An injunction was sought against WMF to force it to remove content from the french wikipedia, that the plaintiffs deemed defamatory and infringing on their privacy. The plaintiffs also sought 63,000 Euros in damages, and requested from the WMF to provide contact information of the anonymous editor responsible for the edit.
The court stated that the Foundation is a hosting provider in the sense of article 6 of the LCEN ("Loi pour la confiance dans l'économie numérique") and as such has no obligation to keep watch on the content that it hosts and can not be held accountable for the content added by contributors to the encyclopedia.
The same law states that hosting providers must remove illegal content when notified it exists. In this case, the dispute centred largely around when the Foundation was notified. The plaintiffs believed they had notified the Foundation via e-mail, although the Foundation has no record of the e-mails having been received. The court did not consider e-mails sufficient notification.
Also, the court stated that when a hosting provider is notified about libelous content, it only has to remove content that is obviously libelous.
In this case, the lawsuit was filed before the Foundation was officially alerted. As soon as the Foundation received official notification, it immediately removed the content in question.
The court also stated that once the Foundation was notified of the problem, it acted swiftly and removed the content. As a result, WMF won the lawsuit and will not have to pay for any damages. The request to provide the contact information of the editor responsible for the edit was also dismissed.
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This is very good news for the Foundation. We maintain that WMF is not the publisher, owner or monitor on any of the Wikipedia projects (and obviously not the WP FR). We are pleased to have our position upheld and supported in a court of law.
In general, it is extremely important that we get used to quickly remove any defamatory content, or privacy-invasive content, as soon as it is brought to our attention. "We", in this case, mean "all of us". Editors of Wikipedia, volunteers on OTRS, staff members. The more we care about people requests of this type, the more we will be recognized as a community caring about the truth and caring about the individual. Whilst we must not fall into easy censorship and let ourselves be pressured to remove information which should be available to humanship just because it does not please a couple of people, it is also important to remember that we are a top 10 website, widely read everywhere and that any erroneous information on people may have huge consequences in their private and professional lives.
Being available to answer readers concerns *is* important. There is no gain for anyone to get in a court to solve such issues (except for lawyers in fact). Most conflicts of that sort could be solved through communication.
Whilst the current case was not strictly speaking a biography page, it involved living people. So, my email is also a reminder that policies such as the "biographies of living people" in the english wikipedia are very helpful to both protect our projects and help making sure our content is as reliable as possible.
Let us seek to avoid violence when violence can be avoided :-)
I suggest that every project get a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons And consider building such policies in the near future.
A few links for more information * http://wikimedia.fr/index.php/Communiqu%C3%A9s_de_presse/La_Wikimedia_Founda... (in french) * http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Le_Bistro/2_novembre_2007#Proc.C... (in french) * http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_policy (in english)
Florence Devouard
The following firm represented the Foundation in this lawsuit:
HUGOT AVOCATS www.hugot.fr