Wikipedia, the free and openly editable online encyclopedia, had its German website shutdown for three days after parents of a dead hacker named "Tron" objected to an article. After seeing Tron’s real name in an entry, the parents filed for a temporary injunction to remove the name or the link to the US Wikipedia website. The American site was not affected and the German site has since come back up.

Tron was a 26 year old German hacker who died under mysterious circumstances in October 1998. He was reported missing on October 17 and his body was found five days later. While police officials say he committed suicide, both his friends and parents believe he was murdered. Tron was a member of the famous Chaos Computer Club in Germany.

Tron’s parents now considered their and their son’s privacy rights violated by the Wikipedia listing, while the German Wikimedia foundation argued that Tron is a person of public interest and therefore could be listed with his full name. After a court had granted an injunction that had been filed by Tron’s parents in the first week of January and aimed to either remove Tron’s full name or to disable the forwarding of the URL www.wikipedia.de to de.wikipedia.org.

Wikimedia Deutschland was not able to change the listing, as all entries for the online encyclopedia are located on servers in the US. Not following the ruling of the court could have resulted in fines of up to 250,000 Euros for the organization. Wikipedia.de was taken offline for a total of three days as a result.

Today, Wikimedia was able to achieve a partial success in court by convincing a judge that the majority of Wikipedia visitors will not be affected by listing Tron’s full name. The injunction was removed in exchange for a security deposit of 500 Euros.

This has not been the first time Wikipedia has been in the media spotlight. In May 2005, Brian Chase made a false Wikipedia entry about John Seigenthaler. Seigenthaler was a journalist and former administrative assistant to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. The entry, which sat unnoticed for several months, stated that Seigenthaler might have been, "directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby."

Seigenthaler found out about the entry and had Wikipedia immediately remove it. In the media storm that followed Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia’s founder, instituted new rules that required users to register before being able to post articles. On November 29, 2005 in a USA Today editorial, Seigenthaler talked about the dangers of Wikipedia and being the subject of false accusations.