Holger Voss is a German

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user who was sued in January 2003 for a

sarcastic Sarcasm is the caustic use of words, often in a humorous way, to mock someone or something. Sarcasm may employ ambivalence, although it is not necessarily ironic. Most noticeable in spoken word, sarcasm is mainly distinguished by the inflectio ...

comment pertaining to the

September 11, 2001 attacks The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into ...

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

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. Voss's comment was originally made on June 21, 2002, during a discussion relating to an article in German net magazine

Telepolis ''Telepolis'' is 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 g ...

; it ended with the statement "If you find sarcasm, please reuse 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. Voss also added a

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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 (), in English "incitement to hatred" (used also in the official English translation of the German Criminal Code), "incitement of popular hatred", "incitement of the masses", or "instigation of the people", is a concept in German criminal law t ...

''. (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

euros The euro (currency symbol, symbol: euro sign, €; ISO 4217, currency code: EUR) is the official currency of 20 of the Member state of the European Union, member states of the European Union. This group of states is officially known as the ...

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

Münster Münster (; ) is an independent city#Germany, independent city (''Kreisfreie Stadt'') in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is in the northern part of the state and is considered to be the cultural centre of the Westphalia region. It is also a ...

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 The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into ...

on the same day (cf. §140 Criminal Code); during the course of the trial, it was also revealed that his disclaimer of the posting as sarcasm had been left out of the legal documents that were provided to the prosecutor by the 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 the

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T-Online t-online.de is a German news portal, owned and published by digital multi-channel media company Ströer. It reaches over 179 million visits per month coming from 29 million unique visitors. The editorial team is located in Berlin. History In ...

saved his

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, which was turned over to law enforcement agencies without a judge's order for several months in disagreement with German laws, which allow the saving of IP addresses for as long as is necessary for billing, and he initiated

legal action In legal terminology, a complaint is any formal legal document that sets out the facts and legal reasons (see: cause of action) that the filing party or parties (the plaintiff(s)) believes are sufficient to support a claim against the part ...

in a separate case, which he won on January 25, 2006. On October 26, 2006, the

Federal Court of Justice The Federal Court of Justice ( , ) is the highest court of Private law, civil and Criminal law, criminal jurisdiction in Germany. Its primary responsibility is the final appellate review of decisions by lower courts for errors of law. While, le ...

decided to refuse the complaint from

, whereby the judgement from January 25, 2006 became law.

References

External links

*
Holger Voss' posting
*

* ttp://stop1984.org/index.php?lang=en&text=zensur_aktuelles_satire.txt Stop1984.org: Attention: satire!*
kein1984.de: Strafprozess wegen Satire im Internet

News coverage

heise.de, January 5 2003: Forumteilnehmer muß sich vor Gericht verantworten

heise.de, January 7 2003: Auch Online-Diskussionen haben rechtliche Grenzen

* ttps://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/33483 heise.de, January 8 2003: Freispruch für Telepolis-Forenteilnehmer Holger Voss
Telepolis, January 8 2003: Eine deutsche Justizposse

politik-digital.de, January 9 2003: Vom Forum auf die Anklagebank

* ttps://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/36176 heise.de, April 16 2003: Anzeige wegen IP-Adressspeicherung gegen T-Online
heise.de, January 25 2006: T-Online darf nur für Rechnung nötige Verbindungsdaten speichern

* ttps://torrentfreak.com/privacy-prevails-german-isp-forced-to-delete-ip-logs/ TorrentFreak.com, November 6 2006: Privacy prevails: German ISP forced to delete IP logsbr>BGH bestätigt Urteil zur Löschung von IP-Adressen
{{DEFAULTSORT:Voss, Holger German Internet celebrities Living people Year of birth missing (living people)