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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.'"
You just referenced their names in relation to the killings.
So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
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?
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.
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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.
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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"
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.
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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").
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.
'Famous Actor Case Convict X' and 'Famous Actor Case Convict Y'
I guess I can accept that with sufficiently large values of Wolfgang Werlé for X and sufficiently large values of Manfred Lauber for Y.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
The Werlé-Lauber effect sounds like something physics students would have to memorize an equation for.
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.
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..."
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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!
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.
And what were the names of these gentlemen?
Let q be a radix > 1. I am in ur base-q, killing 10 d00ds.
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.
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.
Most countries in the world do not hold to the barbaric idea of execution. We are supposed to be more moral than animals.
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.
They paid their restitution, the victims likely requested their desired restitution, and you can associate or not with people in general, but people need not actively tell you that they committed a crime, or necessarily any other sort of information. In a free society, we have the right to disclose personal details at our own discretion... some details will be worn on our face... the color of our skin, our gender, etc... but in general, we should have our privacy to tell only the details that we wish to.
You're still free to choose not to associate with ex-criminals... but how many of them do you really know? I suppose more people than you would expect have had criminal run-ins... especially if you live in the USA.
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.
People have a right to privacy. The USA has "false light" laws as well as defamation laws. Sometimes, even if information is true, if it is presented with actual malice, it is wrong, and the individual is entitled to damages.
That is their private property right.
You seem to misunderstand what prompts rights. A government grants the rights of their citizens to their citizens. There is not some omnipotent higher-power that brings his hand down to personally interfere with human legal machinations.
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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.
In a completely free society, nobody is stopped from doing anything, which includes murdering others. A completely free society has no laws, and the strong rule.
In a society where people value life, liberty, and property, we restrict what others can do in order to protect those rights which we, as a society, have determined are most important. Thus, in order to protect my right to life, we have enacted laws against murder. In order to protect my right to property, we have enacted laws against theft. By violating the victim's right to life, those criminals gave up their right to freedom for nineteen years. According to German law, they have apparently given up no other right, and owe nobody else any other restitution. Their debt has been paid, and they now have all the rights given any other citizen. That's fine by me.
I still side with Wikipedia here because, among other reasons, German laws should not apply outside Germany. However, I object to your statement that in free society retribution is expected. Every law removes of some liberties in order to protect rights which said society values and thus, by definition, makes a society less free. A completely free society would not be one I'd like to live in, so these restrictions can make for a better society, but not a freer one.
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.
Yes, I agree completely with you there. Seems like if they wanted to protect the identity of the murderers once they got out of jail, a better law would have been to never reveal this information in the first place, except to people who have some reason to be directly involved (family of the victims and the criminals, lawyers, etc). Once the information is out, it's out.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
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.
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