If you're in the UK, and you want to sue Wikipedia, there might be hope--
thanks to this court ruling.

Having read the article, this offers no hope for people hoping to sue the WMF. The WMF does not engage in any moderation of content on Wikipedia; all such activities are conducted by persons with no identifiable connection with the WMF. In any case any judgment obtained from a prosecution on this basis in the UK would end up being unenforceable in the US against the WMF, as §230 would probably bar enforcement of the foreign judgment.

This ruling may make it easier to sue UK-based Wikipedians, especially those who are administrators, but that was already a very real possibility anyway. The main reasons nobody has is that suing someone for defamation in the UK is a very expensive proposition, and therefore not one undertaken lightly. Most people just aren't willing to burn that much cash over a stupid website.

In any case, I have a feeling that Justice Stadlen's ruling is unlikely to stand in the long term.

Suing for libel in the UK is a rich man's hobby, as libel is a civil offence, not a criminal one. Judges say all sorts of nonsense all the time anyway.

If a case does come before the British barristry, may I quote you folks?

I haven't had an opportunity to read the decision itself, but if the story is correct, a site operator who took some precautions to screen out defamatory or offensive material would have greater liability than one who deliberately refused to take any precautions at all. If that is what the court said, the ruling seems directly contrary to the public interest.

Kelly, I'm not sure if you have been following the story about Jimbo's recent intervention in Wikiversity, but there he redacted otherwise legitimate academic content, and claimed he did so "with the full support of the WMF" (which Sue Gardner confirmed).


Brad, it occurs to me that a site operator who not only redacted objectionable content (of the sort that Section 230 covers), but also educational material, drawn from legitimate academic sources, would have even more exposure as a "publisher" in the conventional sense.

I haven't studied the particular case either, but let me present the opposite position. If a site presents an impression of reliability, if it does routinely remove libel and thus gains a reputation for probity and responsibility, it then contributes to the libel by failing to remove it.

Yes, that seems paradoxical. However, why is a newspaper, which routinely attempts to exclude libel, become responsible for it? It's really the same issue.

The position that a mere information service provider, who takes no pains to remove, a priori, libelous material, but who only responds to specific complaints (if that), which is far more efficient, is free of liability, is clear.

However, now shift the situation, a little. A site decides to have a declared policy to remove libelous material, but exercises this policy in a discriminatory way, allowing libel of disliked persons (by site management or staff), but removing other libel. Don't you think they should be responsible, then, and much more responsible than the non-diligent site? Your position, NYB, would create a method of publishing libel, that any site could drive a truck through in order to libel enemies without consequence.

And, yes, Wikipedia should worry about this. Libel is common on the site, and is preferentially removed. Possibly Wikipedia is protected by a policy of removal on request, if that is evenly applied, on that I'm not sure.

It is always said to be expensive, but how much does a libel case actually cost ... if it is done by oneself rather than employing a solicitor and barrister?

It is only expensive because one hires a solicitor and barrister (... or loses against someone who did, I presume). Whether a UK could be enforced in the US is another matter but to have a win against the Wikipedia would keep who ever it was stung by it out of the UK, would it not?

Yes, I can imagine the advice solicitors would give about a DIY approach but famous libel defenses have been made, e.g. the McLibel Trial, so I cannot see why famous complaints cannot be successful too.

Does it not count that they do moderate material raised via the OTRS and old fashioned letters?

The McLibel 2 took the British Government to the European Court of Human Rights to defend the public's right to criticise multinationals, claiming UK libel laws are oppressive and unfair that they were denied a fair trial. The court ruled in their favour.

It can be done.

The problem is that you are potentially exposed to the costs of the opposing side. McLibel got away with it as they were two people essentially without assets, so aside from being declared bankrupt - something of a nuisance in later life - they had nothing to lose.

Judges, in my experience, rarely say nonsense, however, the logical course they follow does not always accord with what you'd want the law to say. Things are better these days as they will use things like Hansard to inform themselves of the intent of the meaning of words.

Clearly a win in the UK would have difficulty piercing the veil of security that s230 provides in the US, and I'd assume that is one reason why WMF is quite keen on only existing in the US and using these satellite friendship organisations elsewhere like the UK WikiMedia group (whatever it is called this week) - typical WMF where they are quite happy for naive individuals to get enmeshed in legal responsibilities that they do not want to be exposed to.

What could happen, with a good ruling, could be that a UK judge might determine that it was unreasonable for an organisation to allow anonymous defamation without providing those affected a quick and reasonable means of identifying those responsible - I cannot see a UK judge being at all interested in the vague justifications of why the average person editing Wikipedia deserves identity protection. So a case might be worth pursuing, not for the money element, but to establish a precedent that would effectively force WMF to provide proper vetting of editors if they wish to have UK editors. I think such a judgement could be enforced if the ISPs effectively acquired a liability by providing Wikipedia without appropriate safeguards.

