Slim Virgin wrote:
On 3/30/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 30/03/07, Slim Virgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
And the assets of all the individuals involved would be pursued, as would the assets of the new foundation. It would get very messy, would cost a fortune, and would go on for years if someone determined and
Um, before you speak in quite such apocalyptic terms of the legal d00m that shall rain down upon Wikimedia if it continues its present course ... has the Foundation actually spoken on the subject?
I believe the last I heard from an actual Florida lawyer on the subject was that we would most likely *not* be promptly liable in this manner. Which is why the golfer claiming defamation went after the owner of the IP the libel was posted from - he knew damn well that suing the Foundation directly would fall at the first hurdle.
If you wish to continue putting forward this view of likely legal apocalypse, please substantiate it in a manner that answers Brad's previous posting on the subject.
The issues will be judged by the courts, not by lawyers, and a lot will depend on how much money the plaintiff is willing to spend arguing his case, as well as which jurisdictions he initiates the complaint in, what his complaint is, and what he wants. All I'm arguing is that we shouldn't rest on our laurels.
What we should be asking is whether what we're doing is reasonable. Is it reasonable to host pages about living persons that can be edited by any anonymous person of any age in the world, when we have no clear way of patrolling those pages to make sure anything negative or unfair is removed immediately? And when, even when such pages are spotted, getting rid of the bad stuff often involves a giant fuss, with admins unsure of what action they're allowed to take, because if they go too far they risk being desysopped?
My argument is that the man on the Clapham Omnibus would not find this reasonable.
If you want me to address Brad's previous posting, I'll certainly try if you show me where it is.
Sarah
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I don't know Florida Law - but if my knowledge of UK law would say that if harm is a reasonably foreseeable consequence of an action, and it is reasonable to take steps to prevent it, then a failure to do so is culpable negligence. We know the harm, we could do something, but we don't.
But I say again, legal concerns are not the biggest worry.
There is publicity. How long before the media get wind of a case of some innocent person who gets screwed by Wikipedia? Stressful reputation-wrecking libels lie for weeks - John Doe eventually sees them and complains - the complaint lies for days on OTRS - the material is removed - but nothing credible done to prevent its replacement three days later. - Then how do we fancy the headline: "Wikipedia-induced suicide: in a final note John Doe blames the on-line encyclopedia"?
Then forget about the publicity and ask yourself about the ethics of all of this. As a byproduct of the encyclopedia, we are hurting real people, can we not do more to prevent it?