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Acquittal of German Wikipedia 92

Posted by Zonk from the encyclopedia-of-everything-keeps-keeping-on dept.
Rock-n-Rolf writes "In a previous story Slashdot reported that the German Wikipedia was threatened with injunction. The court has now ruled, as reported in German magazine Spiegel, and Wikipedia is likely to remain online (Babelfish translation). The dispute was about Wikipedia publishing the real name of a dead hacker in an article, and the parents objected to this."
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Acquittal of German Wikipedia More

Acquittal of German Wikipedia

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  • Wasn't it already decided his name was out there for all to see anyway???

  • Now would be a good time... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by greppling ( 601175 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @10:11AM (#14676672)
    ...to remove the name from article, IMHO. It was important to defend the right to give the name. But the name does not add anything to the article, and if it hurts the feeling of those closely involved, there is a good case for not mentioning it.

    Just because you CAN mention the name, this doesn't mean you have to.

    • Re:Now would be a good time... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 09, 2006 @10:15AM (#14676711)
      How is someone's real name not relevant to an article about that person? You can't change history just because you are ashamed of your son.
      • Backround to this: The parants own a travel agency in Berlin and think customers will absence if they know about the son's death because they don't know how to react to this in front of his parents.
      • How is someone's real name not relevant to an article about that person?

        Because he never did anything significant under that name, and because whatever his surname is, it is completely irrelevant to the history of Tron. I'm sure you could also mention that he used Colgate toothpaste, it could be a fact but not a meaningful one.
        • Huh? You're not one of those people who goes through life insisting they be reffered to by their /. nick are you?
    • You know you're right and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter!

      The truth hurts sometimes... so in those cases, we should just not mention the truth.
      You know, to make sure no one gets offended, or sniffly about anything.

      Perhaps our helpfull Government could do something to protect us from this thing called "truth" and the nefarious rise of factual information dissemination that has been causing everyone so much grief since the adoption of this here intarweb thingy.

    • Very true. The last time this discussion came around, someone remarked that some people do no notice how cruel they get when you stick very stricktly to your principles. That and a low empathy/self-improtance ratio ('my right to say whatever I like is much more important than caring for your feelings)

      It's a pity though that we'll probably get the same discussion here again.
    • where is the moderation for -1 spineless?

  • Misrepresentation (Score:3, Insightful)

    by soccerisgod ( 585710 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @10:12AM (#14676679)
    de.wikipedia.org was never threatened with a shutdown injunction. The injunction was directed at prohibiting www.wikipedia.de, the website of the german wikipedia dependance, to link to de.wikipedia.org. www.wikipedia.de itself has no encyclopedical content whatsoever.

    It seems to me the german wikipedia people are trying to (ab)use this situation to their advantage. They refuse to remove a potentially harmful (to the relatives) and entirely irrelevant information from an article and make a big fuss about being threatened in their very existance. Makes you wonder what they're up to.

    • Re:Misrepresentation (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      They refuse to remove a potentially harmful (to the relatives) and entirely irrelevant information from an article and make a big fuss about being threatened in their very existance. Makes you wonder what they're up to.

      Makes you wonder what they're up to? What about writing a complete encyclopedia that mentions a persons name in an article about a person?

      Frankly, it's quite ridiculous to think that an encyclopedia article about a person shouldn't mention his name. An encyclopedia is supposed to be neutr
    • Huh? That's got to be one of the most trollish posts I've read today. How can you possibly see something sinister in defending yourself when you're sued (as opposed to just saying "yes, sir, of course, sir, our pleasure, sir, won't happen again, sir")?

      Stop the xenophobia, please.
  • Could a link be provided to an english (non babelfish) link?

  • It's a basic policy not anything evil! (Score:4, Informative)

    by ami-in-hamburg ( 917802 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @10:16AM (#14676716)
    Um, actually, there is stuff in the media all the time about the Nazi regime including TV, documentaries, news articles, etc...

    Now back on topic, it is a German policy not to use the last name of any person involved in legal matters.

    Newscaster: "Today, Santa C. was arrested on child pr0n charges in Berlin. Santa C. claims to be innocent of the crimes."

    That's just the way they do things here. It seems to apply to certain other situations as well but I haven't been able to find the particulars.

