Comments on: Information wants to be free.

Information wants to be free.

goodnewsfortheinsane — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 13:35:06 -0800

Wikipedia wrangling once more: the entire German edition was shut down this week over the contents of a single entry. The parents of the article's subject, a German hacker who died in 1998 under mysterious circumstances, are displeased with his real name being disclosed in the encyclopedia. It is now back online; however, the future of the family's efforts is currently unclear, not only due to the German order's debatable validity in the US - but also because the order was, initially at least, mistakenly addressed to St. Petersburg, Russia, instead of St. Petersburg, Florida.

By: goodnewsfortheinsane

goodnewsfortheinsane — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 13:36:00 -0800

As a bonus: a badly rhymed, tasteless limerick on the matter.

By: rkent

rkent — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 13:49:16 -0800

"German edition was shut down" actually means "www.wikipedia.de was forbidden from redirecting to de.wikipedia.org." http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauptseite is still up and, as far as I know, accessible from Germany.

By: Faint of Butt

Faint of Butt — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 13:52:54 -0800

That limerick was awful.

By: mrgrimm

mrgrimm — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 13:53:27 -0800

Hanged and estranged don't rhyme.

By: mrgrimm

mrgrimm — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 13:57:30 -0800

"German edition was shut down" actually means "www.wikipedia.de was forbidden from redirecting to de.wikipedia.org." Meaning, not much to see here. WP is hosted in the U.S. German laws seem not to apply.

By: puke & cry

puke & cry — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 14:00:01 -0800

the entire German edition was shut down this week over the contents of a single entry. uh, from the wikipedia article: It is worth noting that the domain wikipedia.de has never been used as a means of accessing the German language Wikipedia, which has always resided at http://de.wikipedia.org/, and that despite media reports to the contrary, German language Wikipedia was never closed or inaccessible in Germany. The court order only affected a domain owned by the German Verein.

By: goodnewsfortheinsane

goodnewsfortheinsane — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 14:08:15 -0800

"German edition was shut down" actually means "www.wikipedia.de was forbidden from redirecting to de.wikipedia.org." So it does. I was misled by the article where I came across this story first, and apologise for repeating the hype.

By: caddis

caddis — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 14:14:40 -0800

BORIS FLORICIC

By: ericb

ericb — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 14:21:45 -0800

The parents effort to have their son's name removed from Wikipedia has only brought attention to it. In each of the articles (above) his name is mentioned -- and already public knowledge.

By: ericb

ericb — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 14:22:05 -0800

parents'

By: trondant

trondant — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 14:25:31 -0800

By: matteo

matteo — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 16:15:30 -0800

the kid's name's all over the Internet, what's the point?

By: Mikey-San

Mikey-San — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 16:44:40 -0800

I, for one, am appalled that I can no longer take as fact everything I read on the Internet. Fuck.

By: gohlkus

gohlkus — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 17:42:25 -0800

Hanged and estranged don't rhyme. True, they don't, and neither do "Floricic," "cryptic," and "deleted" (WTF?) -- and the "that be cryptic" construction is unnecessarily piratic.

By: Samizdata

Samizdata — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 18:05:34 -0800

And ye be overrrrrrrrly crrrrrrritical, laddy buck!

By: brundlefly

brundlefly — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 21:39:09 -0800

unnecessarily piratic There be no such thing.

By: ba3r

ba3r — Sun, 22 Jan 2006 15:11:23 -0800

"The Austrian online magazine "futurezone" interviewed Andy Müller-Maguhn on January 19, 2006 about the case and its background. Maguhn admitted that the true reason behind the incident is a fictitious work recently published by a German author in which the main actor has the same (civil) name as Tron. The parents sent a protest to the publisher but were turned down with the argument that the German Wikipedia is using the name as well. Müller-Maguhn then asked the German Wikipedia to remove the name, but was turned down for a number of reasons, including failure to present proof that he is entitled to speak and act on behalf of the parents" - From the wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tron_%28hacker%29

By: gohlkus

gohlkus — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 23:34:17 -0800

And ye be overrrrrrrrly crrrrrrritical, laddy buck! All I'm saying is that if I were to write a limerick, I'd follow the a a b b a pattern.... There once was a website called mefi Whose denizens all loved to defy The rules of mathowie He quit, went to Maui To cancel, abort, or retry Four minutes. Bam.