Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
You just referenced their names in relation to the killings.
So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
That they should sue Slashdot now, too!
How many times must slashdotters tell these people how the World works ?
--
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?
It's the same story all over again. Once the information is out, there's no way to lock it down again, at least, not without severely affecting our modern means of conveying information, and even that seems unthinkable. Essentially, it's impossible, no matter how many laws you make. Iranian dissenters can find proxies over the internet, samizdat dissemination in Soviet Russia; it's everywhere. The technology for instant everpresent information can't be unlearned. We've spent many centuries perfecting it since Gutenberg's printing press.
Our society would do well to simply accept the present state of instant and everpresent information instead of trying to suppress it.
And THIS is why the Internet needs to remain under United States control. Out imperfections notwithstanding, the United States is one of the only countries that can be trusted to understand what Freedom of Speech means. (Not that there aren't certain elements that try and water it down, but at least it's codified at the strongest level of law).
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Just so that we don't forget the names of Wolfgang Werlé & Manfred Lauber, convicted killers. I would like to mention that the names of the killers are Wolfgang Werlé & Manfred Lauber. If they, Wolfgang Werlé & Manfred Lauber, don't like it they (Wolfgang Werlé & Manfred Lauber ) can sue me.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
*whether
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
Less Hasselhoff, more Streisand.
1. make an article about each of them.
-do not mention the murders
-mention everything else about their life
-like the fact that they sued wikipedia
-mention the fact that you cant talk about what they did thanks to german law
-link to the german law involved
2. make an article about the murders.
-mention that the killers got out of prison
-mention what year they got out
-mention everything about them except their names
-you could even make up fake names, like 'Famous Actor Case Convict X' and 'Famous Actor Case Convict Y',
in other words.... you push that law right up to the point where it is about to break. but you dont beak it. smart readers can fill in the blanks, and most readers ae smart
Wolfgang Werlé and Manfred Lauber are killers. Nothing can whitewash that.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
They did get out of prison, but both where sentenced to life, so lets wait until they have completed there sentence, and then remove there names from Wikipedia. (but only if they ask nicely).
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
It states:
The question of excising names from archives has not yet been resolved by the German courts, he said.
There is no such concept as precedence in the German law. Every judge and every court is free to decide based solely on the current law and the merits of the case. There is something called prevailing opinion, but this is not obligatory, it is rather used as a shortcut by judges to reach a decision.
Only decisions by the highest courts (BVG = Federal Constitutional Court and BGH = Federal Court of Justice) are binding.
Do you really believe that? It's easy for the United States to be all indignant when it comes to German killers. But what do you think will happen when, say, the RIAA/MPAA lobbies to have domain names such as thepiratebay.org preemptively revoked?
Germany need to have a say in how DNS is run, as does the United States, England, France, Russia, China, and all the other nations of the world. Does Germany want x blocked or removed? Too damn bad, Swaziland vetoed them. Does the U.S. want that pesky torrent tracker site blown away? Too damn bad, Antigua says it stays. Everybody wins.
Having one nation in control of who gets to have a voice sucks, no matter which nation it is or how much they profess to love freedom of speech (while simultaneously making it harder and harder to enjoy that "freedom").
Are you kidding? It's just as ironic as rain on your wedding day, a no smoking sign on your cigarette break, or 10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife.* * that is to say, not ironic in the least
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No, Slashdot references that "James Levine" references that those people killed a German actor.....
In the spirit of this discussion, I trust that you will not mention my clients' names in your article.
maybe time to register:
wolfgangwerleandmanfredlaubermurderedayoungactorin1990.com
Curious if you could register the .de counterpart.
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
... and what are you going to do if I don't??? Oh wait ... never mind.
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.
Those who fail to reckon with the Streisand effect are doomed to invoke it.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I found the line:
In the spirit of this discussion, I trust that you will not mention my clients' names in your article
reminiscent of the "of course, you'll have the decency not to mention this to anyone..." line in Blazing Saddles. Which, of course, had Germans as well. And Lilli von Schtup; which is what just happened to his clients.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Wikipedia should ban people for being murderers like Something Awful does
http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Andrew_Allred#Public_Reactions
Also I just permabanned this guy because he murdered two people: http://forums.somethingawful.com/member.php?s=&action=getinfo&userid=84611
Now the question I have here is that, in the rules, it doesn't explicitly state you will be permabanned or punished in any way if you murder people. Does this make the user terms of conditions unclear?
