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February 9, 2006
"Dead Hacker" is Public Figure say German Courts
A story in Speigel (English online edition, click here) reports that Wikipedia won the lawsuit filed by the parents of the famous (that's the point, I think) hacker Tron ("Boris F.", in the German media). The parents alleged breach of privacy, and Wikipedia argued that the volume of Google hits to Internet sources that reveal his full name make him a public figure. Seems right, except that the Internet affords instant public figure status to anyone who gets famous voluntarily or not. Just another area of life made interestingly blurry by the Net.
The Spiegel article says the German Wikipedia site was shut down by court order pending the outcome of the trial, but the English Wikipedia entry denies this, saying that only a German domain that pointed to the German Wikipedia was served with a notice.
Interesting that Boris Floricic, the late Tron's father, owns a trademark on his son's pseudonym. Also weird is that, according to a German dicussion forum, Dad argued to the court that his rights as now the only Floricic in Germany are violated by the Wikipedia mention of his son's surname. Huh?
Spiegel does an interesting thing, by the way: each story has a Technorati/"blogs discussing this story" link at the bottom.
Posted by johnn at February 9, 2006 8:36 PM
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