Holger Voss - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Holger Voss is a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

user who was sued in January 2003 for a sarcastic comment pertaining to the September 11, 2001 attacks

September 11, 2001 attacks

The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks (also referred to as September 11, September 11th or 9/119/11 is pronounced "nine eleven". The slash is not part of the pronunciation...

in an Internet discussion forum, a case that attracted nationwide attention in Germany.

Voss' comment was originally made on June 21, 2002 during the course of a discussion relating to an article in German net magazine Telepolis

Telepolis

Telepolis is the name of a German Internet magazine, published by the Heinz Heise Verlag since the beginning of 1996. It was founded by journalists Armin Medosch and Florian Rötzer and deals with privacy, science, culture, internet-related and general politics and media.Telepolis received the...

; it ended with the statement "If you find sarcasm, please re-use it" ("Wer Sarkasmus findet, der/die möge ihn bitte weiterverwenden."). Voss posted his comment in response to another poster's comment that endorsed the 9-11 attacks. http://www.heise.de/tp/foren/S-Da-trifft-es-mal-die-Richtigen/forum-30631/msg-1911553/read/ Voss also added a postscript

Postscript

A postscript, abbreviated P.S., is writing added after the main body of a letter . The term comes from the Latin post scriptum, an expression meaning "written after" .A postscript may be a sentence, a paragraph, or occasionally many paragraphs added, often hastily and...

to his comment, in which he remarked that he had added that original poster and another forum user to a blocklist, since he (Voss) ostensibly took their comments at face value and accused them of Volksverhetzung

Volksverhetzung

Volksverhetzung is a concept in German criminal law that bans the incitement of hatred against a segment of the population. It often applies in, though it is not limited to, trials relating to Holocaust denial in Germany...

. (The original poster in turn accused Voss of being serious.)

Voss was subsequently charged, following an anonymous report to the police; he received a penalty order for an amount of 1500 euro

Euro

The euro is the official currency of the eurozone: 17 of the 27 member states of the European Union. It is also the currency used by the Institutions of the European Union. The eurozone consists of Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg,...

s, which he appealed, and was summoned to a court hearing on January 8, 2003 by the Münster

Münster

Münster is an independent city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located in the northern part of the state and is considered to be the cultural centre of the Westphalia region. It is also capital of the local government region Münsterland...

county court. Voss was acquitted of the charge of assentingly accepting that an unbiased reader might interpret his statements as an approval of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the same day (cf. §140 StGB); during the course of the trial, it was also revealed that his disclaimer of the posting as sarcasm had been left out from the legal documents provided to the prosecutor by law enforcement agencies.

The case raised considerable attention in Germany, both for its free-speech implications and its implications regarding the liability of Internet forum providers for statements made by their members. Voss also claimed that Internet service provider

Internet service provider

An Internet service provider is a company that provides access to the Internet. Access ISPs directly connect customers to the Internet using copper wires, wireless or fiber-optic connections. Hosting ISPs lease server space for smaller businesses and host other people servers...

T-Online

T-Online, a former subsidiary and now business unit of Deutsche Telekom, is the biggest internet service provider in Germany. It evolved out of the proprietary German Bildschirmtext information service in 1995...

saved his dynamic IP

Internet Protocol

The Internet Protocol is the principal communications protocol used for relaying datagrams across an internetwork using the Internet Protocol Suite...

address, which was turned over to law enforcement agencies without a judge's order, for several months in disagreement with German laws (which only allow the saving of IP addresses for as long as is necessary for billing), and initiated legal action in a separate case which he won January 25, 2006.

On October 26, 2006 the BGH

Federal Court of Justice of Germany

The Federal Court of Justice of Germany in Karlsruhe is the highest court in the system of ordinary jurisdiction in Germany. It is the supreme court in all matters of criminal and private law...

decided to refuse the complaint from T-Online whereby the judgement from January 25, 2006 becomes law.

External links

Holger Voss' posting Das Massaker, das nicht sein darf (The massacre that must not be)

Stop1984.org: Attention: satire! kein1984.de: Strafprozess wegen Satire im Internet

News coverage

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.