On Fri, Jan 2, 2009 at 8:42 AM, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
2009/1/2 toddmallen toddmallen@gmail.com:
Actually, I do see it as a false dichotomy. We're presenting it as "rights" against publication of verifiable, reliable, already-published material. These rights do not exist. I do not have a right to tell you that you may not talk about me or publish information about me, provided what you say is true.
If I understand you correctly, you would be (theoretically) fine with me creating a wikipedia page of you and filling it with true information about you, including your social security number, bank account number, telephone number, mothers maiden name, address, entire sexual history, provided all of this can be said to be correct by a notable source and referenced correctly?
I'm assuming not, at least I hope not.
But in practice then, legally and morally and by wiki policy and guidelines, these rights to demand that information be removed do exist for certain classes of information.
So I think what we're really discussing here *which* kinds of personal information may be published in the wikipedia and under what circumstances.
-- -Ian Woollard
We live in an imperfectly imperfect world. Life in a perfectly imperfect world would be much better.
The problem with this statement is that the fact that few of these things are known publicly and the inappropriateness of publishing them in Wikipedia are correlated. My telephone number is already on the internet where any idiot with ten seconds to spare can find it (http://www.411.ca) which also tells you my street address. The rest of these things simply aren't available, which is reflective of the fact that publishing them is seen as inappropriate -
Cheers Brian