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
I propose we rename the Streisand effect after them.
Your post is a good example of why that German law was passed in the first place.
It's in the title, and it will now likely be in the title of every reply. I think it's interesting that a nation with Germany's history would still think it's a good idea to control its citizens in such a way.
Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
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.
We(as country) have killed 60 million people in WW2. Enough is enough.
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.
Their women and political dissidents most likely would like to see Western laws in place... just sayin'
Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
Fair enough. Barring execution they should spend the rest of their lives in prison.
As a long time goon, to be fair, you can be banned for quite a few things that aren't specifically against the rules.
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Maybe nobody feels "sorry" for child molesters, but I've thought for years it was at least stupid for the U.S. to make their current addresses public be decree. Newspapers have reported on many who fail to maintain addresses on record because nobody will rent to them and they end up wandering homeless from town to town and state to state. Sort of defeats the purpose. But Germany prohibiting the media from besmirching the good name of out-of-prison murderers? Can't we find a happy middle ground here?
American law has always displayed cowardice in declaring where jurisdiction exists. Sometimes it is which agency is in control. Sometimes it is in whether city,county,state or federal laws should be in play. And now with all kinds of treaties and formal arrangements with other nations it is almost overwhelming in nature.
A year or so back it was France suing Ebay over the sale of Nazi relics. Now we have Germany fussing about revealing the names of murderers.
And you don't even want to start about porn laws and what one may have on computer in different states within the US.
It's about time for the public to get involved. No nation should have the slightest control over anything published in America and no town, city or state should ever be allowed to declare any publication illegal if it is legal anywhere in the industrialized world.
"German Killers Sue Wikipedia To Remove Their Names, Or Else..."
I hereby demand that the names of all involved countries be removed from the WWII wikipedia article!
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
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!
Shouldn't you respect a countries laws weather you agree with them or not
No.
But if you want to make that argument, then if I got convicted of underage drinking at 19 in the US, by your logic, I could make the argue to the court I was respecting OTHER countries laws (specifically Canada or Mexico).
Yeah, that would fly far.
The slashdot article says, "German law states that they can't be referred to by name in relation to the killings."
The New York Times article says, "German courts allow the suppression of a criminal’s name in news accounts once he has paid his debt to society, noted Alexander H. Stopp, the lawyer for the two men, who are now out of prison." Note: it says "in news accounts"!
Publishing the names "in news accounts" is different from publishing the names in history articles or other.
But I don't know the laws involved.
Stephan
http://stephan.sugarmotor.org
You screwed your wife. Simple fact. Does everybody have to know about it?
These guys committed a crime. They paid for it. Now they should be able to move on with their lives. Some criminals in the US pay for crimes in a way that they never can get a decent job again. This is not the idea in Germany. Also it is very very difficult in Germany to change your name, unlike in the US.
Yes, I think they either have a right to not have mentioned their full name or
at least get a new name to start over. Such an application for a name change would likely be rejected.
But if you went to Mexico and broke their laws, you should be extradited and punished according to their justice system
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
And what's even more ironic is that Germany, trying so hard to convince everybody that they aren't big bad Nazis, are sliding down the road towards authoritarianism again, getting faster every day...
A good education is a bit like a STD - it makes you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and gives you a desire to spread it.
My turn: Why not mention their names but not the crime?
These gentlemen were declared perpetrators of a crime a few years ago, hence their sentence for a crime which shall be unspecified, yet the crime DID decrease the population by one, if that detail interests you.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Oh great, now they'll sue Slashdot also, and then Slashdot will have no money to fix the damned CSS problems and prevent dupes.
Table-ized A.I.
