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(FFII: Foundation for Free Information Infrastructure - the main coordinating
body behind the fight against software patents and numerous other information
initiatives).
As I read it, the complaint is that a German company believes it is illegal to
criticise their strategy / use of link farms on a public website. Since when
did the internet become a dictatorship?
This is about free speech, free information and public debate - being
threatened using software patents, lawsuits and a lack of understanding of
how the internet works.
These kinds of attacks only serve to disseminate the information even more
widely and raise the number of Google hits for the anti-company information
even higher!
==========================
[German Internet company,] Nutzwerk is trying hard to push FFII
into bankruptcy by obtaining urgent injunctions on the same matter in
several local courts all across Germany, and by doing everything
possible to maximise the costs for FFII. Today's story reflects
Nutzwerk's wishful thinking as well as some real problems with the
current German system of legal liability for contents published on the
Internet.
Website authors and Internet service providers in Germany have for
years been living in an atmosphere of legal insecurity, generated by a
system of civil law that makes it easy for litigious companies to
inflict costs on them. Nutzwerk has taken advantage of this to
cleanse the Net of critical reporting. Nutzwerk has good reasons for
doing so. On the one hand, they have generated an enormous hype
around rather weak offers, with the help of big media and governmental
patent agencies who have been promoting them as an example of a
successful SME based on software patents. On the other hand they have
become known for deceptive diagnosis software, for fake advertisement
banner clicks generated from typo domains such as yaho.co.uk, and for
massive Google spamming with link farms [sample Nutzwerk offensive content
snipped - contact me off list for details].
It is crucial for Nutzwerk to be able to fill search engines with
their own press releases and to bring the unwanted informations down
as far as possible.
When Nutzwerk attacked the FFII with its first in junction last
autumn, they complained that FFII was damaging their reputation
because of the high visibility of FFII's pages in Google. Since then
Nutzwerk has threatened to sue people who place links to this
documentation, but through all their litigiousness, including a
lawsuit against Heise.de, the ranking of the FFII's documentation of
Nutzwerk has only climbed higher and higher.
...
The domain ffii.org is currently offline, due to a hoster who did not
have the nerve to research a baseless threat letter sent by Nutzwerk's
lawyers.
The FFII.org machine is not offline.
For instance you can still view
http://www.economic-majority.com/
And if you give 212.72.72.97 as a nameserver, you can see all ffii.org
domains.
...
However [the webhost]
offered to cooperate in transferring our domain quickly to the next
provider. The transfer is under way, but can take up to 3 days. So
please use the 212.72.72.97 nameserver for a while. You might also
find some news reports from us on
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/
which is not affected.
===========================
Please support the FFII at this time - they made the difference in the
software patent debate and now it's time to support them against these
baseless accusations.
--
Neil Williams
=============
http://www.data-freedom.org/
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/
http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/
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