Wikipedia sued by German killers in privacy claim

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/nov/13/wikipedia-sued-privacy-claim

by philf • 17 years ago

36 35 17 years ago

guardian.co.uk

petewarden• 17 years ago

Here's the original Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Sedlmayr

The murderers' names are Manfred Lauber and Wolfgang Werlé. Let's hear it for the Streisand Effect.

jacquesm4• 17 years ago

Privacy lawsuits are slowly becoming a paradoxical item, the Streisand Effect now is a meme of its own.

I've seen this many times over now, someone sues to keep their privacy protected somehow and within minutes of the news hitting the wires there is an internet snowball referring to the Streisand effect achieving the exact opposite of what the lawsuit intended.

The question now becomes if the Streisand effect is unstoppable (and it seems it is) does that mean that there is now officially no recourse to have your privacy protected ? Does the fact that these two are convicted killers count against them ? Even if they served their time ?

Presumably after you've served your sentence you and society are past it, you should be able to get on with your life.

Interesting detail is that due to a similar effect Sedlmayr came to be famous in the first place.

mechanical_fish2• 17 years ago

there is now officially no recourse to have your privacy protected ?

You could change your name.

Not that this is a definitive solution -- it's obviously rather painful to have to change the entire rest of your identity, rather than simply filing off the offensive part. And (for example), it won't get you off the sex offender registries that have proliferated in the USA, because you'll get arrested if you don't update the registry with your new name. But it would certainly be more practical than trying to "remove a drop of food coloring from a swimming pool", to steal Doctorow's metaphor.

jamesjyu• 17 years ago

If you're looking for more discussion, there is an ungodly amount going on here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_not...

abalashov2• 17 years ago

I don't know about anyone else, but for me this is a hard one; I'm really mixed on it.

On the one hand, you'll get no arguments against free speech or in favour of official censorship from me; go First Amendment, for sure. Likewise, it does not seem tenable to endorse the idea that someone who committed a crime can compel or mandate society to "forget" about it in all repositories of its institutional memory, including those which are created and maintained by private individuals in addition to governmental organisations.

On the other hand, having known and watched people who were incarcerated and rehabilitated attempt to reintegrate into society and lead normal, law-abiding lives and find jobs and housing fail because of the prejudices that arise against them on the basis of their having been convicted of a felony or whatnot, I can definitely appreciate the spirit of this law. To me it seems absolutely imperative that criminals - up to and including those guilty of capital crimes - be given a new lease on life, contingent upon the terms of their sentencing.

For the more conservative, law-and-order types among you who think this is a spineless bleeding-heart rant, I encourage you to contemplate for a moment what it's like to be in the shoes of someone who has committed a crime, experienced years or decades of imprisonment, whose will has been broken and whose remorse consumes them. As if they do not have enough of a burden to live with - and for far more criminals than you might think, it is a burden they excise with attempted suicide - society has conspired to ensure that it is so much more difficult for them to even meet the basic needs of livelihood.

Or consider the case of innumerable teenagers in the US - like the infamous Genarlow Wilson case here in Georgia - that fall prey to the criminalisation of their consensual sexual activity by retarded, ass-backward state laws and then experience a lifetime of stigmatisation by being placed for the rest of their life on the sex offender registries with which the American polity is so obsessively fixated.

My point is that the spirit of the law - that convicted criminals who have served their time have the right to be judged on their own terms subsequently without that cloud hanging over their head - deserves at least some intellectual consideration in this case. It certainly lends the issue some nuance that must be carefully weighed, even if you don't ultimately come down on the side of censorship.

It's precisely these kinds of draconian stances on prisoners' and criminals' rights arising from an overzealous, fanatical jurisprudential self-concept that give the US the record and reputation of being rather backward among "First World" nations. The human dimensions of the criminal element must be taken into account; just because someone committed a crime does not mean they are not a human being and do not deserve your thoughts and your empathy.

jacquesm4• 17 years ago

I think it very much depends on the kind of crime and the circumstances. Society has different rules for dealing with that on a 'gut' level than the standards of proof in court.

