Here's the story. Or at least most of it.
Some 19 years ago, a man in Germany, together with his half brother, reportedly murdered an actor named Walter Sedlmayr. The man was convicted and served 15 years in jail.
Now he is free. And, according to Wired, he has exercised that freedom by instructing lawyers, the elegantly named firm of Stopp and Stopp, to sue Wikipedia.
The lawsuit claims that German privacy law, designed to help criminals re-integrate into society, prevents the man being named in association with Walter Sedlmayr's murder.
Wired quotes Jennifer Granick from the Electronic Frontier Foundation as saying that the lawyers are not only demanding that publications change whatever they write now, but that online archives must endure revision, too.
In writing to Wikipedia, the lawyers offered a very interesting approach: "As your article deals with a local German public figure (such as the actor Walter Sedlmayr), we expect you are aware that you have to comply with applicable German law."
Well, gosh, perhaps not everyone realizes when they mention, say, Boris Becker or that interesting actress who was in the first of the Bourne movies, that one is subject to German law when one does so.
Geek.com quotes the Electronic Frontier Foundation as adding: "At stake is the integrity of history itself. If all publications have to abide by the censorship laws of any and every jurisdiction just because they are accessible over the global Internet, then we will not be able to believe what we read, whether about Falun Gong (censored by China), the Thai king (censored under lèse majesté) or German murders."
(Credit:
CC Schoschie/Flickr)
You might be wondering why I have not mentioned this German murderer's name. You see, as I write, I am reminded that the world seems to revel in the persona of murderers. In some slightly twisted way, they become figures of fascination.
I have a strange suspicion that the more the name of Walter Sedlmayr's murderer is mentioned, the more famous he will become. And the more famous he will become, the more money he might be able to make from the fame he claims not to desire.
So I am conducting a fame-reduction experiment. Moreover, I know that everyone who chooses to discover his name can do so in a myriad of ways.
I wonder how many people tried to access information about this man who murdered the German actor Walter Sedlmayr and how many people have done so in recent days.
I also wonder how Wikipedia will choose to respond to this interesting and rather revisionist-minded lawsuit. At the time of writing, the full names of both murderers are still there in the Wikipedia entry for Walter Sedlmayr.
However, the Wikipedia Administrators' noticeboard has a spirited discussion about all aspects of the case.
The solution proposed by a poster called Zara 1709 on the noticeboard is to "remove the full name from the article and the article talk page, but leave in the edit history of the article and the talk page. We would even have some sources that mention the full names in the reference, simply because they provide other, relevant information, too."
The precedent for this is the so-called Star Wars kid case, in which a 14-year-old Canadian boy waved around a golf-ball retriever like a lightsaber and then endured painful taunts, leading to an equally painful lawsuit.
Zara1709 noted that: "It is quite important to point out that, on Wikipedia, regard for people's privacy applies to criminals and former criminals, too."
However, another poster, Baseball Bugs, dissented: "There is no justification whatsoever for censoring the names of the killers. The notability argument is bogus, there is no privacy or BLP issue, and the 'doing harm' argument is crystal-ball and thus is irrelevant. And some anonymous German judge has no jurisdiction over Wikipedia."
In reading all this, I am left with the words that were often drubbed into me by teachers: "History is written by the winners."
So if this German request succeeds, might some consider that the winner is Wolfgang Wehrle, the man who, with his half brother Manfred Lauber, murdered Walter Sedlmayr 19 years ago? Dash it, I couldn't help myself. I hope I'm not causing undue work for some future editor.
Google must be used to having its neutrality questioned by now. However, when the alleged home of neutrality comes after you, perhaps you wonder if all this questioning of your motives is ever going to stop.
Not so long ago, it was the Greeks who decided they weren't too happy with Street View's prying artificial eyes. Now, according to the Associated Press, it's the Swiss who are getting nervous about their much vaunted (and much-profited from) privacy.
Hanspeter Thuer, the federal data protection commissioner of Switzerland, accused Google of not doing enough to blur faces and license plates. And he demanded that "Google immediately take its Google Street View online service off the Internet."
Ah, Switzerland. I have no reason to believe the man on the bike is a member of Parliament.
(Credit: CC Robert Thomson/Flickr)A Google statement to the Associated Press said that the company would discuss the matter further with the authorities in order to "demonstrate our industry-leading applications for protecting the private sphere."
Perhaps the most interesting snippet of this governmental request is that it appears to coincide with the Swiss newspaper NZZ espying a member of Parliament, Ruedi Noser, on Street View in the company of a lady who was not his wife, but was, praise be, his assistant.