There could be one serious advantage of everyone's personal dirt being available at all times. Eventually people would have to stop pretending to be so perfect. People make mistakes, and currently as that isn't currently ok with society, everyone spends most of their lives trying to hide those mistakes from everyone else.
I think that's a larger detriment to us personally and to society as a whole than not being able to hide those things. If all of our dirt was public knowledge, we probably would be a bit more understanding.
The television will not be revolutionized.
The American lawyer dealing with this is named Godwin. Surely you get the irony in that, if nothing else.
The American lawyer dealing with this is, in fact, the same Mike Godwin who created Godwin's law.
rage, rage against the dying of the light
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!
No I think the idea here is that if you have done the time in jail then you should have the right to a normal life. This is the premise of our entire justice system. I can completely understand that.
I can understand that they want a relatively normal life. Serving time in prison perhaps covers part of their "debt to society" (or punishment or rehabilitation or whatever you choose to call it). Making their victim whole again is the other part. In a property-related crime, some financial restitution is possible, but not entirely in cases of nonlethal injury caused by deliberate violent assault. Adequate restitution to the victim is not at all possible in cases of murder.
So, do they deserve their crime to be swept away and forgotten, granting them a normal life? Answer this instead: is their victim alive again? Both questions get the same answer, in my opinion.
Ask yourself if you were introduced to a person and you found out that they were murderers would you think of them the same way? Probably not and that is the problem and why the German law exists.
It is not a problem at all. The German law is sensible for many classes of crime (larceny, drunk driving, fraud, bigamy, and so forth). It would arguably make sense for cases of accidental manslaughter in which the perpetrator's intent was not violent. It is utterly repugnant when applied to a crime of deliberate violence which resulted in death, mutilation, or permanent disabling of a victim.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
It's a play on a meme concerning Glenn Beck. Here is some back story to it if you're really interested. The most recent episode of South Park (Which you can legally stream online here if you're interested.) does a spoof of is as well.
that isn't something you want to come to light later on when said person goes on an office rampage.
That is exactly WHY German law prevents the public availability of the fact that they murdered someone. What you are proposing is punishing them for their entire lives, even if they are better people now and wouldn't do the crime again.
Having served their sentence, they should be given a second chance to prove their integrity, and their value to society, by holding a decent job and earning a decent living. If they are ready to turn over a new leaf, attitudes like yours will prevent them from ever doing so.
What I am really saying is...you will FORCE them back into a life of crime by DEPRIVING them of the chance to earn a living legally, and you will do this out of fear of who they used to be (rather than who they have become). German law is trying to protect them from people like you.
Yes, I know they killed someone. But they also served their sentence and now they should be given a second chance, whether YOU want to give them one or not.
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
I was thinking along the same lines. Not that I'm trying to evoke Godwin's Law, but would it be illegal to refer to Hitler by name in relation to the murder of millions of people? How about Himmler, Goebbels, or the rest of that lot?
Seems to me that it would be much easier and cheaper for the courts to grant them a new name and new identity at the time of their release.
This would prevent the need for altering historical facts while simultaneously allowing the courts to control the connection between their former criminal past and their new reformed future.
Not at all. The law being discussed exists to protect the identity of Germany's many ex-Nazis. The Holocaust denial law seeks to prevent a repeat of their mistakes.
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Mussolini
Ah, even more irony!
Well, it makes sense when you think about it, that a Usenet celebrity would end up working for Wikipedia.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Okay, now THAT is ironic.
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I'm sure a lot of people will agree with what you say, but that doesn't necessarily make it right. If we knew the solution for crime, crime wouldn't exist. What you are presenting are philosophical arguments mostly, without any objective studies showing they are effective.
Many people would say that a murder is never "paid up", so the criminal should never be forgotten. After all, if he did commit a murder once, what is to guarantee he will never do so again? Who can say the criminal is ever "cured"?
There's nothing irrational or unfair about people wanting protection from criminals. As long as no one can be sure that the criminal will not commit other crimes, and as long as recidivism among "cured" criminals is so high, we, the honest people, have the right to know who are the people most likely to commit crimes against us.
