If this week's border-transcending ruling by Germany's highest court proves anything, it's that an enormous distance remains between advocates of a free Internet and watchdogs against racism and hate-mongering.
Published:
17 December 2000 y., Sunday
The court, called the Bundesgerichtshof, issued a ruling on Tuesday that overturned a lower court ruling, and found that German law applies even to foreigners who post content on the Web in other countries -- so long as that content can be accessed by people inside of Germany. Specifically, the court found Australian Holocaust-denier Frederick Tuben guilty of spreading "Auschwitz lies."
Tuben, who was born in Germany, uses the website of his Australian-based Adelaide Institute to encourage people in the belief that the Holocaust has no historical basis. International reaction to the ruling differed wildly.
Andy Mueller-Maguhn, a leader of Berlin's famed Chaos Computer Club hacker collective and a new Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) board member, was blunt in questioning the legitimacy of the ruling. "This German court wants to judge over the whole world in effect," he said. "No one knows what it means. We could easily agree that it seems likely to be a decision made by a judge who does not understand very much."
Mueller-Maguhn, something of a celebrity in Germany as a technology visionary, plans to take immediate action. He said he will contact Germany's highest court on Monday morning and invite someone from the court for a debate before Germany's legislature on the ruling - and how it should be applied in the future.
Šaltinis:
Wired News
Copying, publishing, announcing any information from the News.lt portal without written permission of News.lt editorial office is prohibited.
The most popular articles
Software company announced new structure_ of it_s business.
more »
Tipped off by American officials, Italian police shut down two rings of hackers who attacked Web sites belonging to the U.S. Army and NASA
more »
Yokohama Mayor Hiroshi Nakada decided Friday to allow residents of the city to choose whether their personal data can be registered in a national resident registry network to be launched Monday by the central government
more »
An Israeli startup takes on Moore's law--and Texas Instruments
more »
Wal-Mart, the most mass-market retailer imaginable, is committing an outrageous form of computing heresy: On its Web site, it's selling Windows-compatible personal computers without Windows
more »
Businesses in the US and UK agree that spam is a problem, but according to MessageLabs many users cannot reach a consensus on its definition
more »
search.lt presents newest links
more »
FORMER FSB OFFICER TESTIFIES ABOUT 1999 APARTMENT-BUILDING BOMBINGS...
more »
Microsoft on Wednesday acknowledged that its .Net plan has been slow to catch on and laid out an agenda to move the software strategy ahead
more »
Police Show Up Only to Find Infected WebTVs.
more »
Filters fail to block 'pro-terrorist' messages
more »