[WikiEN-l] Bans and online/offline reputation (was Re: Follow-up on my Ban from Wikipedia (part 3))

[Anthony]

On 9/11/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The bar for libel of non-public figures is very low if I understand it
> > correctly.  And that bar varies greatly from jurisdiction to
> > jurisdiction.  In some jurisdictions, truth is not a defense.  And
> > then there are right to privacy laws, which are often intermixed with
> > libel laws, and to which truth is not a defense.  Further, I'm sure
> > there's lots of stuff on the arb com "evidence" pages which are
> > downright false.
>
> Where is truth not a defence?

Read [[libel]].  "In some systems, however, notably the Philippines
truth alone is not a defense."

Also, "Statements of opinion that cannot be proven true or false will
likely need to apply some other kind of defense."  I thought in the US
statements of opinion were always non-libelous, but now I'm not even
sure that much is true.  Maybe this is where the public figure/private
figure comes into play?

"User X is a troll."  That's probably an opinion that can't be proven
true or false, and surely some of the arb com "evidence" pages contain
that.  Would that statement be considered libelous in any
jurisdiction?  I don't know enough about the law to say for sure.

> By my understanding, libel is defined as
> publishing damaging lies about someone. Privacy is another matter
> entirely, and truth isn't a defence there.

I seem to remember reading US laws where right to privacy and libel of
non-public figures were treated together.

> However, for something to
> be a violation of privacy (at least under UK law) you have to have a
> reasonable expectation of privacy (eg. someone takes a picture of you
> sunbathing naked in your garden and sells it to a tabloid, that's a
> violation of privacy, if they take a similar picture of you on a nude
> beach, it isn't). There is no reasonable expectation of privacy on the
> internet. The only way privacy law can become relevant to Wikipedia is
> if the person publishing the information knows the person in question
> in real life (which includes stalkers) - we do have problems with
> those kinds of cases, but not very often.
>