I don't see it that way, I don't worry about retribution, I don't think crimes like murders can ever be "paid", no matter what is done to the criminal. It's preventing further crimes I'm worried about.
Sure, jail isn't perfect, but it's an effective way to keep criminals isolated until they learn how stupid it is to be a criminal. You can argue that it's inhuman, but if someone must suffer, let the criminals suffer, not the innocent who are outside.
If Wolfgang Werlé and Manfred Lauber killed a German actor in 1990, and the court system involves sees fit to let them out of prison now, I can accept that. I think serving less than twenty years for a planned murder is too little, but I am not German. But because I am not German, I can also mention that Wolfgang Werlé and Manfred Lauber killed a German actor in 1990, all I want. Wolfgang Werlé and Manfred Lauber killed a German actor in 1990. At least we are free to state solid facts in the US, like that Wolfgang Werlé and Manfred Lauber killed a German actor in 1990. Laws that prevent Germans from saying that Wolfgang Werlé and Manfred Lauber killed a German actor in 1990, and those that prevent many images related to the Holocaust and Nazism, make me wonder if Germany is turning a blind eye to history and may be condemned to repeat it.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
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 am the law."
Why is common sense called that if it's not common?
You do understand the difference between the actions of a few nutcases and the actions of a government, right?
Of course Germany's law don't apply in the USA but there are many agreements between developed countries. Eg WTO agreements
http://www.wto.org/english/docs_e/legal_e/final_e.htm
The IP one:
http://www.wto.org/english/docs_e/legal_e/27-trips.pdf
I wonder if some of these agreements oblige the USA to cooperate with Germany's laws. Having the entry on the English Wikipedia site is of course visible in Germany.
I think we know how this one's going to turn out for our convicted murderers, [redacted] and [redacted].
It's _because_ of Germany's history. In their desire to "move past" the horrors of the past, they're willing to let some people who committed truly horrific crimes go back to a private life after their jail terms, rather than continue reminding people of the events. This actually makes more sense considering the more recent history of East Germany and the Stasi than of World War I and World War II: there are a lot of people who were under incredible social and political and even economic pressure in East Germany who committed vile acts, and Germany as a whole wants to "get over it".
I personally think this is foolish: forgetting what cruelties ordinary people can do helps permit them to occur again. (Witness the American prison camps of the Japanese-Americans, and Guantanamo Bay's imprisonment of people without trial or notice to the world of their alleged crimes, and the continuing use of torture by the USA against "terrorists".)
That's because we don't think letting everyone do everything is the solution to all problems.
You know, we've become fairly peaceful after the war - I still remember the debates when we were pressured into joining the UN forces in the Kosovo and many people considered the idea of deploying German soldiers in foreign countries at least highly controversial. I think that might in part be due to the basic right to human dignity being the very first article in our Basic Law and the foundation on which this country was built.
And that's the very point here: Even though these people murdered someone they have an inviolable right to dignity. Naming them would violate their dignity in a fairly obvious manner. Thus they are not to be named.
You're free to disagree but that's what this country was built upon. We're past "an eye for an eye".
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Suck it, Germany!
Their victims ARE dead, not were dead or have been dead.
********************
I object to Intellect without Discipline.
Which is why I (a German, for the record) don't expect the lawsuit over the English article to go anywhere. Yes, they're overstepping their bounds by doing anything but asking. I do endorse their removal from the German Wikipedia but the English one is out of their reach.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
How something like about this:
#!/usr/bin/perl
($murderer1, $murderer2) = ('Wolfgang Werlé' , 'Manfred Lauber');
($guy1, $guy2) = (\$murderer1, \$murderer2);
print WIKIPEDIA "$guy1 and $guy2 killed a German actor in 1990";
As has been said to me before, "You do good, and nobody remembers. You do bad, and nobody forgets." It all comes down to the face that we are expected by civilized society to act... Well... civil. Being a good citizen and a decent person is to be expected, but anything outside of that norm puts a stamp on you for all eternity.
"Would you like to know more?..."
You're not paranoid if they really ARE out to get you...
If stabbing somebody's kidneys and throat, then smashing the head with a hammer doesn't make you a bad person, then what does?
