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Local Wikipedia Blocked by German MP
[Quote:]
Wikipedia is very popular in Germany. With some 825,000 articles, it is the second biggest edition after the English version. However, this weekend started with a shock for all German Wikipedia lovers.
Those who typed in www.wikipedia.de were redirected to a Web site which read:
“The county court of Luebeck (North Germany) has issued an order in the name of Lutz Heilmann, Member of Parliament (left party/post-communist) that the German Wikipedia (Wikimedia e.V.) must not allow linking its domain wikipedia.de to the Web site wikipedia.org, as long as the German language version of wikipedia.org makes certain statements.”
The county court of Luebeck has announced that wikipedia.de will be inaccessible for about four weeks.
The controversial statements include Heilmann’s past as a member of the infamous East German Secret Service — the Stasi — and allegations that he has threatened an ex-boyfriend.
The irony is that the servers of wikipedia.org , in all of its many language versions, including German, are hosted in Florida under United States law. The constitution of the US grants freedom of speech. The controversial article is still accessible to anybody who wants to see it, and has received many more clicks due to the publicity that the decision of the court of Luebeck has caused.
Clearly, these days attempts trying to hold back information from the Internet community by taking legal action seems to backfire.
You can see the page in question here, or the german version here.
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