Parents of famous hacker force German Wikipedia website offline
Capt. Zap
German website shutdown for three days after parents of a dead hacker
named "Tron" objected to an article. After seeing Tron's real name in
an entry, the parents filed for a temporary injunction to remove the
name or the link to the US Wikipedia website. The American site was not
affected and the German site has since come back up.
Tron was a 26 year old German hacker who died under mysterious
circumstances in October 1998. He was reported missing on October 17
and his body was found five days later. While police officials say he
committed suicide, both his friends and parents believe he was
murdered. Tron was a member of the famous Chaos Computer Club in
Germany.
Tron's parents now considered their and their son's privacy rights
violated by the Wikipedia listing, while the German Wikimedia
foundation argued that Tron is a person of public interest and
therefore could be listed with his full name. After a court had granted
an injunction that had been filed by Tron's parents in the first week
of January and aimed to either remove Tron's full name or to disable
the forwarding of the URL www.wikipedia.de to de.wikipedia.org.
Wikimedia Deutschland was not able to change the listing, as all
entries for the online encyclopedia are located on servers in the US.
Not following the ruling of the court could have resulted in fines of
up to 250,000 Euros for the organization. Wikipedia.de was taken
offline for a total of three days as a result.
Today, Wikimedia was able to achieve a partial success in court by
convincing a judge that the majority of Wikipedia visitors will not be
affected by listing Tron's full name. The injunction was removed in
exchange for a security deposit of 500 Euros.
This has not been the first time Wikipedia has been in the media
spotlight. In May 2005, Brian Chase made a false Wikipedia entry about
John Seigenthaler. Seigenthaler was a journalist and former
administrative assistant to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. The
entry, which sat unnoticed for several months, stated that Seigenthaler
might have been, "directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of
both John, and his brother, Bobby."
Seigenthaler found out about the entry and had Wikipedia immediately
remove it. In the media storm that followed Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's
founder, instituted new rules that required users to register before
being able to post articles. On November 29, 2005 in a USA Today
editorial, Seigenthaler talked about the dangers of Wikipedia and being
the subject of false accusations