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German Wikileaks Suspension Not Related To Police Raid

Posted by Soulskill on from the well-that's-much-less-outrageous dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Contrary to what we discussed four days ago, Germany's registration authority, DeNIC, did not suspend access to wikileaks.de. After some investigation, Heise found out that the ISP ended the contract (in German, Babelfish translation) with Theodor Reppe back in December 2008, with the mandatory three-month notice giving him enough time to move wikileaks.de elsewhere — which he did not do. At the end of March, the domain wikileaks.de was released back to DeNIC."

22 of 70 comments (clear)

  1. Journalism by QuantumG · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is it, at its finest.

    --
    How we know is more important than what we know.
  2. Hanlon's Razor .... by shri · · Score: 4, Informative

    Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. seems appropriate here.

    1. Re:Hanlon's Razor .... by joocemann · · Score: 4, Funny

      Hanlon's Razor sounds like it should be renamed to "The GWB Principle"

    2. Re:Hanlon's Razor .... by twostix · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Hanlon's Razor sounds like it should be renamed to "The GWB Principle"

      Heading up an administration that achieved every goal that the top level members of had publicly advocated for over and over for a decade is incompetence?

      Reopened war and regime change in Iraq? Check.
      Hobbling the US federal government by drowning it in debt? Check.
      Funneling astronomical amounts of public cash into their personal associates Corporations and by extension their own bank accounts? Check.
      And to top it off, in the last months of presidency, presiding over the greatest plundering of a treasury in the history of the world...Check.

      Yes, what a bunch of incompetents, incompetently sitting on their mountains of cash, untouchable by any law after having changed the course of history as they saw fit. Exactly as they said in the 1990s that they were going to do once they got back into power.

      I wish I was that incompetent.

    3. Re:Hanlon's Razor .... by cjfs · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Hanlon's Razor sounds like it should be renamed to "The GWB Principle"

      Or is it more 'Any sufficiently advanced malice is indistinguishable from incompetence.'

    4. Re:Hanlon's Razor .... by gnasher719 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity...

      In this case: Don't attribute to someone else's malice that which can be adequately explained by your own stupidity.

    5. Re:Hanlon's Razor .... by ijakings · · Score: 2, Informative

      Accidentally moderated redundant as apposed to insightful, posting to clear.

    6. Re:Hanlon's Razor .... by PitaBred · · Score: 2, Informative

      I think you were looking for "opposed", as in "going against". "Appose" is a word that's virtually a synonym for "juxtapose", as in things occupying the same space.

      --
      My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
  3. Re:not so amusing by interkin3tic · · Score: 3, Funny

    I wouldn't read an e-mail that was in German either.

  4. Ah, those German emails... by zooblethorpe · · Score: 4, Funny

    I wouldn't read an e-mail that was in German either.

    Warum nicht?

    Tschüß,

    --
    "What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
    "A four-foot prune."
    1. Re:Ah, those German emails... by Daimanta · · Score: 2, Funny

      `Warum nicht?

      Tschüß,`

      No thanks, I dont smoke.

      --
      Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
    2. Re:Ah, those German emails... by zooblethorpe · · Score: 3, Funny

      My hovercraft is full of eels.

      Szervusz,

      --
      "What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
      "A four-foot prune."
  5. Or... by joocemann · · Score: 3, Funny

    .... that's exactly what *they* want us to think!

  6. YES IT WAS by James+Hardine · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The dispute with the registrar stems over a series of exposes last year by WikiLeaks on the BND--Germany's equiv of the CIA. Why the registrar picked this moment to "finalize" the dispute, no-one knows, but it's not hard to guess...

  7. BND involved? by Krupuk · · Score: 5, Interesting

    On November 5th and December 8th, Wikileaks leaked some BND information. On Devember 8th, the ISP ended the contract. Coincidence? I think not.

    1. Re:BND involved? by jamesh · · Score: 4, Funny

      On Devember 8th

      I pine for the balmy days of Devember. Instead we have to put up with this lousy Smarch weather...

  8. Update: Why the contract was terminated by tmk · · Score: 5, Informative

    Wikileaks has published a new press release about the alleged censorship. After I read the details I fully understand why the contract had been terminated.

    In December Reppe tried to transfer bnd.de - the domain of the federal intelligence agency Bundesnachrichtendienst - to his account. To do that he had to assure that he was the rightful owner of bnd.de. The provider stopped the transition and terminated the contract with Reppe with 3 months notice.

    1. Re:Update: Why the contract was terminated by arkhan_jg · · Score: 5, Informative

      He then arranged with the hosting company in January to keep the account open until the end of his existing pre-paid term - an agreement that was then broken with no warning when they killed his account and dumped all his domains back to deNIC as originally threatened, and prevented him from moving them to another registrar.

      --
      Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
    2. Re:Update: Why the contract was terminated by tmk · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I guess he just misinterpreted the phone conversation. It wouldn't make much sense to put the termination in writing and say something else. It makes much sense that the hosting company assured him that he had three months time to transfer his domains.

    3. Re:Update: Why the contract was terminated by kju · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You don't need details to transfer a .de-Domain. Earlier this year a system which uses a "Authinfo-Code" for Transfers was introduced, but it is still possible to transfer a .de-Domain without using a Authinfo-Code. The new provider will just request a transfer from the DeNIC member it is using (if the new provider isn't itself a DeNIC member) which will then send it to the DeNIC. The DeNIC in turn will send the request to the "old" DeNIC-Member, which in turn will send it to the Provider (if not the same as the DeNIC-Member) which shall send it to the customer. There is then a deadline of a few days in which the Transfer can be ACKed or NACKed. So the owner of wikileaks.de had plenty of time to start a transfer and was not dependent on any "details" from his prior provider.

      I believe the story stinks. It looks a lot like some guy tried to fuck with the system by attempting to transfer bnd.de, got burned and then was too disorganized to get his stuff transfered to another ISP in time. All the press releases now read a lot like lame excuses, especially given the fact that we were told quite a different story by the owner of wikileaks.de in the first place. After DeNIC and his old ISP stood up, we now get new excuses why it wasn't his fault. I've dealt with webhosting and customers myself a lot and i know this kind of customer. I put quite a few domains into "transit" because of customers who simply did not transfered there domain out despite of numerous requests. Some customers won't get their ass up before the domain is in transit and stops to be working.

  9. Just a typical dispute.... by mseeger · · Score: 3, Informative

    Hi,

    as far as i can see, even Wikileaks doesn't pretend any longer, that the goverment disabled the domain or made the registry do it.

    The chain of events was (shortened) the following: Wikileaks published some documents about the BND (german version of the NSA [sort of]). Based on those documents was a discussion, wether the BND did register his domain (bnd.de) correctly. To make a show, the owner of wikileaks.de tried to transfer bnd.de to himself. His service provider got (IMHO not unreasonably) pissed and terminated all contracts. This all happened in december 2008.

    End of march 2009 the provider transfered the domains back to the registry since no transfer was initiated from the customer. There is a dispute between the provider and his customer (owner of wikileaks.de) wether the transfer was too early. Most communication between the provider and the owner of wikileaks.de seems to be by phone, so there is little paper trail.

    Sory guys, but no sinister conspiracy here :-).

    CU, Martin

  10. Thought Google would be pleased... by CyberPhart · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm a bit surprised at Google's response. I would have thought that they'd jump at the chance to rat out foreign citizens to their government. They were SO efficient at doing that when the Chinese thugs were hunting down those pesky dissidents.