Acquittal of German Wikipedia

Rock-n-Rolf writes "In a previous story Slashdot reported that the German Wikipedia was threatened with injunction. The court has now ruled, as reported in German magazine Spiegel, and Wikipedia is likely to remain online (Babelfish translation). The dispute was about Wikipedia publishing the real name of a dead hacker in an article, and the parents objected to this."

Comments

It's a basic policy not anything evil!

[ami-in-hamburg]

Um, actually, there is stuff in the media all the time about the Nazi regime including TV, documentaries, news articles, etc...

Now back on topic, it is a German policy not to use the last name of any person involved in legal matters.

Newscaster: "Today, Santa C. was arrested on child pr0n charges in Berlin. Santa C. claims to be innocent of the crimes."

That's just the way they do things here. It seems to apply to certain other situations as well but I haven't been able to find the particulars.

Perhaps it has something to do with the public information laws or some such nonsense but I see it every night on the 6pm broadcast.

Re:It's a basic policy not anything evil!

[ami-in-hamburg]

Ok, I looked this up in the German laws. I could only find it in German so I won't bother with a link.

Apparently, there has always been an absolute right of a person to protect their honor, reputation, and likeness. However, in 1954 it was written into German law. "Persönlichkeit Rechte" "Personal Rights"

The laws are extremely long and complicated but I was able to find a summary at www.anwalt.de. Anwalt is German for attorney. It would seem that the first initial of the last name is used in order to protect the identity of persons in many situations.

In this case, a legal matter, it's used to protect the person directly involved in the case so that they can't be targeted by vigilantes or snuffing a witness. It can also be admitted to protect the identity of the family members as well.

I have also seen this applied to people who have already been convicted so I'm not sure what all the details are concerning when a full last name may or may not be used in public media. I have seen TV reports where the person was sentenced and the news reported the sentencing using only the initial.

Re:Germany.

[Doener]

BTW: An IMHO good article abaout Free Speech in Germany from the stern magazine in German language you can find here: http://www.stern.de/politik/ausland/:Deutsche-Tabu s-Engholm-Badewanne/555064.html Babelfish: http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/trurl_pag econtent?lp=de_en&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.stern.de%2F politik%2Fausland%2F%3ADeutsche-Tabus-Engholm-Bade wanne%2F555064.html

Instead of a translation:

[greppling]

Some facts from the article not mentioned in the summary:

This decision isn't final yet, the parents will most likely appeal.

The crucial argument in the court's decision seems to have been that the personal rights of the parents were not violated, since they could not be identified by their last name. This is actually disputable, their name is pretty unique in Germany. (A search in the phone directory didn't turn up anyone with the name.)

The court did not consider the mentioning of the name a violation of Tron's own personal rights.

("Personal rights" is my translation by me of "Persoenlichkeitsrechte", which is technical term in German law speak. Maybe "Right to personal privacy" would be a better translation.)

Re:Instead of a translation:

[Doener]

In Germany there is not only a strong "Persönlichkeitsrecht" (personal rights) but also a volunteer commitment of the big newspapers/magazines/tv stations. It is the so called "Pressekodex" of the German "Presserat" and it's much severer than the law.

Re:Now would be a good time...

[Doener]

Backround to this: The parants own a travel agency in Berlin and think customers will absence if they know about the son's death because they don't know how to react to this in front of his parents.

Re:I don't Understand German

[Calvin Deck]

Here you are

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,15 18,396307,00.html

The link was on the english article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tron_(hacker) under external links.