Germany's War Against Wikileaks Continues: Deletes German Domain
from the yeah,-that'll-work dept
Last month, we were a bit surprised to find out that the German government had raided the home of the guy who had registered Wikileaks.de, the German version of Wikileaks. Now, as a bunch of people have submitted, the German government has pushed the German domain registrar DENIC to delete Wikileaks.de entirely. It really makes you wonder what the government is hoping to accomplish — because so far, all it’s done is call that much more attention to the fact that it seems scared to death of what might appear on Wikileaks (and what will certainly still appear on other versions of Wikileaks — now with that much more attention).
Comments on “Germany's War Against Wikileaks Continues: Deletes German Domain”
The Truth
Well, if the German government is going through so much trouble over this, then everything posted on Wikileaks must be 100% true. The truth always stings harder, and these guys are acting like they have no clue how the world functions. What is it with those in power always thinking they can just silence the public? And even less effective, the internet?
Censorship
Isn’t this simply outright censorship? In public even.
What Killer_Tofu said; The truth always stings harder?
Re: Censorship
I don’t know German laws so for all I know it could be 100% legal. It still doesn’t make it right though. If I was living in Germany I’d be a bit concerned with these actions.
Re: Re: Censorship
I don’t know German laws so for all I know it could be 100% legal.
Yeah, everything the Nazis did was 100% legal under German law at the time too.
The story is wrong
The former provider of wikileaks.de provided a statement that he terminated the contract months ago.
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/Wikileaks-de-Denic-wehrt-sich-gegen-Sperr-Vorwurf–/meldung/136096
Re: The story is wrong
My German is [very] rusty. Is there an English translation of this somewhere? Or, could someone provide an English translation of the relevant portion?
Re: Re: The story is wrong
It says something about the contract being “terminated” for “non-conforming behavior”.
Re: Re: Re: The story is wrong
I saw that part, but the first notice seems to have been sent back in December with a warning that the take down would be in April. Did you pick up that understanding too, or am I misinterpreting something? I would not put much stock in anything the crude translation says. The translation pages can translate into nonsense. I am still hoping a native German speaker will give us a better explanation.
Re: Re: Re:2 The story is wrong
Re: Re: Re:2 The story is wrong
There is now more information available at
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/More_detail_on_WikiLeaks.de_suspension
Reading that, it appears to me that wikileaks.de’s registrar terminated the contract as punishment for upsetting Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the BND.
Color Me Surprised
Germans acting like Nazis … what a surprise.
RE: RE: the story is wrong
You can just google the link and there is a translate button there. It’s not perfect but it will work to get the gist of the article.
Re: RE: RE: the story is wrong
Aaron:
Thanks. I did what you suggested and got a crude English translation. I am struggling with a couple of phrases, but the gist of it seems to be that the owner of the domain name wikileaks.de got a notice in December 2008 that he needed to take action or the domain name was going to be shut down. Apparently (considering the web site was shut down) he did not take any action.
I am not going to stake my life on my interpretation of the crude translation, but it seems like the domain provider may have gone out of business?
In any case, there is a paragraph further down that says that all the comments regarding association with Australian complaints and the separate police raid had nothing to do with the shut down of the domain name, which seems to be a procedural issue.
Wikileaks claims that it is investigating the matter. However, they also place the shutdown proximate to the raid and the complaint from Australia, so they are attempting to establish in the minds of readers a link between these events without any evidence.
Re: Re: RE: RE: the story is wrong
Apparently (considering the web site was shut down) he did not take any action.
So, that’s your conclusion? In your mind it is just not possible that the registrar could be in the wrong, huh? What a load. Just because they blocked the domain does not prove that “he did not take any action”.
I am not going to stake my life on my interpretation of the crude translation, but it seems like the domain provider may have gone out of business?
That’s good, because you’d be dead. They did not go out of business.
In any case, there is a paragraph further down that says that all the comments regarding association with Australian complaints and the separate police raid had nothing to do with the shut down of the domain name, which seems to be a procedural issue.
So they say.
However, they also place the shutdown proximate to the raid and the complaint from Australia, so they are attempting to establish in the minds of readers a link between these events without any evidence.
They’re just presenting the facts and there is plenty of evidence to corroborate the sequence of known events. Sorry if you don’t like that. You almost sound like you work for somebody involved.
Re: Re: Re: RE: RE: the story is wrong
Apparently (considering the web site was shut down) he did not take any action.
So, that’s your conclusion? In your mind it is just not possible that the registrar could be in the wrong, huh? What a load. Just because they blocked the domain does not prove that “he did not take any action”.
Um, actually, it does. According to Slashdot, he got notice in December 2008 that his ISP was ending its contract. He got a mandatory three month notice to move the domain name and HE TOOK NO ACTION…let me repeat that for those of you with overactive sarcasm, HE TOOK NO ACTION.
Incidentally, I neither said nor “proved” that “he did not take any action” in my original post. What is said, in plain English, was that he “apparently” took no action. Perhaps learning English might be of use to you.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/14/0230200&from=rss
I am not going to stake my life on my interpretation of the crude translation, but it seems like the domain provider may have gone out of business?
That’s good, because you’d be dead. They did not go out of business.
That was a question. Do you understand “question”? Do you understand that I was “uncertain”? Do you understand ENGLISH?
In any case, there is a paragraph further down that says that all the comments regarding association with Australian complaints and the separate police raid had nothing to do with the shut down of the domain name, which seems to be a procedural issue.
So they say.
And now so says slash dot. They did a babel fish translation that seems fairly clear.
However, they also place the shutdown proximate to the raid and the complaint from Australia, so they are attempting to establish in the minds of readers a link between these events without any evidence.
They’re just presenting the facts and there is plenty of evidence to corroborate the sequence of known events. Sorry if you don’t like that. You almost sound like you work for somebody involved.
Actually, the conjunction of events was deliberate to imply a connection between the events. Slashdot is already saying that the German government had nothing to do with the suspension. So, I guess your snotty little statement can go back where it came from. Sorry if you don’t like that.
How to translate a web page
Right-click copy the link in comment #4 by Torsten and paste it into the translate a web page part of Yahoo Babel Fish at
http://babelfish.yahoo.com/ , then select German to English translation in the select from and to languages button, then click on Translate button.
A shame this posting is wrong and all of the posters have been making comments based on ignorance and racism. If there was a hint of intelligence among posters one would see that Wikileaks had their contract terminated by their registrar and webhost for breaching their contract – nothing to do with censorship at all. Wikileaks stuffed up. Simple.