Wikileaks.de Suspended by Germany

Germany's registration authority has suspended investigative journalism site Wikileak's Internet domain registration without a notice.

The action comes two weeks after the house of the German WikiLeaks domain sponsor, Theodor Reppe, was searched by German authorities. Police documentation shows that the March 24, 2009 raid was triggered by WikiLeaks' publication of Australia's proposed secret Internet censorship list. The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) told Australian journalists that they did not request the intervention of the German government.

The publication of the Australian list exposed the blacklisting of many harmless or political sites and changed the nature of the censorship debate in Australia. The Australian government's mandatory internet censorship proposal is now not expected to pass the Australian senate.

It is also worth mentioning a secret draft of international copyright treaty negotiated behind closed doors by some governments representing unidentified entities has been successfully uncovered and made public by Wikileaks.

I find this trend (secret policy making, nation-wide censorship attempts - some already in action, therefore not attempts) extremely annoying. I can understand parents' concern for their children and similar arguments but I believe this issue can be tackled at a user level by commercial or free software. This is not regulation of Internet, it is regulating freedom of expression. Power corrupts, great power corrupts even more.

Short URL for this post

Comments

  1. Thank you for posting this. Very good information on a subject I had no idea that was going on. I agree with you on your points in summation, nothing could be truer.

    Also thank you for visiting my EC market place, I appreciate that!

    ReplyDelete
  2. You're welcome Roger. Let me add this: I believe Wikileaks is doing a tremendous job for the public. Both of us (I assume you are, too) are writing in the web. Some of us do it for income. They, too produce copyrighted material. And some governments are cutting a secret deal about copyright as if we do not exist or we do not have a say in the matter. And I have learned it from Wikileaks. Let me at least thank again for their work once again, here.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I agree with you that censoring what one's children have access to should be done on the user level, without government regulation. It seems goverment in various countries thninks we as people are not capable of doing what is best for ourselves.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

National Drag Queen Month

Pros of Short Domain Names

Most Popular Searches of 2008