So you'll get different responses from ordinary people than you get from the legal entities, and these things have a way of finding an outlet. Just like you can't stop filesharing you can't stop the sharing of basic facts, if it happened and someone wants to get the word out there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop that.

And it has been like that for the last 15 years or so.

I've got exactly one example where it ended differently, and someone managed to successfully remove something from the internet in a more or less permanent fashion, but it involved some pretty drastic measure.

mechanical_fish2• 17 years ago

The problem is that this law -- like so much of the currently broken bits of IP law, like so much of the publishing business -- made a degree of sense before modern information technology came along. Now, however well-intentioned it may be, however real the problem may be -- and I agree, it's a real problem -- the law is completely broken. I don't think I can afford to have "mixed feelings" on this subject: The law has to be repealed, and its proponents have to try to come up with another answer.

Here's a layperson's description of this German law (with the caveat that it comes from an extremely biased source):

Alexander Stopp, the lawyer for the two men, noted that Germany's courts allow a criminal's name to be withheld in news reports once they have served a prison term and a set period has expired.

This is the twenty-first century. There is no longer any such thing as a "news report", as distinct from a "history book", a "personal letter", or even a "word-of-mouth rumor". There was once a time when you could define, fairly objectively, what a "news report" was -- let's try this definition: "a piece of communications designed to be delivered to thousands or millions of people within a time period less than a month" -- but now that time is over. That definition is now rubbish. Anything I type here, anything I say out loud near a blogger, anything I write that comes into view of someone else's digital camera can be captured and distributed to the entire world, in much less than one day, for a price too cheap to meter. Anything that appears on the Internet, even if it is buried inside a dry Ph.D. thesis on a single web server in a locked basement on an isolated Pacific island, is one well-placed retweet away from becoming a "news report".

I wish I knew how else to solve the problem, but even if you believe that censorship was the answer before, it isn't any more. The German legal system is literally trying to enforce the world of 1984: One is legally required to delete or rewrite history after N years.

jacquesm4• 17 years ago

Not only that, it is searchable for eternity, whereas in the past you'd have to visit a newspaper morgue for that.

DrJokepu• 17 years ago

Of course there is a solution. The problem is that courts just don't scale. In the 21st century, courts around thw world work like if it was still the 19th century. Suing people is expensive (both in terms of effort and money). On the other hand, retweeting is cheap. Courts just can't keep up with the Internet.

Now, imagine a world where you can find all the people retweeting 'illegal' information just as easilry as searching on Google and the cost of suing was just as marginal as retweeting itself. Maybe the system was aided by artificial intelligence (one of my college professors was researching the subject of application of AI in legal reasoning). That would change everything and I think this will happen sooner or later. (Sorry for my brevity, I was writing this from my phone)

kiba2• 17 years ago

The publishing business and IP laws were alway backward. It doesn't make sense today, it doesn't make sense in the past.

There's alway people who scream about piracy and censorship and there are alway people who will supply it.

Cheap sheet musics. Banned books. Video tapes. Widespread British literature in America. Pirated poetry in Britain. The movie industry's move to California. The radio. Napster. Bittorrent.

Copyright law has alway been a privelleges of the monopolists. The pirates are simply people who produces and distribute despite the law.

All copyright and patent do is criminalizes the free production, distribution, and entrepeneurship in arts and the science for the alleged benefit of the public, authors, and inventors.

If ye try to criminalize a perfectly good pink act, it shall be a black act, and continues underground.

Also, please don't try to convince me about the morality of giving anyone a living. If an artist starve on the street and he refuse to find another, more fruitful occupation, than it shall be so. If customers do not wishes to buy arts, it shall be so that arts decases altogether.

The customers are kings. All the rages about "right to make a living" is moot when laid at the soverigns. All of prosperity depends on satisifying the customers' subjective preferences and all survival in a free market economy depends on satisfications of customers.

If no one is willing to pay for arts and games, why create it?

yason• 17 years ago

Exactly, this is the point. There are no news reports or history books, it's just the internet and that's live infinitely.

I can't say I know what is the most correct way to integrate old media and new media. I can certainly say I'm in favor of keeping these mens' names unpublished if only that waspossible: their identities are known and can be looked up if needed but IMHO there's no need to have it readily available. I can, also certainly, say that this ideal is impossible on the internet: everything is readily available. And you can't control internet and you shouldn't, because beautiful things will get conceived when the internet is allowed to unravel freely.

