Wikipedia Germany Shut Down
from the gesundheit dept
The local German site for Wikipedia has been shut down after the parents of a deceased hacker sued the site for using his real name. It’s unclear on exactly what grounds the parents sued, whether it’s because they trademarked his name, or simply don’t want his full name used and interpret doing so as a violation of their privacy. In any case, ordering the entire site shut down seems like an awfully big overreaction, but does illustrate the potential repercussions of people who take exception to Wikipedia content. But, as James Enck points out, the shutdown is also pointless — the original article is still available from Wikipedia’s US servers, even the version in German. The German court order also says that the hacker’s full name can’t be mentioned on wikipedia.org sites, again raising the question of just where local jurisdiction stops on the internet. Update: It appears that the press (as they often do) got some of the facts on this story mixed up. Nothing was actually taken down. A page that had pointed people to the German Wikipedia page was forced to stop doing so briefly, and that was it.
Comments on “Wikipedia Germany Shut Down”
Germonesians
Aren’t they an Islamic country? At least, nobody there believe in Christianity, while there are fervent Muslims. They don’t believe in freedom of expression.
Re: Germonesians
so dorpus, you are saying that in that country, church and state are the same – as in the same way that religion and money are the same in the country you live in?
Re: Re: Germonesians
Religion and money are the same in EVERY country. Just like Money and State and Money and Power… Did you have some sort of real point ?
Re: Re: Re: Germonesians
yup. that was my exact point… but it was intended for dorpus.
Re: Re: Germonesians
>so dorpus, you are saying that in that country, church and state are the same
I did not say this. I did say that Germans do not believe in Christianity, while many Germans are devout Muslims.
> as in the same way that religion and money are the same in the country you live in?
Non sequitir. Your Muslims are poor, but are fervent believers anyway.
Re: Re: Re: Germonesians
What has this got to do at all with the article? Why was religion brought into this at all? The whole first comment was irrelevant and poorly worded. Try to stick the subject please.
Re: Re: Re: Germonesians
Dude, where do you think Germany is located? FYI, it is located in Europe, not the Middle-east (where there are more devout Muslims)
The majority religion there is still Christianity.
Re: Germonesians
Nobody in Germany believes in Christianity??? Dude, you need to share those drugs you are taking.
Re: Germonesians
Was the question really “Is Germany an Islamic country”? From bizforum.org: “Religions: Protestants (26 million); Roman Catholics (26 million); approximately 3.2 million Muslims.”
From http://www.countryreports.org/country.aspx?countryid=91&countryName=Germany “Religion: Protestant 34%, Roman Catholic 34%, Muslim 3.7%, unaffiliated or other 28.3%”
Re: Re: Germonesians
I lived in Germany for years. With few exceptions the only people that believe in christianity are people over the age of 70. The rest are just names on paper who could care less about christendom.
Re: Re: Re: Germonesians
I’ve likewise spent several years in Germany throughout the 80s and 90s and I couldn’t disagree more. I had to practically beat the Christian idiots away with a stick in some places.
Guess it depends where you go.
Re: Re: Re:2 Germonesians
Maybe thats true. I was in west germany and there for the first time a public pole declared 51% of people did not believe in God. So thats what I meant by names on paper. If you look at the poles in east germany 80% don’t believe in God.
Maybe I should refine my statement–they could care less about God.
But that doesn’t have much to do with german wikipedia being shut down.
Re: Re: Re:2 Germonesians
…or who is posting.
Trademarked
They trademarked his name “tron”. Give me a break, Disney owns the trademark on “tron” , especially given that he admits taking the name from the Disney 80s movie.
Overreaction by a liberal govt. And parents that can’t face reality.
Mr. and Mrs. Floricic, please get over the fact that your son was a criminal, and as well a piece of technology history, therefore he belongs to the public at large (i.e. the internet), trademark or no trademark.
Re: Trademarked
Oops! The CDU is in power. It’s a conservative Government now.
Cmon, its friggin Wikipedia for gods sake...
the whole point of Wikipedia is that anybody is supposed to be able to add or edit any article. The reason his real name was probably added was because of his fellow hackers that knew him felt his death should be respected by letting the world know as much as they could about him. That and the fact that they were smart enough (dont have to be very smart to figure this one out) to know that there must be a few thousand people that use nearly any given screen name, especially for the 80’s tech loving guys like him. How the heck is the world supposed to know just which “tron” it was? Was it the tron in question, or the TRON in the movie, or the 14 year old tRoN on Xbox Live that thinks he’s all that n a bag o Lays, or the Tr0n (with a zero) on Counter Strike PC that thinks hes all that n a bag o Doritos???
No Subject Given
Fair Use? Wouldn’t that apply here?
No Subject Given
Parents are pissed because his name and image appears in the very popular German wikipeida entry for “schei?e”…
No Subject Given
How did the conversation change to Christianity? You guys are starting to sound like /. commentators.
:*
The Case
Tron’s family does not wish his full name, “Boris Floricic“, to be used; many German newspapers merely refer to him as “Boris F.” On 14 December 2005 the parents obtained a temporary restraining order in a Berlin court against Wikimedia Foundation Inc. because its freely editable online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, mentioned the full name in its German language version. The order prohibits the Foundation from mentioning the full name on any website under the domain “wikipedia.org”. It furthermore requires the Foundation to name a representative in Germany within two weeks following the decision.
anna will you mary me
anna will you mary me
Okay… Some facts here:
Tron’s family sued wikipedia for not using his full name because they`re runnung a business in Berlin
and since that article appeared at Wikipedia they lost many customers and of course for ethical reasons.
The other Hackers (The Chaos Computer Club for example)
support Tron’s family.
The trial is still on, and Wikipedia still displays Tron’s full name (assholes!).
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tron_%28Hacker%29
PS.: I am a german and I’m shocked and amused to see how little you guys know about the world. Muslim country… Yeah, right!
It’s true though that most of the young people (including myself) don’t believe in god the way the bible discribes him.
Christians are more fanatic and dangerous than muslims ever could be.
add:
Here`s a link to a circuit diagram to one of Tron`s inventions, the Cryptron:
ftp://ftp.ccc.de/cryptron/
He also invented lots of stuff to crack Pay TV and phone booths that use Telephone Cards.