Two German men who killed an actor in 1990 are suing the charity behind the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia, claiming that its inclusion of detail of their crimes infringes their right to privacy.The case has become an instant online cause celebre – with one lawyer saying that >the integrity of history itself is at stake – because it ranges the US's First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech, against German privacy and criminal laws, which dictate that after a certain period a crime is "spent" and cannot be referred to. The UK has similar rules on the reporting of lesser crimes.
The two men, who cannot be named here, became infamous for the killing, for which they were sentenced to life in prison in 1993. They were released in 2007 and 2008. But Alexander Stopp, the lawyer for the two men, noted that Germany's courts allow a criminal's name to be withheld in news reports once they have served a prison term and a set period has expired.
"They should be able to go on and be resocialised, and lead a life without being publicly stigmatised" for their crime, Stopp told the New York Times. "A criminal has a right to privacy, too, and a right to be left alone."
German editors of Wikipedia, which is available in multiple languages around the world, have already removed the killers' names from the German-language version about the victim, Walter Sedlmayr. But Stopp has also filed suit in German courts to demand that the Wikimedia Foundation, which funds and runs Wikipedia,remove their names from the English-language article.
In fact Wikipedia administrators – the unpaid group that helps oversee the running of the site – have been discussing the challenge for more than a year. But there is deep disagreement about whether the individuals' German-determined right to privacy overrides the US First Amendment.
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