Much else can't be said about the court case itself: different nations have different laws and there's no general solution to how two different jurisdictions merge. Germany certainly has no say about the US jurisdiction and US certainly can't enforce their free speech policy in foreing countries.

I assume the outcome is pretty random and I hope it doesn't set any significant precedents either way.

lmkg• 17 years ago

I agree that the contention between the two problems is real. That censorship is bad needs no explanation in a community like this. But the stigmatization of ex-criminals is counterproductive to them achieving the standards they're being judged against, and this is a real and under-recognized problems.

However, I don't think that the censorship legislation is an effective way to address this problem. I'm not convinced that legislation is a proper way to address it at all, but I think this legislation in particular is especially misguided, because it's dodging the whole question. It does not limit people's discriminatory actions, much less attitudes, against former criminals. It's not having been criminals that's the problem, it's people's reaction to it that's a problem. That's a social engineering issue, and this German law is a band-aid fix that tries to sweep the whole thing under the rug and call it a day.

The German law casts a discrimination issue as a privacy issue, and therefore misses the point. I side with the First Amendment on this one.

dennisgorelik• 17 years ago

1) It's OK to somewhat forgive the criminals [after their punishment is served], but it's NOT OK to forget about it. 2) Restricting freedom of speech without overwhelming reasons to do so -- is not a good idea. 3) If German courts are going severely persecute Wikipedia for NOT REMOVING FACTS, then the best course of action for Wikipedia would be to withdraw from Germany.

anamax2• 17 years ago

> To me it seems absolutely imperative that criminals - up to and including those guilty of capital crimes - be given a new lease on life, contingent upon the terms of their sentencing.

Oh really? So if you have kids, you're perfectly happy not knowing that you're living next to a pedophile?

> My point is that the spirit of the law - that convicted criminals who have served their time have the right to be judged on their own terms subsequently without that cloud hanging over their head - deserves at least some intellectual consideration in this case.

Yes it does. But it isn't the only point that deserves consideration. Past behavior is relevant, and the relevance is circumstance dependent. (If you don't have kids, living next to a pedophile may be no big deal.)

The best solution is likely to be accurate and useful information. (Note that all of the above poster's complaints are actually due to inaccurate or incomplete information.)

> just because someone committed a crime does not mean they are not a human being and do not deserve your thoughts and your empathy.

No one ever said tht they weren't a human being, but you don't have the right to decide who gets my thoughts and empathy. (Note that this has nothing to do with prison records.) Or rather, if you insist on trying to impose your decisions on me, you'll find that I can play that game too and I don't care whether you like the result.

I'm only willing to let you make the decisions that you prefer if I get the same consideration.

foldr• 17 years ago

>Oh really? So if you have kids, you're perfectly happy not knowing that you're living next to a pedophile?

What would I do if my kids /were/ living next to a pedophile? Move? Lock them indoors 24/7? Burn the guy's house down? Ask him to move in next to someone else's kids instead of mine?

Knowing that my kids are living next to a pedophile would most likely just cause me needless stress.

abalashov2• 17 years ago

Oh really? So if you have kids, you're perfectly happy not knowing that you're living next to a pedophile?

Maybe I am and maybe I'm not. I'm strongly inclined to agree with foldr that it would be mostly pointless to know that and cause me unnecessary angst.

What I am sure of - and this was closer to the general thrust of my post - is that I don't need to know if my neighbour once had sex with his girlfriend in high school when, I don't know, say he was 18 and she was 16 (in states where age of consent is 18). In fact, there is absolutely no reason I should be mentally prejudiced against him as a "dangerous sex offender" and tell my kids to avoid like the plague on that basis. Yet that is exactly the kind of thing we do to people in this country.

salvadors• 17 years ago

There's a great article on the "Right to be Forgotten" at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1401357 which compares the different approaches taken in the US vs Europe in these sorts of matters.

dbz3• 17 years ago

I have one opinion and it's not mixed. I have no remorse for the killers. They want their name removed? Well, maybe they shouldn't have killed someone.

