German Wikipedia Threatened w/ Injunction

TheEagleCD writes "Wikipedia.de, the German version of the popular Wikipedia Encyclopedia, is currently closed due to a German court order. A detailed account of the current controversy [en.wikipedia.org] is available, the short version is that the family of "Tron" (Boris Floricic) - a German hacker and phreaker - is trying to force Wikipedia.de from removing the family name from his entry." As I write this the site is back up, as is the tron entry that caused the whole mess. However it does appear that the entire domain was briefly shut down over one entry.

Actually,

[Captain Perspicuous]

the german wikipedia [wikipedia.org] (which is under Jimmy's control) was never down, only the site www.wikipedia.de [wikipedia.de] (under control of a german club), which normally redirected to the former, and is still down now. So, everybody who remembers the "real" wikipedia address can still use wikipedia without any problems.

Babelfish Translation LInk

[FathomIT]

http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/trurl_pag econtent?lp=de_en&url=http%3A%2F%2Fde.wikipedia.or g%2Fwiki%2FTron_(Hacker) [altavista.com]

Just hot air

[arvindn]

Wikipedia is (mostly) hosted in the US. The German court does not have jurisdiction. End of story. They can do whatever they want to the wikipedia.de domain, but de.wikipedia.org as well as the actual content is totally unaffected.

Re:Nothing for you to see here. Please move along.

[globalar]

You can download database dumps [wikimedia.org] and you can find some help with importing into a fresh Mediawiki installation [wikipedia.org]. You can try Wikifilter [sourceforge.net] for converting the dump data into HTML.

Expert translation

[Anonymous Coward]

NOTE!

EVERYTHING WEBBENSURFERS!

The Wikipagen is not fur gefingerpoken and mittengrabben. Easy pissen off is that blogbereich, spirit levels and slanderen with lawsuitspawnen. Is not fur editten by the dummkopfen. Rubbernecken kourtjudgen musten keepen the that cotten pickenen hands in pockets - relaxen and watchen that flaming war.

Re:Actually,

[FooAtWFU]

A few clarifications for the pedant in all of us: First, Wikipedia is under control of the Wikimedia Foundation [wikimedia.org] these days, not just Jimmy Wales; second, the "German club" in question is actually the German chapter of the Wikimedia foundation [wikimedia.de] and not just some totally random club. And yes- wikipedia.de remains down even as de.wikipedia.org remains up.

Re:What this is (apparently) really about

[Jesus_666]

The answer is simple: Germany is not the USA. We don't sue over everything just because we can - if a German goes to court (s)he does it for very good reasons, for example because less radical (and expensive, as lawsuits tend to be) methods didn't work. I would have found it quite strange if they would have sued the publisher as the first reaction.

A lawsuit is a logical step, but it's still a bit away.

Re:Eh, wikipedia's gone down hill anyways.

[Brushen]

First of all, that quote in no way anywhere says only administrators can comment on Wikipedia process. All Wikipedia editors and anonymous users are welcome to comment on the process.

Second of all, on the pages where users vote on whether or not to delete a page, only registered users may have their votes counted. Anonymous users can engage in debate, but not vote, I suppose like Puerto Rico and Guam's delegates to the U.S. House of Representatives.

Third, this is to prevent users from going to their LiveJournal and rounding up hundreds of their online buddies to vote on an Article for Deletion page to keep their no-name garage band or other non-notable things from being deleted. Registered users that vote in AFDs, or Articles for Deletion, have their votes counted based on how many edits are sufficient to tell if they've registered specifically to vote in that AFD or not.

When an anonymous user creates hundreds of registered accounts to vote on a Wikipedia AFD to prevent it from getting deleted, the jargon for this is "sockpuppeting." The jargon for an anonymous user getting hundreds of their friends to vote on an AFD to keep an article they created from getting deleted is called "meatpuppeting."

Fourth, there is no 50% threshold where entries on AFD become deleted. If an article has around 50% deletion votes, the default is to keep the article because it the community is too uncertain. Most administrators I have talked to say it's clear the community has decided a certain way when around 66% vote a certain way, while some have put it around 80%, or, most wisely, judge it on a case-by-case basis.