    Perhaps it has something to do with the public information laws or some such nonsense but I see it every night on the 6pm broadcast.

    • Re:It's a basic policy not anything evil! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by pe1rxq ( 141710 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @10:22AM (#14676751) Homepage Journal
      It is because in some countries even criminals (or in your example only accused) have rights.
      When they have served there sentence they should be able to go on and have a live.

      This is contrary to countries were sentences are not ment to correct ones behaviour but to ease the blood thirsty angry mob.
      • It is because in some countries even criminals (or in your example only accused) have rights. When they have served there sentence they should be able to go on and have a live. This is contrary to countries were sentences are not ment to correct ones behaviour but to ease the blood thirsty angry mob. Which is all good and well. But the guy is dead. Dead people are typically afforded little consideration with respect to the rights normally held by, well, living people. There's a body of jurisprudence here,
      • When they have served there sentence they should be able to go on and have a live.

        And the injuction was to keep his name quiet? I had no clue about this guy nor his real name...and I wouldn't have if an injuction wasn't brought against WP (and I subsequently read about it). Now that they raised a raucous about it: I know his name.

        Congrats Mom & Dad Floricic: you promoted what you were trying to prevent!
      • It is because in some countries even criminals (or in your example only accused) have rights. When they have served there sentence they should be able to go on and have a live.

        Except for when, you know... they're dead?
    • That's basically to protect the identity of the accused, prior to acquittal or conviction. Once they're convicted, they'll cheerfully use the full name.

      In this case, there is no doubt that Boris Floricic was Tron, and this injunction is solely to prevent the Floricic family being embarrassed by being associated with their criminal son. Well here's a thing, if they wanted to avoid embarrassment, perhaps they should have raised their child to be law abiding.
    • And if he is convicted of the crime is he still refered to in a semi-anonymous way, or do they give the name? Would it be "Today Santa C. was convicted of...", or "Today, Mr Sinter Klaas, a Dutch native visiting germany for the holidays, was found guilty of..."
    • Ok, I looked this up in the German laws. I could only find it in German so I won't bother with a link.

      Apparently, there has always been an absolute right of a person to protect their honor, reputation, and likeness. However, in 1954 it was written into German law. "Persönlichkeit Rechte" "Personal Rights"

      The laws are extremely long and complicated but I was able to find a summary at www.anwalt.de. Anwalt is German for attorney. It would seem that the first initial of the last name is used in orde

  • Tasaday were real! (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Hao Wu ( 652581 )
    Did you know that the Tasaday were a real tribe in the Philippines - and not a hoax? Wikipedia says so [wikipedia.org].

    If Wikipedia has proven anything, it's that all of recorded history has been politicized. An illusion of objectivity is the ultimate goal that humans work toward - not truth.

    Think of the sinister implications... particularly with a country like Germany and their past.

  • Instead of a translation: (Score:5, Informative)

    by greppling ( 601175 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @10:34AM (#14676853)
    Some facts from the article not mentioned in the summary:

    This decision isn't final yet, the parents will most likely appeal.

    The crucial argument in the court's decision seems to have been that the personal rights of the parents were not violated, since they could not be identified by their last name. This is actually disputable, their name is pretty unique in Germany. (A search in the phone directory didn't turn up anyone with the name.)

    The court did not consider the mentioning of the name a violation of Tron's own personal rights.

    ("Personal rights" is my translation by me of "Persoenlichkeitsrechte", which is technical term in German law speak. Maybe "Right to personal privacy" would be a better translation.)

    • In Germany there is not only a strong "Persönlichkeitsrecht" (personal rights) but also a volunteer commitment of the big newspapers/magazines/tv stations. It is the so called "Pressekodex" of the German "Presserat" and it's much severer than the law.
  • Since stuff like this will sooner or later always affect projects like the Wikipedia, I wondered whether a possible solution to this would be to include 'meta-tags' in the Wikipedia, that re-format content according to local jurisdictions:

    In Germany, we usually only mention the initial of the last name in legal matters, in order to protect the 'image' of the accused, and i think whis is actually a good idea.

    If the source-markup of Wikipedia articles would include something like:

    <name context='legal'>M

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