German Killers Sue Wikipedia To Remove Their Names 859
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.'"
Get your lawyers ready /. (Score:5, Funny)
Wolfgang Werlé & Manfred Lauber are murde (Score:4, Funny)
Cause and Effect (Score:3, Funny)
Less Hasselhoff, more Streisand.
Now that they are out of prison.... (Score:1, Funny)
They did get out of prison, but both where sentenced to life, so lets wait until they have completed there sentence, and then remove there names from Wikipedia. (but only if they ask nicely).
Re:Wolfgang Werlé & Manfred Lauber are mu (Score:4, Funny)
maybe time to register:
wolfgangwerleandmanfredlaubermurderedayoungactorin1990.com
Curious if you could register the .de counterpart.
Re:this is not a huge problem (Score:4, Funny)
'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.
Re:A proposal (Score:4, Funny)
The Werlé-Lauber effect sounds like something physics students would have to memorize an equation for.
Re:Get your lawyers ready /. (Score:1, Funny)
If a major media organization were to run a story about a long-forgotten 1990 murder, and that they weren't going to mention any names, they'd still get sued... by Glenn Beck.
Catch-22. Tell the truth about a couple of convicted murderers and get sued by some German dude for naming names. Omit the names and get sued for libel by a guy who wears a Nazi costume on the front of his book. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Re:Capital Punishment (Score:3, Funny)
I hereby demand that the names of all involved countries be removed from the WWII wikipedia article!
Re:Ooh! Ooh! I wanna play too! (Score:3, Funny)
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?
Re:Get your lawyers ready /. (Score:5, Funny)
No, but I'm pretty sure that now they are in prison someone else knows their assholes.