I'm not trying to troll or flame or anything, I just feel that the punishment fits the crime. -> You kill an actor, you get fame. You don't like the fame? Don't kill the actor.

And I feel the first amendment should have priority over anyone's personal feelings anyways. =/

ugh• 17 years ago

Wouldn’t a more rational approach to punishment to be one that puts (with certain constraints – freedom, privacy, cost and maybe a few others) minimizing crime above everything else?

I don’t care how I feel about a certain punishment as long as it gets its job done. There are the least murders if you legalize murder (unlikely)? Fine, legalize it.

Sure, you might want to minimize or maximize other things. The happiness of the victims (or their family and friends). The happiness of the people reading or hearing about the punishments. But that feels rather superficial to me. I guess that’s a judgment call.

Now, we don’t really know whether this law actually gets the job done (and insofar, I am pretty split on this case) but at the very least, I have become quite careful when evaluating punishments (stripping certain rights to privacy away would be a punishment) with my feelings.

Man, I’m rambling :)

dbz3• 17 years ago

I see how what I said comes off rather emotional vs. rational(/logical). I agree that they should get a punishment that fits the crime. In fact I feel that so much that I think that each time a crime is committed, the person should get an individualized punishment regardless of what other punishments have been in the past. The punishment should fit the person and the crime. (Of course there should be guidelines w/e we don't want to hear me ramble =p)

However, I found it oddly ironic that the punishment they got for killing an actor was fame, and they didn't want the fame, which I personally believe they deserved for murder. And I was expressing that they got what they deserved, imho.

(I view murder as rarely forgivable.)

radu_floricica• 17 years ago

It's a very bad idea to judge/make law based on a single case. In US for example the law is broken in the opposite direction: one a sexual offender in any way, forever a sexual offender. It's not just about murders, it can be a simple bar fight in your 20's that can follow you forever. Or any other stupid act or decision.

That's a defense of the spirit of the law, btw. In this case there's no doubt wikipedia should not be censored.

henrikschroder• 17 years ago

There's a notable difference in the view on punishment between Europe and the US. (Probably between common law and case law? I'm not really sure)

Basically, over here, when you've done your time in jail, you're done. Your debt to society is paid. Your status as a regular citizen is restored. And as such, you have some sort of right to be forgotten, you shouldn't have to be treated as an ex-con for the rest of your life.

In reality though, people do care about it, people are curious, people do treat ex-cons differently, there is a value attached to knowing if someone committed a crime or not. What these guys should have done is to ask to be removed quietly, and if it was denied, just forget about it and hope everyone else does it too. Bringing attention to it is the exact opposite of what they wanted.

maxklein• 17 years ago

Why don't they just change their names? I mean, if it's about finding employment and they don't want their employer know about this - what's the plan to explain that 16 year gap in their resume. Holiday in poland?

eru• 17 years ago

They only have to convince their boss. Not their co-workers.

nandemo• 17 years ago

Wikipedia administrators (...) have been discussing the challenge for more than a year. But there is deep disagreement about whether the individuals' German-determined right to privacy overrides the US First Amendment.

There's no such disagreement. Of course the German law doesn't trump US law in US jurisdiction. I checked the wikipedia discussion and the best argument I found for removing the names in the English version amounts to:

Since they are not notable, respect for their privacy would demand that their full names are left out. Since they went to court with this, the perpetrators have made clear that they would like to keep their privacy. Since Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, and not a forum for public shaming, their full names should be removed.

I still can't agree with this but it makes more sense than simply caving to the German law.

mkyc• 17 years ago

The problem isn't that the information is available, it's how the information is used. That is, the problem isn't Wikipedia, it's the coworker who treats the reformed and repentant ex-convict like trash, then goes home and beats her kids. Or the neighbor who tells guests that "a criminal lives next door", without being asked and for no good reason.

Our built-in reputation heuristics don't function correctly when our memories are so wonderfully enhanced by technology. I look forward to the days of disposable identities and the Friends of Privacy. Or genetic screening against being a dick.

jjs• 17 years ago

If you want to keep your privacy, don't kill a public figure.

Wikipedia sued by German killers in privacy claim

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