No cookie for Hubertus Albers

Wednesday, June 27, 2007 at 20:27 | Posted in Germany, Legal | 3 Comments

I wrote about a month ago that Hubertus Albers, who is better known as Atze Schröder, sued the CEO of Wikimedia Deutschland e.V Arne Klempers for legal costs of a withdrawn lawsuite against Mr Klempers. As Heise on line reports, the court (LG Hamburg) has ruled against Hubertus Albers. The court says that mentioning the real name of a public figure like Atze Schröder does not violate his personal rights for privacy and there is a public interest against the comedian who regularly appears in public Hubertus Albers failed to argue why his interest in secrecy should value higher than the public interest in knowing his name. Without an explanation how his privacy was violated by merely telling his name the court has no reason to assume a privacy violation.

Arne Klempers writes in his blog that he is not surprised by the ruling. He does, however, point out that mentioning the name in German blogs may still not be safe as there is another case still pending in Berlin.

Since I am not bound by German courts, it is safe for me to say that LG Hamburg gave no cookie for Hubertus Albers. Whatever the ruling in Berlin may be, it has no effect whatsoever in what I write in this blog.

via Farlion and RA-Blog