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German Killers Sue Wikipedia To Remove Their Names
Jason Levine writes "Wolfgang Werlé and Manfred Lauber killed a German actor in 1990. Now that they are out of prison, German law states that they can't be referred to by name in relation to the killings. Therefore, they have sued to get Wikipedia to remove their names from the Wikipedia article about the killings. The German edition of Wikipedia has already complied, but the English edition is citing US freedom of speech and a lack of presence in Germany as reasons why they don't need to remove the name. In a bit of irony, their lawyer e-mailed the NY Times: 'In the spirit of this discussion, I trust that you will not mention my clients' names in your article.'"
That these guys killed someone and were convicted of it is a recorded, historical fact. No allegations, simple fact.
Are we not allowed to state simple facts now?
I don't care what their names are. What are they doing out of prison?
Most of the stuff on
Are you trolling or just brainwashed? This is why the Internet (which is not under US control at the moment) should not be under any single country's control. If it were under US control, you could watch the gambling sites and anything else politically expedient disappear.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Oh REALLY?
Explain the PATRIOT act to me?
While the American constitution undeniably is what you say it is, the past 20 years has not been kind to America!
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Wouldn't it be much more effective if the internet was not under the control of any one country? If instead it was a network of computers spread throughout the entire world....oh wait. Nevermind.
I'm sure a lot of people are going to come out against the position of Germany's culture on this, citing freedom of speech. Freedom of speech, in the United States at least, is not given to citizens so that they can harm other people's reputations or hold them accountable for their actions. It is there so that actions by the government can be openly criticized and constructive dialog be established between (and amongst) citizens and the government, without fear of reprisal. It is there for the betterment of everyone. If there is no benefit to society, no protection is granted.
These people have served their sentences. They have been punished according to the law of their land, and then released. In this country, a person's criminal record haunts them for life -- denying them jobs, restricting their freedoms, and in some cases leading to a greatly diminished quality of life such that they are forced into criminal enterprise in order to meet basic needs. But in Germany, these laws are crafted so that people can have a chance at a normal life again--A chance at redemption. It is recognized that people make mistakes, but these mistakes shouldn't haunt them for the rest of their lives. The government has stepped in to ensure that any adult citizen that has their freedom also has the same chances as the next.
As far as the internet -- do we really want it to be a tool that enables a person's past mistakes to haunt them forever? That any personal information, once released into it, somehow becomes public property? Those naked photos your boyfriend took of you when you thought you'd be with him forever -- are those public property once he breaks up with you and posts them online? How about the records of your divorce, or the reasons why you were fired? What about that one night when your best friend tried to walk out of the bar drunk, and you stole the car keys and the two of you got into a big fight and the police were called? You want the whole world to know about these things? Or--was it just a mistake and once amends have been made then that's the end of it?
Just because the information is out there doesn't mean it should be. Information doesn't have rights -- people do.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Shouldn't you respect a countries laws weather you agree with them or not,
So if a law against something exists, anywhere on the planet, everyone should follow it? I'm pretty sure you don't want the world to adhere to Saudi Arabian, Singaporean, or North Korean laws. And I'm pretty sure they wouldn't want to adhere to Western laws.
No.
I elected my government to support and protect MY interests, not other countries' citizens' interests.
I don't care what their names are. What are they doing out of prison?
They did the crime, they served their time. What's so hard to understand about that?
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Your post is a good example of why that German law was passed in the first place.
So basically in Germany, if I really really dislike someone, I can say "hmmm for a mere 20 years of my life I can take X amount of years of theirs, after giving them a gruesome and painful death". Seems like stupid logic to people who have a lot to live for, but for people that don't... I'm sure these two are giving each other high fives and declaring themselves the winner.
And this isn't the difference between "murder" and "accidental killing" here, they murdered this guy, and it was a hate crime. The victim was a gay actor. They then mutilated his body.
If they did their time they'd be buried in a state-owned plot with a small placard to mark the spot and this whole discussion would be nonexistent.
Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
You know, I admit I am biased. I don't like murderers like Wolfgang Werlé and Manfred Lauber, because their victims have no recourse, ever again. And while I do believe that some of them can change and not be a threat to other people again, that doesn't mean that the past didn't happen. Forgiveness yes, whitewash the past, fuck no!
Murderers should very well learn to live with the consequences of their actions, because their actions have consequences that can never be rectified.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Or maybe you and GPP just aren't smart enough to see the irony.
The American lawyer dealing with this is named Godwin. Surely you get the irony in that, if nothing else.
"Ironic" was a stupid song, but the stupidity of the reaction to it is far greater. Every use of the word "ironic" is now a red flag for every would-be pedant who isn't nearly as smart as he thinks he is.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Since when is it your job to tell Germany how to apply its laws? Your moral disagreement is irrelevant to the discussion. They were tried under German law, served their time in Germany, and are now allowed to continue their lives. If you think that is wrong, move to Germany and change the laws, but don't advocate just ignoring the laws.
While I recognize the goal of precedent -- to provide consistency in legal decisions -- I have to envy the Germans on this one. The major side-effect of precedent in American law is that it creates such a huge body of law, often piling ambiguity on top of ambiguity, that the general public cannot understand the law. At the very least, I wish that case law that added to (or invalidated) existing statutory law forced the law back to the legislature for clarification and correction.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
The _murderer's_ rights aren't violated by people knowing what they did. They should have been executed anyways. But irrelevant of that, non-aggressive people also have the right of freedom of association. I for one choose not to associate with people I consider dangerous.
In a free society, criminals would owe restitution to their victims, and victims would be also entitled to request retribution against the criminal. Then people at large could make their own associative or dis-associative decisions regarding the criminal.
One thing is clear, however. It doesn't violate anyone's rights for other people to know information about them that they've made publicly available through their actions.
Note that I'm not saying I have, per se, the right to know information about other people. That would imply positive obligations on the part of other people. However, no-one has the right to stop the various people at Wikipedia from recording and maintaining an account of history. That is their private property right.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
A young man is walking through a small village one day and decides to stop by a bar and have a beer. He walks into a bar, and sees a grizzled old man, crying into his beer. Curious, the young man sits down and says, "Hey old timer, why the long face?"
The old man looks at him and points out the window, "See that dock out there? I built that dock with my own two hands, plank by plank, nail by nail, but do they call me McGregor the dockbuilder? No, no."
The old man continued, "And see that ship out there? I've been fishing these waters for my village for 35 years! But do they call me McGregor the fisherman? No, no."
The old man continued, "And see all the crops in the farms out there? I planted and have been farming those crops for my village for nearly 45 years! But do they call me McGregor the farmer? No, no."
The old man starts to cry again, "But you fuck one goat..."
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
If you think that is wrong, move to Germany and change the laws, but don't advocate just ignoring the laws.
Can we apply that same rule to this case, which would keep the killers name in the wikipedia article?
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Studies have shown that life in prison and the death penalty have a 0% recidivism rate. /sarcasm
That said, I do agree that one purpose of the prison system should be reform. However, hiding what someone has done in the past doesn't necessarily help the people they are around or to reform them. In fact, hiding somones criminal past can make it easier for them to comit crimes again. Say, a convicted imbezzler working with large amounts of cash? The question between balancing the protection of the public vs. the convict continuing their life is an interesting balancing act. I think Germany has gone a bit too far towards the convict in this law.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Enough with the goddamn excuse culture. You want respect, you earn respect. You want a second chance, then PROVE you deserve it first.
These guys killed someone and now they want the world to pretend it has never happened. Does NOT happen.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
This is fascinating -- when the United States [frequently] seeks to have its laws apply beyond its borders [extraterritoriality], everyone particularly the EU objects reflexively: "How dare they? We're a separate society."
Now some in the EU think its laws should apply to the US. And not just about this, also other issues. Why should anyone in the US, and particularly elements of the [deservedly] much-abused US government give a rats @$$ for such blatant hypocrisy? Surely no-one denies the US is a distinct society!
If they did their time they'd be buried in a state-owned plot with a small placard to mark the spot and this whole discussion would be nonexistent.
