. It is not for editing by dump people. The rubbernecked court judge must keep his cotton picking hands in his pockets. Relax and watch the flamefest.
It isn't proper German