•Catherine Crier Takes a Dallas "John Doe" to Court Over ... Her ...
Dallas Observer, TX
By Robert Wilonsky in Crime and Punishment Former Dallas County judge and prosecutor Catherine Crier left her hometown long, long ago -- exactly 20 years ago, matter of fact, when she swapped the bench for the bright lights of CNN, then ABC, ...

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Hmm, I went over to the Catherine Crier (T-H-L-K-D) and it's not exactly a high traffic page. There are several IPs editing this article, so it's difficult to say exactly which one was causing the problems. Perhaps Oversight has already cleaned up here?

I'll be following this closely, but it just proves that flagged revisions are really needed....How many times do we have to keep saying this???

Would one of the mods be able to (if appropriate) move this thread to the "News Worth Discussing" folder, where it might be seen by more people? This is as big a news story as we've seen in the past couple of months, especially if fireworks ensue upon failure to identify the IP address.

I thought the prevailing approach is to put threads like this in the BLP forum so they'd be seen by fewer people. Moral tightrope, eh?

How are we further sullying Ms. Crier's reputation by pointing out the full story of how she was WRONGLY defamed by a Wikipedia platform that promises no accountability? There's not even a tightrope on this one -- it's a four-lane highway at 2:00 AM... easy going.

You'll find many of the other BLP-related threads share the same premise (where an offensive edit has been made but not adequately reverted).

I don't care where you discuss this, but I do want to know what the standard is for deciding.

Catherine Crier isn't asking for her BLP to be deleted. She's also famous enough that there's little chance of a WR thread challenging for a high Google rank... though in this particular case, it would be better if it did.

Still, it's early days yet, and for all we know, she might yet contact us and ask us to "do something." That's extraordinarily unlikely, but we'll see what happens!

Hmpf. Her attorney, "Former Federal judge" Joe Kendall, blew it.
If I was filing this, I would have attached the WMF as codefendants, and
included in the claim information about how WMF members also have
Wikipedia bios---all of which are protected and patrolled. "Unequal
treatment under the law" or somesuch. There MUST be an obscure federal
statute or precedent that could be used to evade or short-circuit Sec 230.
Even if that claim gets thrown out, it's still part of the public record.

Maybe he could "Be Bold" and complain on the basis that the ADA requires
that "public facilities" must be equally accessible to all, and that this anonymous IP
address had an "unfair advantage" by knowing how to edit anonymously, and perform
sneaky world-wide defamation. There have been precedents, usually involving access
to websites by "handicapped" people. They could always try to stretch the definition....
wouldn't be the first or last time.

This will be a test case. It will cost a lot of money and (probably) accomplish very little,
chasing an IP address by itself isn't the best policy. If Mr. Kendall is smart, he'll amend the
complaint with the above, plus more examples of Wikipedia defamation. Gets me that
someone with the $$$ to file a defamation lawsuit is foolish enough to get stuck in this
morass.

She might have to fire Kendall. There's plenty of juicy stuff on WR alone to bolster
a legal claim against a WP editor of this general type. He should have done more research.

So, lack of computer literacy is now a "handicap" that should have legal protection, so that any site that's in any way harder to use by people who aren't experts in how to use it is a violation of the law? I certainly hope the courts never buy anything like that.

That's one of the problems, though. Long term geeks like you, Dan, have had years to hone your skills - in order to compile lists of "Wikiwhiners" on your website to degrade people who have already been victims of Wikipedia's geeks-turns-bad scenario. Non geek victims are left to fend for themselves with little or no experience in the medium.

At least when the Review goes on the attack, against Jimbo for example, it is challenging someone who is more than capable of using the internet to defend himself.

That's one reason why Brandt has garnered respect here. Because he used the tools of the geek against the malicious geeks themselves, and in doing so, has struck blows for normal people who would find such a task impossible.

I think they are proceeding according to what the law prescribes they should do. The defendant is most rightly the person who made those edits from the IP address. If somebody walked into a Starbucks with a bomb strapped to them, threatening to kill everyone if they don't do jumping jacks and recite the Lord's Prayer, the first entity that law enforcement should go after would not be the Starbucks enterprise.

Let them go this course. When it (probably) turns out that they fail to identify the IP perp, then they can begin to realize that the real problem here is the "attractive nuisance" state of being in which the Wikimedia Foundation enjoys maintaining Wikipedia. Then the sparks might fly. It would be best if they open a new suit at that time, and make it a class action.

But this one isn't a Whiner... she's a Crier!