You really think two individuals and their lawyer are acting on behalf of the German Government?
Or you can't see the difference between a government entity seeking to have its domestic laws applied to a foreign jurisdiction, and some random non-government representatives trying the same?
This has been modded insightful?
Not only did I piss myself laughing, I am now wondering just how many goat fuckers there really are out there!
Seriously though, this classic joke makes an eloquent point here that so many miss - passing judgement is how you expect others to judge you, if one does not know the full story, one cannot reasonably expect justice for themselves, as others cannot know your full story either. In a lifetime of many decisions, at different times the decisions may appear polarised, if you haven't been in this situation, you are either a saint or have haven't really learned much in the time you have had so far..
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.
It would only be fair if the person that they murdered gets to pretend that it never happened too.
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.
for a longtime. They have obviously never heard of the Streisand Effect.
(Does it really need a link here? Oh alright then. knock yourself out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect )
I live here and they have managed to reach out to me over the intraweb. I would never have thought of clicking the "english" button on that German wikipedia page either.
I know nothing-NOTHING!
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogan's_heroes
Posts, MyBio or Sig, may contain satire, sarcasm, bolded nouns be sardonic or even witty & be Church of SD
And here in the good old US of A if you are an 18 year old that gets caught having sex with his 16 year old girlfriend, not only will you do some prison time, but your name will appear on the publicly available sex offender website for the rest of your life.
"A witty saying proves nothing." -- Voltaire
Not to mention your quote is only tangentially relevant to the slightest bit of my post; you've basically ignored everything. Are you openly trolling now, or are you just incapable of forming a logical argument and thus have fallen back on throwing random quotes and hoping nobody notices you're not really making any sense?
We have a saying in the Jewish community specifically about German crimes committed in the past: "Never Forget."
Interesting point:
- Stalin did the same in Russia and depending on what study you trust he even got even more people killed, however he had more time
- Pol Pot in Cambodia (however he was not able to top it, because there were not enough Cambodian)
- French merchants delivered slaves from Africa to the USA, were approx 50% losses during the transportation process were acceptable (however I do not know any official number of dead person, because they didn't count so well without Holerith counting devices)
- The Spanish and Portuguese invaded South America and eradicated many different ethnics and cultures there. They also did not keep count. However it is surely an atrocity.
- Also the US tried to help the French recolonize Korea where they failed and they tried to establish an US controlled government in South Vietnam. The people didn't like this and resisted. And therefore the US poisoned their country (they did this mainly in South Vietnam and not in North Vietnam which is an interesting fact as well)
And we could continue this list of state or group driven murder throughout human history. The question is, what makes one more evil than the other? Is it the number of people or dead people divided by time. Or other ridiculous metrics which can help us to shift around blame or point fingers on each other.
Like: 70 years ago Germans murdered million in Europe and therefore their grandchildren are all murderers too. And they are all guilty.
Another option would be to start to learn from history, but as long any discussion on Germany includes Nazi Germany this will not happen.
What difference? The govt ususually are wor _wort_ nutcases!
If you consider a government somehow "greater" [justified, moral] than individuals, you have therby circumstribed and limited freedom to some "allowed" territory.
Is it authoritarianism if it's also what the people want? To me it usually implies that the government is doing things to control the people. But if the people are controlling the government and telling it to control a minority of the people, isn't it really the people who are being authoritarian and not the government?
Sometimes, but what if what I did wasn't illegal here? If I got away, I don't see why my country would decide I should be punished for doing something legal.
Then your an idiot because that has nothing to do with the point.
There is a difference between a German citizen trying to get something removed from a US based internet site and the German Government doing so.
It's got nothing to do with "for the people and by the people". It's got to do with the fact that free people are allowed to things that their government's disagree with. So holding a government accountable for such actions is retarded.
You have it completely backwards.
If a government does something, then yes you can hold the people (let's ignore dictatorships and so on) accountable - since they elected them.
But if an individual person does something, you can't hold the government accountable - you are allowed to dissent in a free country after all.
