Quoting Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net:
Quoting Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri/Legaldispute
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
Um, Fred, I'm confused by this statement. The actual malice standard is a standard which is only relevant in the United States and only the standard for public figures. William Pietri's proposed template doesn't address what country or standard is precisely in use. And Pietri's template doesn't even address that the issue is libel. So what precisely are you saying?
From our article on the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act of 1974:
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
Ok, so there is a malice standard in Britain (I think that's really interesting that the standard in the US is that you need to prove malice if the claim is false and the person is a public figure whereas malice is sufficient reason in Britain even if the claim is true. Ah well, at some point either the British subjects or surrounding countries are going to tell the British government that they won't put up with their standards of libel. But that's not today so moving on...) Ok, so unless any Wikipedian or the many newspapers published the results with malice we don't have much of an issue. I doubt that di Stefano is going to be able to prove that by any stretch of the imagination. What we need to be concerned about is the possibility of a lawsuit, far more than whether or not he can win it.