Comment by lysace

5 months ago

Thinking about the probable next steps made me remember that time Germany temporarily prohibited wikipedia.de from pointing to the actual Wikipedia when an article there said that the German politician Lutz Heilmann had been a full-time Stasi (the infamous and insanely brutal secret police) employee in the former DDR.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_Wikipedia#German...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutz_Heilmann

9 comments

lysace

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chihuahua  5 months ago

Interesting that a single cranky ex-Stasi employee can block Wikipedia for all of Germany because he's mad that Wikipedia states the proven fact that he is a former Stasi employee.

Do German courts not review the facts before granting injunctions?

  • Retric  5 months ago

    As a rule short term injunctions (in this case 2 days) have minimal fact checking.

    That’s kind of the inherent tradeoff for courts being able to make really rapid decisions. It’s useful if say someone’s house was going to be destroyed tomorrow you can’t exactly do a lot of fact checking or the damage will have been done, but it means a lot of seemingly silly things happen.

    The goal is prevent harm while doing basic fact checking in preparation for some longer review, and again 2 days later the court didn’t extend the injunction after review.

  • extraduder_ire  5 months ago

    In many legal jurisdictions, something being true does not necessarily make it non-defamatory. Don't know if that's the case in Germany.

    I don't agree, but it's a legal reality.

    • hkwerf  5 months ago

      IANAL. In Germany, something being true makes it non-defamatory [1].

      > Wer in Beziehung auf einen anderen eine Tatsache behauptet oder verbreitet, welche denselben verächtlich zu machen oder in der öffentlichen Meinung herabzuwürdigen geeignet ist, wird, wenn nicht diese Tatsache erweislich wahr ist, mit Freiheitsstrafe bis zu einem Jahr oder mit Geldstrafe und, wenn die Tat öffentlich, in einer Versammlung oder durch Verbreiten eines Inhalts (§ 11 Absatz 3) begangen ist, mit Freiheitsstrafe bis zu zwei Jahren oder mit Geldstrafe bestraft.

      I'll just translate the important condition for being punished for defamation ("Üble Nachrede"):

      > [...] if not this fact is demonstrably true [...]

      I've intentionally kept the somewhat weird word order while translating. It's just as weird to read for a German. It's an old law.

      [1] https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stgb/__186.html

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