Wikipedia operates under the laws in Florida. Somewhere in the system it explicitely states that.
The Star Wars boy could only sue under two jurisdictions. Either the one where he lives, or the one where Wikipedia headquarters lives. He can't choose to sue anywhere in the world. It would probably set a legal precedent were some court in the US to decide that merely "naming" a person is harassment or whatever.
Yes of course "mere reporting" can be libel. But naming a person cannot be construed as "libel". Unless of course their name is "Ugly fart head". Privacy laws (which is a very vague term) do not cover public databases sources. A newspaper is a public database.
The cat is already out of the bag Ian, merely reporting on the case cannot be construed as "lynching" or "punching". If you report on a murder are you murdering the person? If you report on a fire, are you setting the fire? If you report on fraud, conspiracy, rape, are you doing those actions? No you are not.
A reporter shows what's going on, they don't hide from it on some moral high ground while wearing blinders. Our job is to show the world as it is, not as we wish it were by hiding from it.
Will Johnson
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2008/6/23 WJhonson@aol.com:
Wikipedia operates under the laws in Florida. Somewhere in the system it explicitely states that.
The Star Wars boy could only sue under two jurisdictions. Either the one where he lives, or the one where Wikipedia headquarters lives.
The wikipedia could be sued and lose anywhere in the world, it's up to the court whether they accept it. One UK company- spamhaus was hit with an $11 million award to a spammer in an American court. It turned out that they were able to ignore it, but it was a close thing.
If you report on fraud, conspiracy, rape, are you doing those actions? No you are not.
In the UK it is very normal for rape cases to have a reporting block on the victims name. And the Star Wars kid *was* a victim (not a rape victim, but still...)
Our job is to show the world as it is, not as we wish it were by hiding from it.
Outed any rape victims lately?
Nice morals.
Will Johnson
2008/6/23 WJhonson@aol.com:
The Star Wars boy could only sue under two jurisdictions. Either the one where he lives, or the one where Wikipedia headquarters lives. He can't choose to sue anywhere in the world. It would probably set a legal precedent were some court in the US to decide that merely "naming" a person is harassment or whatever.
Sadly, no; he can "choose" to sue in a number of jurisdictions which a) interpret the act of defamation as having occurred in the location where it was read, not the location where it was originally published; and b) percieve him as having standing to be defamed. This isn't a new concept; we even have an article on it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libel_tourism
Sure, WMF - or any random editor - is fairly safe from this; but the fact remains it happens. Repeatedly asserting that this isn't the case really isn't helping your argument, here.
A reporter shows what's going on, they don't hide from it on some moral high ground while wearing blinders. Our job is to show the world as it is, not as we wish it were by hiding from it.
Our job is to WRITE AN ENCYCLOPEDIA.
Andrew Gray wrote:
2008/6/23 WJhonson@aol.com:
A reporter shows what's going on, they don't hide from it on some moral high ground while wearing blinders. Our job is to show the world as it is, not as we wish it were by hiding from it.
Our job is to WRITE AN ENCYCLOPEDIA.
And we're doing a pretty poor job of it if we DELIBERATELY OMIT RELEVANT, NPOV INFORMATION.
NPOV, ultimately, is the best "moral code" I think we can hope for. Both in terms of general acceptance and in terms of balancing the occasionally-competing needs of being informative and not being "evil."
2008/6/24 Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca:
Andrew Gray wrote:
Our job is to WRITE AN ENCYCLOPEDIA.
And we're doing a pretty poor job of it if we DELIBERATELY OMIT RELEVANT, NPOV INFORMATION.
NPOV, ultimately, is the best "moral code" I think we can hope for. Both in terms of general acceptance and in terms of balancing the occasionally-competing needs of being informative and not being "evil."
It's not clear. Perhaps editors need a hippocratic oath.
Information can do harm, both accurate and inaccurate information.