Hi,
I'm a sysop in HuWiki and we have the following problem. Some revert warriors took up the habit of logging out during a revert war to get around the 3RR (we have the same 3RR rule as EnWiki).
So basically they are using their logged out IP as their sockpuppet for revert warring.
When they were blocked since it was obvious from the anon users' edit history and from the steps in the revert war that the anon and logged in user was the same person, they started attacking the blocking sysops for this, referring to their legal rights to privacy.
Also, for exactly the same reason, there is a collection of IP addresses used by one of the revert warriors on a user page, so that anyone can see where he edited from, even when he was not logged in.
The revert warrior and his friend claims that such a collection of IP addresses is a violation of privacy rights and Wikipedia's published privacy policy.
So my questions:
Is it against the privacy policy or the law to:
1a) publicly claim that an anon user is the same as a logged in User when they take part in policy violations such as 3RR
1b) publicly claim that they are the same person when they haven't violated any policies yet
2) publish a list of IP addresses assumed to belong to a user who have already violated policy (3RR, personal attacks)
Thanks, nyenyec
On 7/1/05, Nyenyec N nyenyec@gmail.com wrote:
Is it against the privacy policy or the law to:
1a) publicly claim that an anon user is the same as a logged in User when they take part in policy violations such as 3RR
1b) publicly claim that they are the same person when they haven't violated any policies yet
- publish a list of IP addresses assumed to belong to a user who have
already violated policy (3RR, personal attacks)
It is certainly not against the law in the United States, which is where the servers are located. It may be against the law in other jurisdictions (I know some European countries have perfectly ridiculous data privacy laws). Claiming that someone has violated policies runs the risk of a defamation claim; again, it's very unlikely that such a claim would withstand scrutiny in the United States.
It is my impression, however, that there is no unfair disclosure, since the conclusions being reached about a user's IP address are being reached solely by deduction from that user's public behavior. For there to be a privacy violation, it would have to involve access to private information (such as the internal data about user's IP address that is only available to developers). There can't be a privacy violation when the determination of an individual's IP address is based entirely on public behavior; that would be like arguing that I have a privacy right in my phone number after I publicly announce what my phone number is.
Kelly
Nyenyec N (nyenyec@gmail.com) [050702 12:26]:
Is it against the privacy policy or the law to: 1a) publicly claim that an anon user is the same as a logged in User when they take part in policy violations such as 3RR 1b) publicly claim that they are the same person when they haven't violated any policies yet 2) publish a list of IP addresses assumed to belong to a user who have already violated policy (3RR, personal attacks)
On en:, we do any of these. If I do an IP check and see that a user is using an IP as a sockpuppet, then too bad for them.
Using an IP for violating policy is taken to mean you've lost your right to privacy on that matter. You don't get to hide behind it.
- d.