Or are you arguing for a system in which the people can only do and say things pre-approved by the government?
Wolfgang Werlé and Manfred Lauber killed a German actor in 1990. Wolfgang Werlé and Manfred Lauber killed a German actor. Wolfgang Werlé and Manfred Lauber
Here's a clue: look up the word irony or don't use the word.
Irony: made out of iron.
(According to the Great Man, T. Pratchett anyway.)
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
maybe time to register:
wolfgangwerleandmanfredlaubermurderedayoungactorin1990.com
Curious if you could register the .de counterpart.
Can you imagine how long that would be in German?
INCONCEIVABLE! (Yes, that word does mean what I think it means.)
Ahh - My eye!
The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
I am not a german lawyer (IANAGL). But essentially the law is saying you can't make new publications refering to the names of the released prisoners after they are released. But it was OK to publish this when they were in jail or being prosecuted.
Therefore every publication published before they were released were legally able to publish their names and assuming that there is no requirement to destroy said publication, which would be very Orwellian, then all the information can stay out there in libraries etc.
Obviously everything outside of germany doesn't have to comply, but the german wikipedia can just show a static locked version of the offending page from before the two murderers were released, as it is then not a new publication.
I suspect there is a great deal of private German support (or even clandestinely within their govt) for the suit. Such as do are responsible.
Does this mean that the names of all those found guilty at Nuremberg have to be removed from wikipedia? Or does it only apply after a certain date - and not if they were hanged. What a stupid law - an pure example of lets protect the murderer (whether or not they have "served their time" they are still murderers).
dnuof eruc rof aixelsid
So you are declaring europeans hypocritical because 3 individuals did something that other europeans have complained about others doing in the past?
Because you have some suspicions about the thoughts of others?
OK then.
They served 15 years, and now they are back on the streets?
/weebit grins
Google Results 1 - 10 of about 21,300 for Wolfgang Werle and Manfred Lauber... and climbing!
Keep up the good work!
But was never convicted and never went to prison and never was released from prison either!
Stephan
http://stephan.sugarmotor.org
Does it require that we go around the world with a black marker redacting their names from all those printed newspapers from before they serve their time? How would you like to make everyone just "forget" as well?
I suppose I understand Germany's position: they did their time, you aren't allowed to punish them more, but just *change their actual names*. It would be *much* easier than trying to put the genie back in the bottle.
"Murderers should very well learn to live with the consequences of their actions"
And I thought that's what 20 years in prison was for. If you don't intend to let them rehabilitate and reintegrate what is the point of them learning from their mistakes. You might as well just kill them, save them the trouble.
Instant and total #1
They may have served their time, but that doesnt change the fact that they killed someone.
"Now, the question is, should anyone (such as potential employers) be able to Google their names and get a Wikipedia article naming them as murderers as the first hit?"
Yes, actually, welcome to America.
You probably won't enjoy the Freedom of Speech we have here, but we do.
Most Americans have been socialized in a culture of punishment, not rehabilitation
Rehabilitation doesn't work. It's been tried, but, it doesn't work. Once you do some things, walk through certain doors, there's no closing them again.
This is my sig.
Because people like you are stupid?
You kill once, you're a killer. It's patently fucking ridiculous to argue about tenses.
I get that German law considers prison as primarily reformative, and has an affirmative respect for human dignity in its basic law, but I still think this law gets the balancing wrong.
From what I understand the concept of dignity applies as much to the deceased as it does to the living --Klaus Mann in the Mephisto case (http://books.google.com/books?id=sHZfkgxtoZQC&pg=PA301&lpg=PA301&dq=mephisto+case&source=bl&ots=BmWa0DHtk4&sig=n-E3ZqS_0NJ-mTOFr9Etr2L2JTM&hl=en&ei=qZf_SsSQJJHJlAejz4SMCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=mephisto%20case&f=false)
To command that all references to a victim's killers be scrubbed seems to interfere with the deceased's right to dignity. Denying the holocaust is a crime in Germany because it disrespects the suffering of the victims; this law allows these murderers to deny their own crime.