Noser's reaction was charming in the extreme: "There is probably no problem for my wife, as you could also recognize my companion in the picture." Somehow, the use of the word "probably" offers a hearteningly realistic view of humanity on the part of the Parliamentarian. I think he will go far with such a sanguine view of the world's workings.
Whenever countries in Europe raise objections such as these, it appears that Google finds an appropriately European solution: discussions and talks, followed, no doubt, by the parsing of a few nuances, until the issue seems to recede from the public eye.
Then the Google eye can happily go back to work.
For Google Street View, Japanese version, it's not a wrap. It seems to be more of a wrap on the knuckles.
Google has received so many complaints about the height of its ambition, I am sorry, I mean the height of its cameras, that it will re-shoot all of its Japanese footage again. With cameras of a more modest scope.
According to some critics, Google's eagle eyes were more those of vultures, capturing the meat of rather too many private moments over too many private fences.
This is one of the offensively lofty Street View cars in Japan. You can just make out the red tip of the Ladybug 2 camera.
(Credit: CC Raneko/Flickr)In Japan, people are not fond of having even their clean laundry aired in public. And the protests became too great for Google to ignore.
So the company has agreed to bow to these complaints and lower its gaze by 16 inches.
Which will cost a little money, as it has already filmed in 12 Japanese cities, including Tokyo and Osaka.
This news comes as Google is also facing a few hurdles in Greece.
Authorities there have halted all Street View filming until Google satisfies them that its intentions are good and that its cameras will not show number plates, restaurant waiters smashing plates or anyone secretly watching the DVD of "Mamma Mia."
Beware Google bearing gifts.
Greece has decided to stop the lovely, sensitive Google Street View drivers from taking any more pictures while it considers whether those young Turks are taking too many liberties.
It has asked the somewhat large search company to provide information regarding the length of time Google intends to keep the images.
"I had one of those Street View cars outside my house last night. Trojan horses, if you ask me."
(Credit: CC Tilemahos Efthimiadis/Flickr)It has also asked about how Google informs those who might be leaving the homes of illicit lovers, emerging from pornographic establishments, or vomiting on the sidewalk (English tourists) and are suddenly caught by the righteous retina of the Google eye.
It appears that Greece has taken similar measures against a rival surveillance service operated by the Greek ISP Kapou.
As Plato himself put it: "Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous." Oh, but virtue is so difficult, is it not?
When it comes to things Web-related, sometimes you just want to read something sensible, for a change.
So it was with some relief that the recent words of Tim Berners-Lee swam through my left ear without entirely exiting from my right.
Speaking to a bunch of possibly sober British politicians, Sir Tim, as he's known over there, said it's time that we should really have a jolly good think about who is crawling all over our Web behavior.
"We use the Internet without a thought that a third party would know what we have just clicked on," he said. "Yet the URLs people use reveal a huge amount about their lives, loves, hates, and fears. This is extremely sensitive information."
You can hardly argue that it's being treated sensitively when your information might be sold off to third parties for their commercial or even psychological gain.
Referring to our personal data, he said: "The principle should be that it should not be collected in the first place."
He went on to talk a little technical, saying encrypted surfing might be an idea, except for the fact that it would make everything slower and more expensive.
Surely, he spoke the truth. Like teenies snorting a particularly zippy strain of coke, we have grabbed the Web and slipped our tongue down its throat without for one tiny second considering the longer-term consequences of our snogging.
In some sense, this is the same philosophical dilemma that Facebook is contorting itself around and that Google seems, at times, reluctant to entirely embrace.
But who will ever make a decision about it? Will we just bungle our way through it all until there is no privacy, and the folks who hold the information become, to some extent, at least, our voyeuristic puppeteers?
I am having a fanciful notion this afternoon that neither business nor government can be trusted with legislating the Web. Instead, because the Web is worldwide, it needs a worldwide Web czar honcho chappy--with a little of LeBron James' powerful talc, added for good measure, and without any of that United Nations/International Olympic Committee horse-trading nonsense.
We need someone who can be clever and honest enough to set rules that enjoy some harmony with a philosophy that the majority might consider human. I know that it might be a little difficult to get China, North Korea, and--I don't know, France--to agree. But surely, some way has to be found before it all gets very, very messy.
I'm nominating Sir Tim, just because he sounds so bloody sensible. I welcome other suggestions for solving this creepy, creepy little problem.
- prev
- 1
- next