Funny how some people, for all their preaching, have have a blind spot on the most essential human right of all.
Nice attempt to troll but that bit is getting old, try to give it a little freshness by perhaps giving examples (no matter how marginal and irrelevant) of how US states are more independent from the federal government than EU member states are from the EU.
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
The EU countries, unlike some other countries, are civilized ones and here we don't execute our citizens.
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
People need to think deeper than just the inherited customs and traditions they were born into. Otherwise, we do not have much hope of progressing as a species. (No, I don't have a positive outlook on our future... and NO, we have not progressed in tens of thousands of years-- take a modern baby and raise them in a "primitive" time and they'd come out no different; no less violent, no less potentially intelligent.)
Prison is a matter of necessity in SOME cases-- its purpose is to prevent the anti-social members of society from breaking the rules of society. Even primitive pack animals will expel (or kill) a member who is too damaging to the group structure.
Prison as a punishment is NOT necessary. Unfortunately, social science has not gotten far enough to undo popular cultural BELIEFS... yet. Christian based religions are culturally biased against their own teachings. So one can't expect much change anytime soon.
Wiping history of the names of criminals is quite foolish for academic and government needs; however, it does make sense to do so for the general populace. People are unfair, judgmental, and quite quite irrational so for a "cured" criminal or "payed up" criminal the knowledge continues to plague them for probably the rest of their lives. A good argument can be made for keeping the general public unaware and having some compassion for the criminal (something americans do not understand; I've likely lost most of them already.)
Sure, one could say that a pervert needs to be known... but if they are treated as the mental cases that they are; they will NOT get out of the system until they are actually treated - not some meaningless time period in a cage! Its SICK how we use terms like corrections and reformed in a culture that doesn't believe in it. We make it economic-- you PAY your debt to society with time and/or money; like it was a trade. It is not.
Errors always happen; its human run. If you want to start harming former criminals simply for the sake of potential future crimes you are entering a line of reasoning that easily can be extended into lots of unpleasant areas (and already is.) The reason we have free speech that is near absolute is because splitting hairs always ends up being abused. Therefore, the right to be reformed (ignoring that the public doesn't believe in reform - "can't teach an old dog new tricks") comes into conflict with the right to free speech. Something for some judges to weigh in on time to time...
I have no direct experience with the system, I know people who have: Childish behavior labeled as adult; mental cases labeled as criminal; untreated pedophiles let free or not even convicted...to repeat it! (as an illness, its much easier to be diagnosed than it is to be convicted. false positives are also not as harmful...)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
People like you tarnish the global reputation of the country we share, and policies like the ones you advocate erode our human dignity. We already punish crimes too severely. We lock up more than one out of every hundred people. That's savage. There aren't anywhere near that number of dangerous people: no culture is that twisted.
Our attitude toward crime is one of punishment, punishment, and more punishment.
What you'd get out of our losing the keys isn't a rational sense of safety, but rather the visceral satisfaction of seeing people punished, of the great balance sheet in the sky being corrected. If people like you had your way, we'd feed criminals to lions in Giants Stadium, then impale their bodies on the flagpoles outside the United Nations. You'd have us openly embrace exploiting of criminals for economic gain and sadistic pleasure, and thereby turn us into monsters. We're not so far away now, after all: we think of repeated rape as a normal part of a prison sentence, after all, and joke about it.
Well, I refuse to be part of that.
We don't need harsher sentences. Two-decade sentences are just as effective as longer ones. Either way, a large chunk of an offender's life is wasted, and that waste is enough disincentive. While there are people that have compulsions, and that need to be separated from society, you need a different arrangement. But there are vanishingly few of these people, and prison isn't the right place for them: these irredeemable people need psychiatric help. Even among murders, the vast majority don't belong to this category.
As for your crime wave: there was a massive crime wave 1920-1939. What your 1970s crime wave and that one had in common is that both happened when economic conditions really went sour for a lot of people. The 1920s saw wealth increase, yes, but wealth disparity between the rich and poor also skyrocketed. Then the 1930s happened. In the 1970s, we had stagflation, and then for the past thirty years, we've pursued policies that have greatly increased the gap between rich and poor. Is it any wonder crime is on the rise?
