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 »
A brand new worm slithering through the Web is getting passed by Microsoft Outlook home and businesses users and is so bad it has the potential of wiping out complete files.
more »
Decisions by international arbitrators in cybersquatting cases can be challenged in U.S. court, an appeals panel has ruled.
more »
Business users were the worst offenders in this week's spread of the Goner worm and many firms were slow to update antiviral protection during the outbreak.
more »
Ending 114 years of tradition, one of New Zealand's oldest journals will move entirely to the Web and cease paper publication next year.
more »
The unrelenting momentum of the Internet as a tool for employing creative and cost-effective new ways of doing business will be the driving theme of next week's Internet World Fall 2001 trade show in New York.
more »
According to research from GartnerG2, as much as 10 percent of the B2C e-commerce transactions in the United States will be done through devices other than the PC by 2005.
more »
There are now more active mobile-phone users than landline telephone users in Sweden.
more »
Philippine Hackers Deface Sites To 'Expose Flaws'
more »
Microsoft denied European Union (EU) allegations that it violated antitrust rules and misused its dominance of the computer industry.
more »
Opera Software has officially released Opera 6.0 for Windows.
more »