Ogrish.com

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Ogrish.com was a “shocker” site, mainly offering video and image material for download , showing real accidents, killings and other acts of violence. It was argued that a comprehensive investigation “also had to shed light on the darker sides of the world”. The motto of the site was “Can you handle life?” .

The operator of the website was the Dutchman Dan Klinker (pseudonym "Evil Knevil"), employee since 2003 the Brit Hayden Hewitt.

The site has been called "perhaps the toughest of a series of bloodthirsty sites" that has become iconic among teenagers .

However, since the end of 2005, the authors of the site have tried to combat the image of a "shocking site" through increasingly serious reporting. Safety tips and precautionary measures were given, for example, to avoid accidents shown. Since October 2006 the page no longer exists, but only a redirect to the follow-up project " liveleak.com ".

Offer from "Ogrish.com"

“Ogrish.com” had a constant network of people who provided the page content. It included numerous private individuals on the one hand, but also administrative and medical staff on the other. Most of the content was owned by the operator of "Ogrish.com". According to the operator Klinker, over 10 employees were busy updating the content, while hundreds of other people were constantly searching the Internet for new content.

Klinker obtained a considerable part of its offer from Islamist propaganda sites .

In view of the sometimes very rigorous depiction of violence in the images provided, the comparison with the website " Rotten.com " was often made , but the satirical undertone that is common there was completely absent on "Ogrish.com".

The offer from “Ogrish.com” included interactive elements such as a wiki and a well-frequented web forum . In addition, T-shirts with the “Ogrish.com” logo and the printed “OgrishMag” were issued at irregular intervals.

In 2004, the operator Klinker stated that its site received 300,000 hits on an average day. When new beheadings by Islamists are published, the number of hits increases to 750,000 a day. 65 percent of the hits came from the USA , 75 percent from men. His site only provides visitors with what they expressly request. In his opinion, everyone has the right to see the uncensored truth. The responsibility for handling the material lies with the person downloading it. According to Klinker, videos of beheadings are downloaded many millions of times. With up to 60,000 accesses per hour, the servers reached their performance limits.

The site operator was assumed to use the shock videos as advertising for the purchase videos offered for sale on the site, which are supposed to depict the rape of young women and sexual acts with animals.

Ogrish.com received positive feedback from research on violence against animals. In several cases, the operator worked with the animal welfare organization PETA to investigate acts of violence against animals and to identify the perpetrators. He spoke out clearly against violence against animals for entertainment purposes and therefore removed the corresponding content from the forums and the home page.

Criticism of the content

The website provided numerous videos that were very drastic in their depictions of violence - mostly without the prior consent of the persons depicted or their family members having been obtained, which has already led to legal disputes in the past.

The site attracted attention in 2001 for the publication of video material showing people falling to their deaths from the burning World Trade Center . The video was provided with derisive and insulting comments, blind patriotism and hate speech.

Arguments broke out in 2002 when ogrish.com released drastic video footage of the murder of Daniel Pearl . The FBI had put pressure on Klinker and his hoster , which initially removed the material. However, citing freedom of the press and information, it was put back online a few days later. Another example is the photos of victims of hurricane "Katrina" , which were published without the consent of the bereaved.

In 2004, 34 pictures and two videos of victims of the Madrid train attack were published, showing them in a defamatory manner. These included footage from surveillance cameras and other recordings that were part of the investigation files. How the material got on the site is unclear.

Access from individual countries

Germany

On January 26th, 2003 the public prosecutor's office in Düsseldorf ordered the internet registrar Joker.com to block the DNS entry of ogrish.com because the site published material that glorified violence and thus violated §131 StGB . The page content was then relocated to the USA.

In August 2005, German youth protection authorities asked the telecommunications company Level 3 Communications to block access to "Ogrish.com" via German IP addresses. Since many Internet connections run via the server located in Frankfurt am Main , other countries connected to it such as the Netherlands , France , Poland and Switzerland would have been affected. The reason given for blocking the site was that its content would violate applicable German law. For this reason, since February 20, 2006, the search engine “Google” and, for a long time, Yahoo also filtered the search results from “Ogrish.com”. However, it has not been clarified whether the content actually violated German law. The website operators claimed the opposite in a self-written disclaimer and thus the legality of their offer.

Spain

When pictures and videos of the 2004 Madrid bombings appeared on the site, the Spanish investigating magistrate ordered the police to "take all necessary steps to shut down the site." He relied on Article 18 of the Spanish Constitution and Article 579 of the Spanish Criminal code. These articles allow interference with telecommunications to protect the constitutionally guaranteed honor and privacy.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Ralf Streck: Pictures of the attacks on March 11th. from "secret" investigation files. In: Telepolis. Verlag Heinz Heise, October 23, 2004, accessed on October 9, 2017 .
  2. ↑ a b Ernst Corinth: It's Raining Men - “We only show reality”: Website mocks the victims of the terrorist attacks. In: Telepolis. Verlag Heinz Heise, September 26, 2001, accessed on October 9, 2017 .
  3. ↑ a b David Talbot: Terror's Server. In: Technology Review . MIT , February 1, 2005, accessed October 9, 2017 .
  4. ↑ a b Beheading videos fascinate public. The Washington Times , October 18, 2004, accessed October 9, 2017 .
  5. ↑ a b Cole Stryker: Murder, Mayhem and the Evolution of Website LiveLeak. Newsweek , September 30, 2014, accessed October 9, 2017 .
  6. ^ Rachel Halliburton: Blood and gore on the web. New Statesman , March 28, 2005, accessed October 9, 2017 .
  7. ↑ Anouch Seydtaghia: "ogrish.com", la face la plus sombre du Net. Le Temps , September 13, 2004, accessed October 9, 2017 (French).
  8. ^ A b Peter-Michael Ziegler: Execution voyeurism as an online mass phenomenon. Heise online, September 24, 2004, accessed October 9, 2017 .
  9. ↑ a b Andreas Wilkens: Registrar has to block the domain in the DNS. Heise online , February 12, 2003, accessed October 9, 2017 .
  10. ↑ Wolf-Dieter Roth: Anyone who stinks is thrown out of the network. In: Telepolis. Verlag Heinz Heise , November 17, 2004, accessed on October 9, 2017 .
  11. ↑ Florian Rötzer: In the name of freedom of expression and freedom of the press. In: Telepolis . Verlag Heinz Heise , May 29, 2002, accessed on October 9, 2017 .
  12. ^ Declan McCullagh: German registrar bans web site. CNET , February 12, 2003, accessed October 9, 2017 .