If Germany wishes to protect their rights to move on, gain employment, and be free from harassment, they can do so by less restrictive means than by commanding that others never mention the past, in public, in too specific a level of detail.
Luckily, you're not smart enough for people to care what you think.
But he meant whole life tariff.
Which the EU absolutely does do.
But you ASSUMED he meant the death penalty, which says a lot about your own ethnocentrism and egotism.
You will, of course, never admit you erred.
The Grauniad in the UK amused me; they didn't mention their names or publish a link to the article, because it's also published in Germany. They did carefully give you all the information you needed to go and look it up on Wikipedia yourself (specifically they gave you the name of the victim).
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
I kill you!
No offense, but where I live such logic would be great material for a comedy show... :)
On topic: nobody is talking about letting murderers go free, we're talking about not killing them...
And I thought that's what 20 years in prison was for. If you don't intend to let them rehabilitate and reintegrate what is the point of them learning from their mistakes. You might as well just kill them, save them the trouble.And I thought that's what 20 years in prison was for. If you don't intend to let them rehabilitate and reintegrate what is the point of them learning from their mistakes. You might as well just kill them, save them the trouble.
Wait; so in your opinion, not forgetting one's murderous past is the same as executing them? Your brain must be composed of a single neuron, if you can only think in terms of 0 or 1. Everything or nothing. Basically, you have the intellectual capacity of an amoeba.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Hey! Amoeba can have up to 700billion base pairs in their genetic code while humans only have 3billion. How dare you insinuate they are simple.
But yeah I was being a bit emotionally charged, my bad.
"It's extremely important to preserve freedom of speech, and not to grant the state the right to determine what is or isn't said. A sometimes conflicting right is privacy and protection against verbal or other forms of violence. Once the state is granted the right to prevent speech (writing, songs, etc.) that it claims might precipitate harm, we're on a very dangerous slope. That's why the Supreme Court, in 1969, finally reached the standard of protection of speech that was proposed during the Enlightenment (and I believe may be unique to the US): speech is protected until the point where it is part of imminent criminal acts. So if you and I go into a store to rob it, you have a gun, and I say "shoot," that's not protected speech. How far should it go? Very delicate questions, and my personal feeling is that one should err on the side of restricting state power, as a general rule."
Well, the problem here is that the government is hugely influencing what it is that people want - be it through school books, state TV, political campaigns etc. It's a neverending chicken-or-egg-circle.
A good education is a bit like a STD - it makes you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and gives you a desire to spread it.
You're completely missing the point. The point is that dealing honestly with its past was the correct thing to do for Germany as a nation, and it is the correct thing to do for individual murderers.
You're mixing up two issues. The first is lessons other nations have learned from the holocaust. Let them worry about that, it's none of your business if you're German. The second is that you correctly perceive that Germans are not treated quite equally yet and that people keep bringing up Nazi Germany.
People don't keep bringing up Nazi Germany to accuse Germans, they keep bringing it up because nobody knows whether one can really trust Germany again. Has whatever caused German democracy to go off the rails last time really been eliminated from German culture? Is German culture intrinsically proto-fascist, even if the current government is democratic?
If you want other people to stop bringing up the Nazi era, you need to convince them that German culture itself has changed. Let me tell you that vehemently asserting that the German basic law is perfect and superior to the US Constitution, and that it trumps US first amendment rights is not the way to do that. Actually, that kind of unfounded belief in German superiority probably contributed to the rise of the Nazis in the first place.
I know this is off-topic, but this page on Slashdot is loading very slowly using either Firefox 3.5 or IE8. It appears to have something to do with JavaScript. Firefox indicated this as it kept asking me to continue loading scripts. And IE8 switched me into compatibility mode -- something I've never seen occur on any other site I visit (and I visit many, many sites).
What's going on?
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
but redemption should be considered on an individual basis, not a societal basis
in other words, i'm will to give these guys a chance to be considered redeemed, but i'd like to be the one giving that redemption on my own terms, not on society's terms, if i ever interact with these guys
therefore, i'd like to know their past. having that knowledge does not mean i will automatically condemn them forever. i know it was a long time ago, and i am willing to give them fresh consideration. but i'd like to be the one doing that
so why does the german law assume german citizens are eternally condemning? why doesn't the german law assume that german citizens are open-minded and fair-minded and able to consider redemption on their own basis?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Wait; so in your opinion, not forgetting one's murderous past is the same as executing them?
