Wau Holland
Wau Holland ( born December 20, 1951 in Kassel, † July 29, 2001 in Bielefeld, actually Herwart Holland-Moritz ) was a German journalist and computer activist.
Life
Holland was born in Kassel, Germany and moved to Marburg, where he attended school and began studying at the Philipps- University but did not graduate with his family at the age of ten years. Holland was one of the founders in 1981 of the Chaos Computer Club (CCC ), one of the oldest hacker clubs. From 1983 he worked as a columnist at the Berlin daily newspaper (taz ), where he regularly reported on the emerging German computer underground and the mailbox scene.
1983 Holland oversaw the light kit is one of the very early on the computer ( Osborne 1) created books (Roland Jaeger, Cornelius Steckner: Cinnabar - Art Scene 1919-1933 Hamburg Hamburg 1983, ISBN 3-924225-00-1. ).
Holland was a founding member of the hacker magazine of the CCC Data slingshot, which dealt with the possibilities of global information networks and faster computers and often contained in the initial years schematics for self-built modem. The former telecommunications installation law required that the modem had been approved by the German Federal Post Office; in doubt, this only modems issued by the Federal Post even rented or sold. Cheaper high-speed modems, as they could be purchased, for example, in the United States, were banned. " Connecting a modem DIY was punished more severely than negligent triggering a nuclear explosion " as Wau Holland put it in retrospect.
Wau Holland was a radio amateur and led the amateur radio callsign DB4FA.
Not least because of Holland's work was acquired by the CCC awareness and recognition. Holland gave lectures on control of information in the government environment and in the private sector, he fought against copy protection and all forms of censorship and for a Free Information Infrastructure. The censorship of some governments he compared with the behavior of the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages, copy protection mechanisms he considered product defects. In his last years he spent much time in a youth center in Jena, where he instilled in both the technical and the ethical side of hacking children.
Holland lived after the political changes in Ilmenau and taught as visiting professor at the Technical University of Ilmenau, among other ethics in computer science.
Holland died 49 years old at the effects of a stroke. With the in January 2004 recognized non Wau Holland Foundation ( WHS ) to put the life's work of the public eponym available and opportunities will be created to continue the projects of Holland.