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A German court forced the removal of a Wikipedia article’s history

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Re: A German court forced the removal of a Wikipedia article’s history

#21

Post by Wowfunhappy »

fxbl0i wrote: post #8
gumby wrote: post #2

The way I read this article in English, were the original article still online, or had it been archived by archive.org and the Wikipedia link changed, then it could stay up. Does that make sense? The article doesn't link to German coverage so it's hard to learn about the underlying matter.

Well, it depends. The EU doesn't like free speech; archive.org is not exempt (April 10th): https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190410/14580641973/eu-te...

Something I've been very unclear about for a long time: to what extent does the EU have jurisdiction over websites hosted and operated in non-EU countries, who don't do any business with the EU beyond serving web pages to EU IP addresses?

Presumably, if China asked Wikipedia to remove something, Wikipedia would say no, regardless fo whether doing so violates Chinese law... right? What makes China different from the EU?

This question applies to GDPR as well.

Re: A German court forced the removal of a Wikipedia article’s history

#22

Post by throwawaa743892 »

hndamien wrote: post #19

Is it time to decentralise Wikipedia...?

Decentralize means a lot and has a lot of impact. It's not as easy as "installing the blockchain".

Instead, it might be more fruitful to take regular archives of it. Indeed, that is a supported action (wikipedia is intently copyleft) and many people already do it.

Re: A German court forced the removal of a Wikipedia article’s history

#23

Post by HarryHirsch »

Is there any reason that Wikimedia does not mention the name of the person in question? Historically, Wikimedia has been in favour of free speech to the detriment of all else, so it can't be out of consideration to the article's subject.

Re: A German court forced the removal of a Wikipedia article’s history

#26

Post by bscphil »

_cs2017_ wrote: post #24

Background: https://thewikicabal.com/2019/01/20/waibel-v-wikimedia/

Thank you for this: I was able to learn from this article that a good bit of the now-censored history is, ironically, revealed in public court documents. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/1/14/Urtei...

There's also an archive.org page from late 2015 which contains the word "PRISM" among other stuff. https://web.archive.org/web/20150908002221/https://de.wikipe...

This article from Heise is still up as well, and it makes claims about Dr. Waibel's purported ties to the NSA. https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/NSA-Abhoerskandal-De...

Personally I think attacking Wikipedia ought to have severe Streisand-ing consequences.

Re: A German court forced the removal of a Wikipedia article’s history

#27

Post by vonmoltke »

tropo wrote: post #18
fxbl0i wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it depends. The EU doesn't like free speech; archive.org is not exempt (April 10th): https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190410/14580641973/eu-te...

How is archive.org not exempt? They are outside of EU jurisdiction unless they made the mistake of opening an office over there, which would be trivially fixable by shutting it down.

They are not exempt in the sense that the EU (or individual member states) will start blocking the Internet Archive if they don't comply.

Re: A German court forced the removal of a Wikipedia article’s history

#28

Post by 0xb100db1ade »

vbezhenar wrote: post #14
ratsmack wrote: post #5

I would think the Wikimedia would stand on principle and refuse to remove items that are factually true. This capitulation to the whims of globally driven censorship needs to come to an end, and will only happen with an organization with a strong backbone and a commitment to freedom of speech and/or press.

I would prefer them to keep a separate version for Germany which will have additional indication that this page was censored by German government. People coming from other IP addresses should view original page. Surely Germany can't forbid people from the other countries to get some information from servers located outside of Germany.

While a good idea, keep in mind that the article says Wikipedia only had one day to take action.

Re: A German court forced the removal of a Wikipedia article’s history

#29

Post by baroffoos »

vonmoltke wrote: post #20
vesinisa wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is actually already an ongoing collaboration between Wikipedia and Internet Archive to snapshot almost every single web page to Wayback Machine as soon as they are referenced on any Wikipedia site: https://blog.archive.org/2018/10/01/more-than-9-million-brok... The pages are being archived at a rate of 20 million URLs/week. PS. This is not free. Internet Archive is one of those great online institutions that ne…

What's going to happen when someone like this professor decides to swing the GDPR hammer at Internet Archive to get the rotted page purged first?

I think thats why archive.is exists. They do not act on deletion requests iirc.

Re: A German court forced the removal of a Wikipedia article’s history

#30

Post by yellowapple »

tropo wrote: post #18
fxbl0i wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it depends. The EU doesn't like free speech; archive.org is not exempt (April 10th): https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190410/14580641973/eu-te...

How is archive.org not exempt? They are outside of EU jurisdiction unless they made the mistake of opening an office over there, which would be trivially fixable by shutting it down.

Wouldn't the same also apply for the Wikimedia Foundation?
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