>This result is disappointing for us, but it is not a notable change in the law<p>Bullshit. This is a big precedent where Wikimedia will now remove material from Wikipedia if a court orders them to. They even acknowledge that the material in this case was, if not unambiguously true, at least well sourced.<p>That's a huge precedent. It only remains to be seen whether Wikimedia decide to fight a similar decision made by some other court, perhaps in a less popular jurisdiction like China or North Korea.<p>Perhaps they mean that this is not a notable change in the law because Germany is not a common law jurisdiction, and changes to the law happen only through the legislature and not through the judicial system. But in that case the claim is trivial, and still equally irrelevant now that <i>Wikimedia</i> have set the precedent that they will obey courts in these cases.
How does Wikimedia determine which country’s laws it will comply with? Unless they have some physical presence in Germany, why wouldn’t they just tell the Germans to go pound sand instead?
I thought that the history is supposed to be available for legal reasons. It's the only way that contributors to the article are attributed, as required by the Creative Commons licensing.<p>Edit: quite a bit of the history is unavailable, but the names of the contributors can still be seen. Perhaps that's sufficient. <a href="https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alexander_Waibel&action=history" rel="nofollow">https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alexander_Waibel&...</a>
If I were running Wikipedia, I would make some effort to programmatically archive online citations, like archive.org does. Imagine some government persona mis-tweets something that leads to article-worthy historical consequences; if twitter deletes the tweet, can that person sue to have it removed from wikipedia because it made her/him look bad, on the basis that the original citation link doesn't work?
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.
What would have happened if the information was in an append only log like git history (where a rebase would be inappropriate) or a blockchain (where it can't occur)?
At least Wikipedia content is still accessible in Germany.<p>Because of a German court order to regarding some of their items[0] Project Gutenberg blocks German access to _all_ of their books. Now for more than a year.<p>I sympathize with them but a total block seems a bit heavy handed, punishing all of Germany for a maybe poor decision. Guess this was the simplest way to respond given the resources they have.<p>Curious to see how this is going to play out in the end.<p>Back to Wikepedia<p>> Because of the very short deadline from the legal proceeding—we were given less than one day to take action<p>What I don't understand in the Wikipedia case is why the deadline was so tight. Seems unreasonable.<p>[0]. <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16511038" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16511038</a>
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.
> "the content was in fact defamatory, largely because the source in question had been taken offline"<p>Is there not an archive.org link for the source? Or some other archive? Or maybe it was taken down from archival sites similarly?
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?<p>The article doesn't link to German coverage so it's hard to learn about the underlying matter.
Statement from the law firm:<p><a href="https://raue.com/en/news/industries/media-and-telecommunications/media/raue-llp-successful-against-wikipedia/" rel="nofollow">https://raue.com/en/news/industries/media-and-telecommunicat...</a>