You know, it's really fucking sad when a man has so little hope, so few prospects, and so little education that he thinks it's a good idea to turn to mugging, robbery, and gangs as a way of life, of providing for himself, and of giving us life meaning. Happy people who have a chance of raising a family and growing old don't do those things. Desperate people do. And while individuals might fail society, it's even more true that society has failed these individuals.
And all that doesn't even take into account the people locked up for the so-called "crime" is enjoying certain recreational drugs. See, when you take a perfectly ordinary person and stick him in prison, you do two things. First, you expose him to the dregs of society. More seriously, you make him a pariah who, when released, goes on to enter crime culture because he's been excluded from respectable society. When you put harmless people in jail, you create harmful crime.
But not for you. On the planet you live on, all criminals are irredeemably wicked, and all crime is the result of personal flaws. You'd have us suppose against all reason that anyone who commits a crime is a worthless sub-human who deserves to be locked up forever.
What if you were reduced to such desperate straits that you felt crime was your only option? What if you snapped one day and acted on one of the illegal scenarios we all briefly entertain? Would you judge yourself to be a sub-human, beyond retribution and worthy of the harshest treatment? Or would you judge yourself to have made a mistake, one that you might rectify later? No? Well, everyone is just like you.
Since when is it your job to tell Germany how to apply its laws?
Since when is it Germany's job to tell Wikipedia how to censor its content?
No, blatantly misrepresenting the concept of freedom of speech in the US, arguing for censorship of the information in the US on the basis of German laws, and making an extremely dishonest comparison between the release of private information like pictures of yourself naked and public information like that you fucking murdered someone is flamebait. The only thing sad here is that you think you actually have a proper argument.
That story/joke sums it up quite well: When you do things right, no one remembers... do things wrong, no one forgets.
Most people are not enlightened enough to make the distinction between "did a bad thing" and "is a bad person", and give em a chance to get on with their lives. Sturgeon's Law applies to the human race, also.
I think we know how this one's going to turn out for our convicted murderers, [redacted] and [redacted].
Rude would be if I called you ein verdammter Idiot, it could be seen as either justice or cruelty but never rudeness I think. Personally, I think there are people that are beyond redemption and should be given life without the possibility for release, but I'm against the death penalty on the principle that courts are fallible. We know there has been cases where people convicted to death later have turned out to be innocent, of course nothing can really give them back the 20 years in jail either but then you can at least do something to correct your mistakes.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Their victims ARE dead, not were dead or have been dead.
********************
I object to Intellect without Discipline.
The United States is a major part of the civilized world, and DOES support capital punishment, hence your comment is obviously incorrect. Your argument is wrapped around redefining words so you can pretend you're correct.
Actually, no. They story shows the finality of the action. If you murder, you will always be a murderer because there is no way to undo it. If you build a dock, it does not necessarily mean you are a dockbuilder. I've done some plumbing and in no way am I a plumber, and I was nowhere near that goat.
If you happen to commit one murder, and the penalty is the same as for 100 murders, you would be correct in finding it logically desirable to kill every potential witness and their family for good measure, instead of stopping at one victim.
Since when is it Germany's job to tell the US how to apply the First Amendment?
Since when does a german lawyer and his german clients represent the nation of Germany. The lawyer would be ignoring his duties in protecting his clients if he didn't petition US wikipedia and news agencies to not discuss his clients. He's not going to win this fight because of the first amendment but he has to try.
"Educate the mind but never at the expense of the soul."~Blessed Basil Moreau
Germany is doing nothing of the sort. One German lawyer is.
404: sig not found.
Just look at what's censored from American TV! Spike TV, "the network for men", can't even broadcast "God damn it" or "asshole", as if their UFC audience would be offended!
Any claim that Americans are the worldwide guardians of free speech is an epic fail.
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
LOL...how can you ever know that?
I'd rather trust the opinion of the judge (and possibly the jury) who gave them 19 years, and not life sentence, over that of a crazy mob with pitchforks.
Unfortunately, the mob is still there, which is why laws like this one have some purpose.