German Wikipedia Back Online Amid Lawsuit
Businessweek has a report on this running saga on German Wikipedia . There are a lot of issues raised in this action, from the responsibility of Wikipedia to the removal of a web site because of one article. The nub of what is going on currently is in the quote below.
Quote:
The German version of Wikipedia returned to the Internet on Friday after three days offline, a blackout prompted by a lawsuit in which the parents of a dead hacker objected to the site's use of his real name.The Wikimedia Foundation, which runs the collaborative Web encyclopedia, reached a temporary settlement with a Berlin court that will let users access the German-language version of Wikipedia at http://de.wikipedia.org, hosted in the United States, instead of its usual http://www.wikipedia.de.
The site also remained available by going to http://www.wikipedia.org, and clicking on the German language link.
- Y! MyWeb
good
it shouldn't have been taken down in the first place IMO
Idiotic
Now the parents (morons) that didn't want the kid's name in the wiki has it in thousands of blogs and news sites instead.
Good waste of money on lawyers, PRICELESS!
The Germans.....(sigh)
Just what sort of a legal system do they have.
Almost everywhere else a judge would make an interim order following an ex-party application for the removal of the material until a full hearing determined whether or not the application had merit. If it did the ban would stay but only on the page and not on the website. Either the judge didnt have a clue about the internet or German law is more sinister than I ever imagined.
First: Get your facts straight
OF COURSE according to other state's laws the same coulld happen elsewhere. To give you a little hint, start reading here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cease_and_desist
and there:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporary_injunction
Kind regards...
What happened to justice?
Cease and desist and temporary injunctions are fine but the terms must be fair and wiping out a whole website when a page would do is a long way from justice. Cant say I've noticed a similar report coming from any other Western countries.