
Wikipedia sued by German killers in privacy claim - philf
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/nov/13/wikipedia-sued-privacy-claim
======
abalashov
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.

~~~
mechanical_fish
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.

~~~
kiba
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?

~~~
lucumo
_> The pirates are simply people who produces and distribute despite the law._

I'll give you "distribute", but "produces" is plain nonsense. If I copy a book
to give it to a friend, I'm not "producing" it, I'm "distributing" it. The act
of producing was the effort that went into writing it, editing it, typesetting
it, etc.

~~~
kiba
Pirates that prints books must "produces" it via their printing press. It
depends on the context.

------
dbz
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
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 :)

~~~
dbz
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.)

~~~
lucumo
_> However, I found it oddly ironic that the punishment they got for killing
an actor was fame,_

That's _not_ the punishment they got. They were given a prison sentence which
lasted approx. 15 years. That's the punishment they got. The fame is a side
effect.

~~~
dbz
You are correct. I should have said "a punishment"; however, even that would
be technically incorrect.

But I guess what I mean is that the fame is pure karma which they shouldn't be
allowed to rid themselves of because they committed _murder_. (I assume murder
because "they were sentenced to life in prison.")

~~~
lucumo
Apparently the dominant legal view in Germany (and I guess in more parts of
Europe) is that once a sentence is served, the crime is dealt with. If society
believes that the sentences are too light, it can change the law, but once a
judge has pronounced a sentence, and it's served in the proper way, that's it.

"Fame" is a way of society to hand out punishments outside of the courts of
law. Such an extrajudicial punishment is especially annoying when there are
mitigating circumstances. Usually those are details that courts bother with,
but public opinion doesn't.

(Now, that doesn't mean this particular case is easy. Wikipedia also records
history. History records the identity of many killers and I believe in a lot
of cases that can be an important historical fact. Balancing rights rarely is
easy, so I'm happy that we have independent professionals that spent a lot of
time thinking about these issues.)

------
petewarden
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.

~~~
jacquesm
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_fish
_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.

~~~
jacquesm
It would be sad if it came to that, especially for wrongly convicted people.

Changing your name is not just some paperwork, there is a pretty strong
psychological aspect to that.

------
salvadors
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.

------
mkyc
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.

------
nandemo
_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.

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

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

