Wikipedia Asks Court For Immunity From Liability For User Posts
Mediapost.com, NY -20 minutes ago
by Wendy Davis, Monday, May 5, 2008 7:00 AM ET Online encyclopedia Wikipedia is asking a court to dismiss a libel lawsuit brought by literary agent Barbara ...[/size][/font]

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It doesn't sound from this article like BB has much of a case at all. I'm surprised at this given that she's trying to sue. There must be ways in which she thinks she's not fighting a hopeless case- her perspective on the law isn't explained in this article.

It also strikes me that she's just ensuring the content she dislikes is getting even more well known, as articles like this about the case are mentioning it.

What is more interesting is what is not in that case. That case relies totally on American law. What will be far more fun is if someone in the UK gets really pissed.

In fact, I am watching the royal family articles which I notified to OTRS. If the American dweeb who bemoaned a fellow American for oversighting defamatory material gets his way, then that article will be back to claiming the member of the royal family might have done the things that were suggested by a drunken liar.

Fortunately for the royal family, the UK law understands that mud sticks and therefore writing things like "It has been claimed by X that Y" is still considered defamatory and cannot be repeated. The royal in question would have no trouble going to court and winning. Last time I looked, S230 didn't apply here and I doubt that Wikipedia have been professional enough to check out what their liabilities are in the various countries around the world where they publish.

The english wikipedia is published in the U.S., no? So it is the ISPs who pass that information to you in your own country, thereby acting as publishers themselves.

Mods, please excise the useless IMG tag from Post #1 so that we can read the subsequent posts without side-scrolling.

To my mind, the place where WMF is vulnerable is WP:OFFICE, where they expressly reserve editorial oversight in cases of potential libel.

To my mind they can't have it both ways. They cannot be both common carriers with no editorial oversight and also the final arbiter of what's publishable.

I suspect it gets more complicated than that. For example, the BBC controls access to its website abroad for copyright reasons. It is clear therefore that it is within the abilities of organisations to control the scope of their publication.

I am fairly sure that the fact that it can be read in the UK makes it fair game to be attacked in the UK. The ISPs can genuinely hide behind the Telecommunications Act or whatever the proper legislation is - I doubt that the UK courts would have much time for the semantics and misinterpretation of an American company claiming that they were not responsible for something that they have the ability to control. I suspect that the courts could hold that the WMF were reckless for not putting in place reasonable mechanisms to identify and control the publication of statements, and they would not accept that it was reasonable for the WMF to simply say "Not my problem, Your Honour."

This also raises the interesting thought that in principle ISPs might have to "take down" Wikipedia if it was found to be acting improperly. They would not be interested in filtering at more than the site level, so if they were getting take down notices, then it would be Wikipedia as a whole that would be blocked.

Now my evil twin has suggested to me that ColScott should be reminded that his reputation has been terribly besmirched in the UK and as such he should take court action here, a technique successfully used by other American citizens.

I seem to recall that Kissinger launched a defamation suit in the UK, knowing that in the US he would be wasting his breath.

It is likely that WP will prevail at the trail court level in any action concerning immunity. A successful challenge to Section 230 immunity will require an appeals court decision building on other appeals court cases already limiting the immunity based on the level of intervention into content by the web site seeking immunity. Given the weak case BB has we should not even hope that she brings an appeal when and if she losses. That would only result in unfavorable law from the viewpoint of people who feel that immunity is an abandonment of accountability.

A successful challenge to Sec 230 Immunity would look like:

• A fact pattern with clear defamation and unfavorable intervention by WP admins or officials;
• Plaintiff losing at the trial court level;
• An appeal focusing on the role of WP admins and officials in shaping content.

BB's case is not the right one.

I agree her case is not the right one, but it will tease out the arguments on both sides of the question.