These are very good mechanisms to help prevent Wikipedia from being overwhelmed by neo-Nazis and beastiality connaisseurs who want to create 500 Wikipedia articles on self-invented terms for man-on-sheep sex positions.

Re:Not really

[Lehk228]

wikipedia.de redirects to de.wikipedia.org. there is no way to edit/block pages on wikipedia.de without doing the same on de.wikipedia.org.

English version

[FhnuZoag]

There's an easier way, you know. Click the language link to switch to the English version: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tron_(hacker) [wikipedia.org]

Re:If they can do this over the issue of a name

[vertinox]

As it looks now, some Germans still want to rewrite history -- which is a very bad habit to get into.

Well... Its not as if http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/holocaust [wikipedia.org] keeps getting submitted to http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_deletion [wikipedia.org]

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

However, there are many laws controlling speech about Nazism in Germany. The press is free - unless you want to say certain things about Nazism.

As faw as Nazism is concerned, there are only two restrictions regarding the freedom of speech:

1. You cannot deny that the holocaust has happened.
2. You cannot publicly display Nazi symbols.

To me that doesn't sound like what you wrote in your first post:

Their utter lack of freedom of speech strikes me as particularly gestapo-esque (Say the wrong thing, and we'll put you away!) and instead of having an open forum to discuss what happened with the whole WWII thing they seem to be trying to bury it.

See the difference?

Re:Nothing for you to see here. Please move along.

[AxelBoldt]

Or you can get static HTML dumps here [wikipedia.org].

Re:WTF?

[idlake]

Just about every major German city has numerous sites for WWII, the crimes the Nazis committed against minorities, and the horrors of war. These sites include concentration camps, large memorials, and burned out churches and buildings.

If you were actually stationed in Germany (as opposed to making it all up) and didn't see them, that's just a testament to your own inattention and ignorance.

Silly, pointless and won't work; German law

[Qbertino]

The parents of Tron calling for a temporal decree at a german court and having his real name deleted from Wikipedia are being silly. Tron is, by definition, "a person of public interest" (german legal term) and any legally optainable information on him may thus be published.
A temporal decree in german law is exactly that: temporal. A decision by court that needs to be followed until the real court rule is out. No judge in his right mind will prohibit an encyclopedia from publishing details about Tron.

This case does emphasise though that writers to wikipedia are bound by german publishing law and are liable for any damage they cause by deliberately publishing lies or such. Just because the server with german content is outside of germany doesn't mean you'll get away with causing public unrest (Volksverhetzung), denial of the Holocaust ('Auschwitz Lüge') or anything else that is illegal in germany. If the indended audience evidently is in germany the courts won't fall for cheap excuses. Which makes perfect sense.

Re:Actual Complaint

[1u3hr]

The dilemma here is that two values are in conflict...The protection of privacy, in this case: the right not to be associated with some fictive character that has been based on their son's life, and the personal rights of the son that are at protected even post mortem.

Very few countries protect the privacy of the dead. That's why all the nasty stories come out after a celeb dies, but no one can sue for libel. As for the parents, they are not mentioned and it's just their bad luck their surname is distinctive. If the Wikipedia article is true in the facts about Tron, I really don't see anything they have a right to complain about. Should the Hitler family demand their most famous member be referred to as "Adolph H." so as not to embarrass them?

Re:Legal Status

[bhima]

You've got that completely wrong:

David Irwing is British not Australian
He was arrested here in Austria not in Germany
He was not arrested "immediately detained upon ever setting foot" here
He was not arrested for violating Austrian law in another country but rather for making a public speech to students in Wien.
The Law he was arrested on is not some "Anti-Free Speech Law" but rather they are laws aimed at preventing the reoccurrence of previous atrocities.
The US also has speech that is not protected... this isn't all that different.

Why is it that you American Nationalists always want to distort what is going on in Europe when you obviously don't have a clue?