<img alt="" height="1" width="1" />French company fined 25000 Euros for altering [b]Wikipedia entry[/b]
The Next Web
A court decision issued last week fined French company Hi-Media €25000 (US$36000) for damages and interest after it was proven that the company removed the mention of competitor Rentabiliweb from a list of vendors in the French Wikipedia's article on ...



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Yikes - this is pretty hard to believe, but since it happened in France, maybe not as hard as it might be elsewhere. Still, that's a lot of money for something like that, considering that these sorts of things happen fairly frequently on a variety of Wikimedia sites.

This is really, really hard to believe.

No, it's not. It's France. The French law that regulates relationships between businesses would be bizarre by American standards. Notably, businesses have no freedom of speech at all.

Kelly makes a good point. I was giving this some thought myself, and I realized that in addition to the differences in commercial law, the French have a much more protective and (I daresay) paternalistic attitude towards the French language than any English-speaking country has towards the English language. They'd be much more likely to see the French Wikipedia as theirs, similar to the way they'd want to protect the Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française (in effect, the "official" French dictionary) if someone was seen as trying to "corrupt" it in some way - it would be seen as an insult to their national honor. So if the French Wikipedia has driven other French encyclopedias (and encyclopedia-like websites) out of business, then I suppose it's more likely they'd act in this fashion towards it.

That doesn't make it all right, of course, but I still doubt that something like this would result in a monetary judgment in any English-speaking country... except maybe for New Zealand, where they can be sort of unpredictable about things.

That's not even it at all, Somey. This was a fistfight between two businesses that happened to take place in part on Wikipedia. Wikipedia isn't part of the issue, it was just the venue in which the fight took place. That said, French courts tend to believe they are in control of everything, and if someone else doesn't like that, tough shit.