On 15/11/2007, William Pietri <william(a)scissor.com> wrote: Well I would but Fred Bauder just deleted the talk page. Still here goes. Reports from three continents over a period of over a decade show that in 1986 Mr Di Stefano was convicted of fraud in the UK. Souces include the Scotsman the Guardian the Independent a newspaper from new zealand (Di Stefano went there in the early 90s but wasn't allowed to stay) and US court records (Di Stefano was removed from the US mid 90s no idea why he was there). The other question is is Mr Di Stefano actually a lawyer. By normal sourcing standards we could get as far as probably (no really solid evidence that he is but the evidence against is mostly of the newspaper X couldn't find any records type). By the sourcing standards being applied by Fred to the fraud conviction thing we can't really say that he is. Anyway against that we have what? Well the short version is that the information isn't publicly avialble. Something is going on through the back channels and Jimbo is involved. Private eye (oh yes just to complicate matters they decided to report on the thing) guessed at legal threats and are probably right (mind you if you are Private eye legal threats are never going to be that far out of your mind) but no detail of those threats. The person you might want to ask is SqueakBox. -- geni

On 15/11/2007, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote: No one appears to be denying the the case happened. The debate is was it the same person. According to the New Zealand Press Association it appears we are not the first to ask that and the New Zealand authorities were in a position to get an answer: http://nz.news.yahoo.com/071030/3/287t.html -- geni

On Nov 15, 2007, at 1:27 AM, Steve Bennett wrote: Excellent question. The answer is "we should moderate him." I have done so. -Phil

Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote: And for those wondering, I believe the official Wikimedia Foundation position is that editors are indeed on their own when it comes to the legal consequences of any edits they make. Even if those edits are obviously what we'd consider good edits. There's some sound legal reasoning behind this, and I think they've made the right choice, but it was still a surprise to me when I learned it. My guess is that if there were a reasonably good test case, there would be a fair bit of public support and possibly donations and/or pro bono legal assistance. But even with that a lawsuit like this would still be a substantial burden, probably a multi-year one, for the editor involved. This does leave us with the risk of having articles that have been whitewashed due to legal threats. That worries me, so I've proposed a warning template for articles in that condition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri/Legaldispute But I don't think anybody has used it yet. William -- William Pietri <william(a)scissor.com> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri

which contains the language: "Content has been removed from this article because of a dispute over the legality of its inclusion, and so the article may not meet normal Wikipedia standards. Please see the discussion on the talk page." Raises some interesting questions. "Normal Wikipedia standards" permit violations of Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons? Do not take malice into account? I don't think so. Focus on that word "malice"; that is the legal black hole which will produce serious liability. Fred

joshua.zelinsky(a)yale.edu wrote: For what it is worth, that is entirely intentional. If somebody is threatening to sue us, I wanted to avoid inflaming the situation by saying anything that might upset them further. I also didn't want something that would hint at the details of the problem, because many ways of stating the details might be equally disputed by somebody involved. Really, the only goal is to let readers know that they are not receiving a good article, as with {{Unbalanced}} or {{POV}}. And like those warnings, we don't need to say which way we think the article might be bent. We just have to let readers know that they're not getting what they get out of most of our articles: a quick, balanced take on some topic of interest to them. William -- William Pietri <william(a)scissor.com> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri

David Gerard wrote: I think this is slightly different than a "chilling effects" tag. Slightly broader. It's meant to cover when we chicken out on something, but also the period when the Foundation has put an WP:OFFICE-ish hold on editing something while they think things through. Unfortunately, at least from my perspective, it's easy to mistake each for the other. There has been relatively little clarity about when we cross that line, as the WP:OFFICE holds I've noticed seem to take a very long time and have very little visible progress. Once we've ironed out objections to the tags here, I'll follow your suggestion and run it by those two folks. Thanks for the suggestion. William P.S. Although impishness is a big part of my character, I'm not looking to make trouble with this one. Although the necessity irks me, I accept that the WMF's legal budget is not infinite, and we have to pick our battles carefully. -- William Pietri <william(a)scissor.com> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri

On 15/11/2007, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net> wrote: UK law Fred not US. Costs are generally paid by the losing side if they can afford them. -- geni

On 15/11/2007, Sam Blacketer <sam.blacketer(a)googlemail.com> wrote: The statement was made from the POV of the defendant so paying money into the court doesn't really apply. -- geni

