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Censorship Networking The Internet Your Rights Online

German Wikileaks Suspension Not Related To Police Raid 70

Posted by Soulskill from the well-that's-much-less-outrageous dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Contrary to what we discussed four days ago, Germany's registration authority, DeNIC, did not suspend access to wikileaks.de. After some investigation, Heise found out that the ISP ended the contract (in German, Babelfish translation) with Theodor Reppe back in December 2008, with the mandatory three-month notice giving him enough time to move wikileaks.de elsewhere — which he did not do. At the end of March, the domain wikileaks.de was released back to DeNIC."
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German Wikileaks Suspension Not Related To Police Raid More

German Wikileaks Suspension Not Related To Police Raid

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  • Journalism (Score:5, Insightful)

    by QuantumG ( 50515 ) * <qg@biodome.org> on Tuesday April 14, 2009 @12:17AM (#27566437) Homepage Journal

    This is it, at its finest.

    • How many major newspapers do you think would post a story on the front page saying "Oops... we were wrong" about a previous front page story? If it appears, it'd be buried in the middle of the classifieds or something, so the outrage can continue. As grammatically incompetent as the Slashdot editors are, I can at least give them props for doing it right ;)
  • how could... erm, would... someone not read an email from his isp?

    • Re:Hanlon's Razor .... (Score:5, Funny)

      by joocemann ( 1273720 ) on Tuesday April 14, 2009 @12:42AM (#27566585)

      Hanlon's Razor sounds like it should be renamed to "The GWB Principle"

      • What does the Gene Ween Band have to do with this?

      • Re:Hanlon's Razor .... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by twostix ( 1277166 ) on Tuesday April 14, 2009 @02:15AM (#27566933)

        Hanlon's Razor sounds like it should be renamed to "The GWB Principle"

        Heading up an administration that achieved every goal that the top level members of had publicly advocated for over and over for a decade is incompetence?

        Reopened war and regime change in Iraq? Check.
        Hobbling the US federal government by drowning it in debt? Check.
        Funneling astronomical amounts of public cash into their personal associates Corporations and by extension their own bank accounts? Check.
        And to top it off, in the last months of presidency, presiding over the greatest plundering of a treasury in the history of the world...Check.

        Yes, what a bunch of incompetents, incompetently sitting on their mountains of cash, untouchable by any law after having changed the course of history as they saw fit. Exactly as they said in the 1990s that they were going to do once they got back into power.

        I wish I was that incompetent.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by ijakings ( 982830 )

          Accidentally moderated redundant as apposed to insightful, posting to clear.

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by PitaBred ( 632671 )
            I think you were looking for "opposed", as in "going against". "Appose" is a word that's virtually a synonym for "juxtapose", as in things occupying the same space.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by KlausBreuer ( 105581 )

          Hmmm... I don't see your point.
          Yes, GWB was the worst president you guys have ever had, but - was his rule incompetent?

          Look at the whole thing from his side. Imagine that he couldn't care less about the blindly obedient, nicely patriotic public. What DID he want?
          Help out his friends by making them stinking rich? Getting himself stinking rich? Worked great, really well, probably quite a bit better than could be expected.

          So... while he appeared to be pretty low-IQ, his whole group made an exceptional amount o

        • Hobbling the US federal government by drowning it in debt? Check. Funneling astronomical amounts of public cash into their personal associates Corporations and by extension their own bank accounts? Check.

          Brobama's got those down, I'm sure he's on for bigger and better things now.

          Exactly as they said in the 1990s that they were going to do once they got back into power.

          "They" never left power.

        • Heading up an administration that achieved every goal that the top level members of had publicly advocated for over and over for a decade is incompetence?

          GWB was only incompetent when seen against the view of what the people who voted for him expected. I'm sure military contractors, the stockholders of Haliburton and Al Qaeda recruiters see George W. Bush as a great success.

      • Re:Hanlon's Razor .... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by cjfs ( 1253208 ) on Tuesday April 14, 2009 @03:33AM (#27567235) Homepage Journal

        Hanlon's Razor sounds like it should be renamed to "The GWB Principle"

        Or is it more 'Any sufficiently advanced malice is indistinguishable from incompetence.'

    • Re:Hanlon's Razor .... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by gnasher719 ( 869701 ) on Tuesday April 14, 2009 @04:10AM (#27567321)

      Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity...

      In this case: Don't attribute to someone else's malice that which can be adequately explained by your own stupidity.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Lars T. ( 470328 )
      Or, as for most replies to the original story, see my Sig.

  • Or... (Score:4, Funny)

    by joocemann ( 1273720 ) on Tuesday April 14, 2009 @12:36AM (#27566545)

    .... that's exactly what *they* want us to think!

  • YES IT WAS (Score:3, Interesting)

    by James Hardine ( 1150665 ) on Tuesday April 14, 2009 @12:54AM (#27566623)
    The dispute with the registrar stems over a series of exposes last year by WikiLeaks on the BND--Germany's equiv of the CIA. Why the registrar picked this moment to "finalize" the dispute, no-one knows, but it's not hard to guess...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Lars T. ( 470328 )

      The dispute with the registrar stems over a series of exposes last year by WikiLeaks on the BND--Germany's equiv of the CIA. Why the registrar picked this moment to "finalize" the dispute, no-one knows, but it's not hard to guess...

      This moment? Maybe because the contract had run out over a week ago? How much longer should they have given the guys to "finalize" their move?

  • BND involved? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Krupuk ( 978265 ) on Tuesday April 14, 2009 @01:25AM (#27566751)
    On November 5th and December 8th, Wikileaks leaked some BND information. On Devember 8th, the ISP ended the contract. Coincidence? I think not.

