German Court shuts down Wikipedia

I can understand the parents not wanting to see their dead sons name in print anywhere, but is this a case of the parents wanting to claw back some dignity for their son or to stop everyone knowing that he was a hacker and was to be investigated for computer fraud? Either way, the injunction hasn't really worked because the son is still named and the site is still up (albeit on another URL).

Source. The Register

I am surprised the parents (or at least their legal advisors) did not understand that by going to court they would only awaken interest in the peculiar circumstances of their son's death. The nature of the Internet is that when someone says they want to withdraw some information, you can guarantee that people wil start looking for it and then pass it around.

The circumstances of Tron's death were unusual, to say the least - he was found hanging form a tree in a Berlin park. Whilst he may have comitted suicide, it is possible that something more sinister may have happened. He had apparently been approached by two different intelligence servies to work for them (and had refused). He was well known for cracking pre-paid telephone cards and satellite TV encryption - notably, work on th the Videocrypt system of SKY's analogue service.

I just went to the site, (it seems to be working OK) and typed in Tron and guess what his name and DOB are up there still. maybe he hacked from beyond the grave to get Wikipedia up and running again!

wikipedia.de is still only showing a welcome page describing the legal situation. However you can still get to the german language pages by going to de.wikipedia.org.

It seems that previously, wikipedia.de were not even allowed to link to de.wikipedia.org, but this has been overturned.