In my opinion, a life sentence and a death sentence are the same, the question is just how long they are behind bars before they die. And anything that follows them around the rest of their life is a life sentence. You don't give them a chance to reintegrate, so why bother releasing them? Either keep them behind bars until dead, or let them out and give them a fighting chance. Letting them out and having them restricted from actually re-entering society is worse for society than keeping them locked up. As for what they'd prefer, if you cared, you would have given them a clean slate to start from, so we know that part doesn't matter.
Learn to love Alaska
"WERE killers"
I'm not sure they were in wolf form at the time, though.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Wow, I didn't expect this. You're proving to be a person with quite a bit of self-confidence. Good for you! I take back what I said about you (and the amoeba).
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
+5, Insightful.
Cory Doctorow talking about cloud computing makes as much sense as George W Bush talking about electrical engineering.
Some points:
1. There is no right to avoid the prejudice of others. Others should be free to make whatever judgments they want about me based on whatever information they have about me. If they use this to affect a matter of public access or curtail my rights, then we as a society may want to step in (avoid racism, etc). If they compel me to provide private information, I have the right to say no, and they have the right to tell me to leave.
2. Holding back factual information is next to impossible. Something happened, so now we have to go sanitize the records of what happened after someone served a sentence for it? The conviction of a party for a crime is a historical fact, and attempting to hide that fact by finger-waving at public information sources is folly.
3. The problem isn't the information. It's the discrimination and prejudice that comes afterwards. Perhaps if we were more open, we'd be less inclined to pretend that everyone is squeaky clean.
30, 100 S. Ashland Ave #208 (same as in AnyWho), agnostic, no illegal drugs, but I have been arrested before. If it's the kind of place that won't hire because of that, I'm not interested in workin' there. It's not like this information can't be had extremely easily. Pretending that we can hide public information is foolish. Pretending that we can hide history is ridiculously foolish.
Erm, by that legal logic, Hitler shouldn't be mentioned by name when talking about the holocaust either, considering he endured his punishment (DEATH). What kind of retarded law is that!
> Now that they are out of prison, German law states that they
> can't be referred to by name in relation to the killings.
Great. I find new reasons to be worried about Germany every year.
We are talking about historical facts here, and the censorship thereof. That's *scary*.
On a related note, Germany also still restricts political speech. Apparently in the last hundred years of history they have learned... nothing. Germany tops my list of "most likely countries to cause World War III", not because there aren't plenty of other governments this retarded, but because the others are all located in third-world countries. Germany is a major western post-industrial economic powerhouse, and that makes their backwardness on this issue (freedom of political speech) very dangerous.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Nice touch by John Schwartz, the NYT reporter, and his editors. Notice how after being specifically asked not to name the perps he went ahead and made them the lead? Now they are the first lines of a story in a major paper of record and will even appear in the abstract of the article, and every archive search to come!
I'll tell you what the 'effect' is! It's pissing me off!
"The word "buried" must have made me biased. I think you might have a reading comprehension problem."
SO, keeping them in prison until they die of old age won't result in them being buried?
Oh, it will, And that's what a whole life tariff is.
God, you must be so embarrassed being wrong twice AND calling someone out for thier reading comprehension when it was your own lack of intelligence that caused you to say something stupid in the first place.
Your apology is accepted in advance.
I really do enjoy these moments, when an asshole like you gets shut the fuck up after shooting off his dicksucker, it's very satisfying to know not only that I'm right, but that you're completely wrong, and better yet, KNOW YOU ARE WRONG, hence your pathetic attempts to flame me.
I love owning you.
"Says the person without a +1 karma bonus..."
Says the person without intelligent input...
Did nobody think to tell them that attempting to sue Wikipedia to remove their names was likely to plaster their names over the entire interwebs?