    • Re:BND involved? (Score:5, Funny)

      by jamesh ( 87723 ) on Tuesday April 14, 2009 @02:09AM (#27566917)

      On Devember 8th

      I pine for the balmy days of Devember. Instead we have to put up with this lousy Smarch weather...

    • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Probably related.

      What is odd is wikileaks.de losing their domain name in difference to having their ISP cancel a contract. I would suspect the entire set of facts has yet to be laid on the table and would tend to discount the possibility of this being a clerical error on the part of wikileaks.

      Nevertheless, we see the homes of wikileaks domain owner being raided among allegations of suspicion over illegal pornography including child pornography, the surrender of the domain name and now an ISP contractual mat

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by prefec2 ( 875483 )

      BND? Is that not the organization, which was caught by the Bavarian police for suggling a plutonium sample?

  • [paranoia] Is this a ploy by wikileaks to seek attention to its cause? [/paranoia]

    • How would that be possible, unless one believes that there's no such thing as bad press? All this does is make me doubt the competence of wikileaks' administrators.

  • Update: Why the contract was terminated (Score:5, Informative)

    by tmk ( 712144 ) on Tuesday April 14, 2009 @02:52AM (#27567063)

    Wikileaks has published a new press release [wikileaks.org] about the alleged censorship. After I read the details I fully understand why the contract had been terminated.

    In December Reppe tried to transfer bnd.de - the domain of the federal intelligence agency Bundesnachrichtendienst - to his account. To do that he had to assure that he was the rightful owner of bnd.de. The provider stopped the transition and terminated the contract with Reppe with 3 months notice.

    • Re:Update: Why the contract was terminated (Score:5, Informative)

      by arkhan_jg ( 618674 ) on Tuesday April 14, 2009 @03:10AM (#27567141)

      He then arranged with the hosting company in January to keep the account open until the end of his existing pre-paid term - an agreement that was then broken with no warning when they killed his account and dumped all his domains back to deNIC as originally threatened, and prevented him from moving them to another registrar.

      • Re:Update: Why the contract was terminated (Score:4, Interesting)

        by tmk ( 712144 ) on Tuesday April 14, 2009 @03:31AM (#27567227)
        I guess he just misinterpreted the phone conversation. It wouldn't make much sense to put the termination in writing and say something else. It makes much sense that the hosting company assured him that he had three months time to transfer his domains.

        • I guess he just misinterpreted the phone conversation. It wouldn't make much sense to put the termination in writing and say something else. It makes much sense that the hosting company assured him that he had three months time to transfer his domains.

          Phone conversations have the advantage/disadvantage that they leave no paper trail.
          There is also a claim that the ISP didn't send them the details necessary to transfer the domain. Maybe they never asked for these details?

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by kju ( 327 )

            You don't need details to transfer a .de-Domain. Earlier this year a system which uses a "Authinfo-Code" for Transfers was introduced, but it is still possible to transfer a .de-Domain without using a Authinfo-Code. The new provider will just request a transfer from the DeNIC member it is using (if the new provider isn't itself a DeNIC member) which will then send it to the DeNIC. The DeNIC in turn will send the request to the "old" DeNIC-Member, which in turn will send it to the Provider (if not the same a

        • It wouldn't make much sense to put the termination in writing and say something else.

          It would make a lot of sense if your plan was to trick him in to failing to renew his registration so that you could terminate his domain. The only thing we can be fairly sure that the guy is guilty of is trusting his registrar, which is a MASSIVE FAIL. It's entirely possible that they told him that they would make the transfer for him and then failed to do so, which would be illegal but essentially unprovable without a recording of the phone conversation.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by tmk ( 712144 )

            It would make a lot of sense if your plan was to trick him in to failing to renew his registration so that you could terminate his domain.

            This is not what happened. Reppe still owns the domain. He has only to find a new provider.

  • Someone, somewhere had a fact-checking fail.

    Now, should they be rolling a saving throw vs. Job Loss?

    Of course, if the onus was on the /. editors, note that they were a Cape of Uncriticizability and have damage reduction 1/- against Job Loss. They have to lose their job twice---before DR---to actually get fired; flamed, on the other hand... ;-)

    (mods with broken irony detectors: the invitation to flame the eds is what I like to call a joke :p)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dan541 ( 1032000 )

      What do you think makes a better headline?

      "Admin forgets to renew domain!"

      Or

      "Wikileaeks censored by German authorities!"

  • Babelfish's translation sucks so badly compared to Google Translate's version [google.com] that I can only suspect some ulterior motive in providing it.

  • Just a typical dispute.... (Score:4, Informative)

    by mseeger ( 40923 ) on Tuesday April 14, 2009 @05:40AM (#27567701)

    Hi,

    as far as i can see, even Wikileaks doesn't pretend any longer, that the goverment disabled the domain or made the registry do it.

    The chain of events was (shortened) the following: Wikileaks published some documents about the BND (german version of the NSA [sort of]). Based on those documents was a discussion, wether the BND did register his domain (bnd.de) correctly. To make a show, the owner of wikileaks.de tried to transfer bnd.de to himself. His service provider got (IMHO not unreasonably) pissed and terminated all contracts. This all happened in december 2008.

    End of march 2009 the provider transfered the domains back to the registry since no transfer was initiated from the customer. There is a dispute between the provider and his customer (owner of wikileaks.de) wether the transfer was too early. Most communication between the provider and the owner of wikileaks.de seems to be by phone, so there is little paper trail.

    Sory guys, but no sinister conspiracy here :-).

    CU, Martin

  • I'm a bit surprised at Google's response. I would have thought that they'd jump at the chance to rat out foreign citizens to their government. They were SO efficient at doing that when the Chinese thugs were hunting down those pesky dissidents.

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