I agree that the lawsuit is interesting on its own terms, even if the Foundation isn't involved. I have an ATT DSL account in Texas, and I know that a two-minute power-down cycle on the DSL modem will get you a new IP address about 90 percent of the time. It's interesting to me whether ATT keeps careful records of who has what IP address at what precise point in time. I've been in the habit of getting a new IP address once per day for over three years now. Is this just wishful thinking on my part?

Imagine if ATT says that their records are inadequate to pinpoint the perp? All hell would break loose. On the one hand, ATT lets the National Security Agency monitor their data streams. On the other, they don't know which customer had a particular IP last August 12. It would mean that there is absolutely zero accountability, and the courts are left powerless because the law hasn't kept up with the digital revolution. Judges don't like to feel powerless...

Another interesting point: I cannot find the offending IP address or the offending edits in the edit history of that bio. Were they oversighted? Did Ms. Crier request this? What if Ms. Crier did not request this, and instead had authorized a cybersleuth to investigate the IP address, and then this cybersleuth reported that the evidence from Wikipedia is missing? Wouldn't the Foundation be required to "unoversight" everything that's relevant to that IP address and provide it to the plaintiff, or stand accused of withholding evidence? What would Mike Godwin do? I know that Brad Patrick would cough it up, but Godwin has some weird ideas about these things that he inherited from his days at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Yes, this case deserves to go forward, because already it's interesting.

As usual, the comments are also getting "interesting". Does anybody know what Brazil interview that Jeff Merkey is mentioning here in connection to Jimmy Wales? I'd like to read the actual article to make up my own mind.

The wiki kultists are in fine form here as well. i wonder if "Um Yeah" isn't somebody who we all know and love?

Video of the interview is here. There's a Portuguese translator speaking over Jimmy.
http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/folha/videoca...38u467040.shtml


Here's the story as translated by google.
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=e...num=5&ct=result

I agree that the case touches on interesting issues and because of the nature of the offended party it is possible that this will bring many of the discovery issues to public light. I believe that ISPs are pretty good about retaining logs and being aware of just who is assigned what address at any point in time. This might be the case to bring to light any weaknesses on that end. Websites (including Wikipeda) have log purging policies that have always seemed to me outrageous or even bordering on obstruction. 90 days, 60 days or even 30 days. This in a context where they give anyone access to say anything and the limitation on defamation action, although short, is usually one year. I never understood this.

It will also be interesting to see whether any oversight people or WMF spokespeople will be called to testify as to the contents of any potentially oversighted edits, or to demonstrate those edits in court, and whether the WMF will cover that person's expenses.

Hypothetically, suppose "Adam", who is an indigent college student, oversights an edit in response to a complaint. Would the court accept an affidavit from Adam regarding the content of the edit (maybe with a screenshot), or would the court want to see the oversight tool demonstrated in court and to directly view the oversighted content? If the latter, would the court accept testimony from "Eve", a paid representative of the Foundation, who can log in with oversight permission and demonstrate the interface, or would the court require Adam to testify? And if Adam is called to testify, who would pay his expenses?

thanks, Tarantino! that's a good read!

They couldn't, you know... provide it in a way other than making it available on a public website? There are people here on WR who get offended when they are not able to inspect the evidence themselves of a case that has nothing to do with them - demanding that the harm to someone else be continued so they can satisfy their own curiosity. I'd considered you to be above that sort of thing.

I believe that it might be possible to recover "oversighted" edits without the assistance of people with permissions who might not be trustworthy or completely forthcoming with some deeper level forensic examination that might involve taking possession of the actual servers as evidence. It might even be possible to recover purged logs. Of course this would be a part of discovery that would occur after someone has brought suit and the complaint had been tested by motions to dismiss or no-cause showing that the complaining party had a substantial reason for needing the information. Anybody know more about the forensics?

Assuming that edits were oversighted, the simplest way to deal with it would seem to be to call as a witness someone with oversight capability, give them a computer and an internet connection, and have them log in and show the oversighted diffs in open court, in front of the judge, parties, and court reporter.

Or, there must be some kind of recognized computer forensic experts around. When you have a divorce case that turns on infidelity proven by email, or a child p0rn case, the judge and jury do not themselves examine the files on the hard drive or the server logs personally, they hear testimony of an expert. Presumably the parties could hire an expert witness who could fly to Florida or SF, examine the oversight logs and SQL database, (who would have enough expertise to know that things weren't being tampered with), then testify in court.