However, as with these legal things, without some deep pockets to get such a judgement, it is unlikely to happen. A more interesting route would be getting on the Facebook Emergency button bandwagon and hoping to get some national publicity that the world's information systems are being polluted by a bunch of faceless wierdos - and persuading the public that this is a problem. Unfortunately, the public are a bunch of faceless wierdos, so they tend not to see the problem

Abd, I see your point, up to a point, but I don't think it outweighs mine.

You are right that in certain circumstances, one can create an increased risk even while attempting to help, and in that situation the good intent doesn't always exonerate. This comes up sometimes in negligence cases.

You are also right that the context in which a defamatory posting is made will bear on the weight that it is given. If there is a negative article about me (true or false), it will be taken more seriously if it appears in the New York Law Journal or the New York Times (flawed but generally seen as reliable), somewhat less seriously if it appears in the National Enquirer (gossipy and privacy-invading but generally trying to be accurate), and less seriously still if it appears in the Weekly World News (blatantly made-up stuff). That being said, especially in the Internet age, a defamatory posting can be damaging in any location.

Let's abstract the issue here away from Wikipedia in specific. Suppose I own a website with reader comments enabled. Anyone can post a comment, but only I have the ability to redact or remove comments. I see that someone has posted a blatantly defamatory or offensive post about you, which I know should be removed. Would you rather that my thinking at that point run along the lines of

(1) "This comment about Abd is defamatory and offensive; I will remove it"
or
(2) "This comment about Abd is defamatory and offensive; I wish I could remove it, but by doing so, I will be opening myself up to litigation and liability if I inadvertently miss removing a comment about someone else, or even if I have an honest disagreement about whether the comment about someone else is also defamatory and offensive. I wish I could remove the defamatory and offensive comment about Abd, but I guess I better not."

Bear in mind that in my hypothetical I am the only person who can remove the comment; if I don't do anything, it's there forever. I don't see a reasonable argument for preferring a legal rule creating a strong incentive for a site-owner to think (2) rather than (1).

"Forever" belongs in quotes, Brad. Do you really think Wikipedia will exist in its present
form, even 10 years in the future? Bigger and better-funded nonprofits than the WMF
have disappeared without a trace before. And anyone who inherits its broken database
is likely to perform drastic surgery--especially on BLPs.

Twenty years from now Wikipedia and Google will both be a bad memory, and lawyers like NewYorkBore who pontificate on public forums as a lawyer, while hiding behind a screen name, will be disbarred if and when they are exposed. I hope I live long enough to see it.

Okay, a little bit of overstatement there. But I don't think we can rely on the fact that postings eventually tend to age off the internet as reducing the need for dealing with BLP issues.

For what it's worth, I do think that Wikipedia will exist in ten years, hopefully with some improvements, but recognizably the same entity that exists today. (Not arguing here whether that's good or bad, just answering your question.)

You make a very good point Brad - but legal rules on defamation and libel are not written from the point of view of the publisher, although the laws on this in the US are different, and I think far better - than in the rest of the world.

I'm a journalist and the libel laws where I live are seen by some as among the toughest - and most confusing - in the world. That makes them hard to navigate on a day-to-day basis and easy for almost anyone to make threats. But try to open up debate on this and it's just the media looking to feather it's own nest... sigh...

This "legal rule" is called s.230, and it was in fact enacted in light of failures of the US legal system to perform a rational function under these circumstances.

The problem with s.230 is that it (deliberately?) introduces more options which are as bad as the second:

(3) This comment about Abd is defamatory and offensive. However, free speech and all, I will not remove it as I am shielded from liability by section 230. HA HA HA!

(4) I had no idea someone said such a vicious thing about Abd on my website! Fortunately for me, I don't have to do a thing about this -- I don't even have to monitor this place of mine -- since I am immunized from liability per s.230.

The irony here is that section 230 was given force of law to encourage the owners of websites to keep tabs on things, remove nonsense, and generally make the place fit for human habitation. That is to say, it was intended to be a kind of "Good Samaritan law".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rywVlfTtlMY

Curiously, the other area of law that dominates the internet in the USA as an entirely different structure: the OCILLA says that online providers are not liable for copyright infringement if (1) they remove stuff on request ("DMCA takedown"), and (2) remove material on their own, absent of a notice, if the website owner knows it is subject to copyright ("red flags").

Failure to act on either condition results in the website losing their safe-harbor status and is liable.

Which basically says -- using language found near Good Samaritan law -- the website owner has a "duty to care" for their website, at least as far as copyright is concerned.

Why wasn't s.230 written along these lines? I speculate that OCILLA was written as a nastily fought compromise between IP lawyers and communications/computation lawyers, both groups liquid-lunching more than a few congress members, while s.230 was written mainly by the communications companies.

The defamed, or potentially defamed, were not consulted.

I think we can see this in the specific exceptions to s.230. First is federal criminal law. So someone called the Justice Department. The second is intellectual property law. So someone, timidly, gave the IP lawyers a call, who probably barked back "give us an exception and we don't care".