Rehabilitation Act and actions for libel under British law According to Law and the Media, a reference work relating to British media law, if a person can prove that the details of a spent conviction were published with malice, then the publisher may be subject to libel damages regardless of whether the details were true or not. This applies where the publisher is relying on a defence of qualified privilege or justification. As a result, although British media remain free to publish the details of spent convictions, provided they are not motivated by malice, they generally avoid mention of such convictions after rehabilitation.[1] To apply this to the case at issue, the sentence, if there was one, may have been for over 30 months, and the conviction may have been overturned on appeal. So this particular law may not apply at all. However, notice the English use of the concept of malice. Fred

On 15/11/2007, joshua.zelinsky(a)yale.edu <joshua.zelinsky(a)yale.edu> wrote: It's not all bad. The UK libel law is considered likely incompatible with EU rules on freedom of speech - which are nothing like as good as the US First Amendment, but certainly better than what we have. Unfortunately, making this stick will require people spending a lot of money to take it through the courts first. - d.

On 15/11/2007, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net> wrote: I do. Not on the issue we are debating but there have been a few clearly false rumors floating around. Our standards don't do a very good job then. Check the last sentence of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Randi#Eldon_Byrd and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Stephen_Barrett There are other cases. -- geni

On 15/11/2007, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net> wrote: I'm not sure how well you would do trying to argue that a wikipedia editor gets qualified privilege. Somehow I doubt you would get very far. -- geni

Ray Saintonge wrote: Nope. I haven't placed it in an article. I agree that lack of promotion is part of why it hasn't been used. For me it's a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation. If somebody would like to use it on an article, I'm glad to move it to template space. I'd like to follow David Gerard's suggestion to run the phrasing by our PR and legal advisors at WMF first, so give me a few days of warning. William -- William Pietri <william(a)scissor.com> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri

On Thu, 15 Nov 2007 04:08:55 -0500, "Alec Conroy" <alecmconroy(a)gmail.com> wrote: You think. But it's not your money. And do believe that I have already gone down the "according to X" route. I am not actually a clueless newbie. Guy (JzG) -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

On 11/15/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman(a)spamcop.net> wrote: Well, up to a point, Lord Copper. I don't have access to OTRS but can make an educated guess as to what might have been written there. This is a public forum and so we should be as guarded here as on the article talk page, but there are two issues of dispute which are not represented in the article at present.One of them is more than a rumour. The other is more speculative. The first is the conviction of a John di Stefano in March 1986 for fraud, for which there are multiple impeccable sources; there are also many reliable sources who say this person is Giovanni di Stefano. Giovanni di Stefano says that the conviction was overturned on appeal. The existence of a successful appeal has been disputed. Then there is the more vexed question of whether Giovanni di Stefano is an 'avvocato'. There is a 2002 court judgment which found in his favour on the basis that he was. Subsequently there is a 2004 newspaper article which has cast doubt on it. The problem with the point Giovanni di Stefano makes, as relayed by Guy, is that it is possible to work out a way in which someone might have been able to practice law in England with a degree of privileged access given to those presumed to be qualified to practise, and yet have an outstanding conviction. It requires a combination of failing to check credentials and incompetence by the authorities, but it is not impossible. The problem so far as editors of the article are concerned is that it is not protected, not under office examination, and yet no guidelines have been given to editors about the limits. Is any mention of a 1986 conviction prohibited? If so, then it would be better to say so given that indefinite blocks are being threatened. There seem to be invisible lines beyond which one cannot step. It would be helpful if they became visible. -- Sam Blacketer London E15

Quoting Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman(a)spamcop.net>et>: This really shouldn't be being discussed on an open list. That said, the response to that is he should be going after the very many sources which do have the claim, and suing them. We're simply using the reliable sources (including a United States federal court decision).

Quoting William Pietri <william(a)scissor.com>om>: Yes, yes and yes. In general, once there are serious legal threats in play it almost never makes sense to discuss them in the open. This is simple pragmatism. There are many possible risks and not enough gain.

On 15/11/2007, William Pietri <william(a)scissor.com> wrote: Depends. For a UK based editor writing about litigous people in the UK, my advice (as a somewhat knowledgeable non-lawyer) is: avoid. Leave the hell alone. Let the Americans deal with it, we have many good BLP editors in the US. Don't even TOUCH the article lest you get some liability stuck to you. It sucks, but it's reality under the UK's horrible horrible libel laws - d.

On 15/11/2007, William Pietri <william(a)scissor.com> wrote: The problem is that quite a lot of courts are deciding that they have world wide jurisdiction. How much do you know about Japaneses civil law? -- geni

On 15/11/2007, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net> wrote: This, by the way, is why I actively avoid editing certain controversial UK living bios, and why Wikimedia UK has a form letter regretting its lack of any control over the content and referring people to info(a)wikimedia.org. - d.