Trial court decisions don't make law that extends beyond the particular judge you find yourself in front of, and only if she chooses to abide by her own decision next time. The real game has to be played out on the appeals level. The masters of case selection and strategy in shaping the law are lawyers such as Thurgood Marshall when he was GC of the NAACP. The ACLU is also pretty good at selecting case prudently, too. The worst examples of case selection are death penalty cases, where obviously counsel is highly motivated to pursue any avenue of appeal without consideration of the impact on shaping the law. They properly need to be only concerned with the client whose life they trying to save. The result sadly has been adverse to overall efforts at using the courts to oppose the death penalty. It is possible that because BB has, understandably, no wider aim than pursing her own action that she might bring an appeal that would only result in bad law.

If she's as bad an agent as her critics say, she probably won't sell a lot of copy to the trial court, either.

I suspect the American courts aren't the right venue to fight Wikipedia, unless they really, really drop the ball somewhere. Wikipedia is very much in line with the basic tenets of American life: freedom of speech, personal freedom, and so on. So any attacks will tend to run into First Amendment arguments pretty rapidly. We know from gun law, that even when a forceful argument can be made that something is harming a large number of people, that there is a massive reluctance to address a problem and that lawyers support this with this dubious claim that Americans are more free by being able to blow each others' heads off at a whim*. So I think there are so many side issues that can be dragged in that even if the principle of harm was accepted, it might be argued that other rights were being curtailed.

(*Anecdote time. In the UK, guns are still pretty rare things, and you don't normally come across them. So I was rather amused when I was hobnobbing with royalty** a couple of weeks ago at Windsor Castle that as we left the castle there was a policeman with a live machine gun, finger hovering over the trigger, wafting it in the general direction of any tourists who had performed the capital offence of Failing to Return Their Audio Guide. Suffice to say, it was a very effective strategy.)

**Not him and not that.

Er, should someone even have left this

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...&action=history

out in the open?

The site checks the IP you are using and adjusts itself accordingly. But you can get round that using an open proxy, as I have done from Paris and Bonn.

So instead of yammering about this, what are the main points one would put in an amicus brief?

1) WP:OFFICE;

2) Tight relationship between "volunteers" and Jimbo/WMF;

3) Willful disregard of methods for safeguarding BLPs and similar articles;

4) Consent and comfort given to scrapers who replicate info / failure to pursue;

What else?

Evidence that Wikipedians recognize the generic problem of problematic BLPs, per Doc Glasgow's definition of the problem, various proposed remedies in circulation, and the BLP pledge.

It's probably not your intention, but your effect is to make me glad to be in the USA instead of the UK... the country of personal freedom rather than the country where they threaten you with machine guns if you don't return your audio guide.

I had noted that. This is the sort of thing that I was thinking of... Bwwwaaaahhh!!

Well, the police only occasionally gun us down, rather than as a matter of routine. Actually, the interesting thing is that people here are so unused to guns that I don't think anyone else actually noticed the bizarre scene. I had a joke with the policeman about it who did have the good grace to be embarrassed as he seemed to have forgotten that he was holding it. (The Queen was in residence so it is not particularly surprising that they have armed police there).

I am fairly cynical about AmericanBush pronouncements on freedom and democracy as there is a lack of respect for other peoples' including elements in their own society (I can't reconcile Bush's attitudes on rights to life standing where he does on the abortion debate when he so casually supports the death penalty - but then that is the American version of God who always seems to be a Fire, Brimstone and Damnation type than the infinite forgiveness wishy washy European model). America can be wonderfully schizophrenic - the open source movement I see as a reflection of the best attitudes of a peculiarly American community spirit of helping each other - don't pass it back, pass it on - and yet I also see the worst of Wikipedian attitudes also being rooted in an American attitudes - the fuck you, I look after number one, shoot on sight, bit.

Just thought I'd throw some Bank Holiday controversy out there.

<img alt="" height="1" width="1">Wikipedia Sued For Libel
WebProNews, KY -21 minutes ago
By Mike Sachoff - Mon, 05/05/2008 - 2:45pm. A literary agent is suing the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikipedia contributors for negative comments, ...

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Whatever this is, it's been going on for several years now:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...e=Barbara_Bauer
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...&oldid=56507125
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=120917731