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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."

17 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.

  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 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.

  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