Stevertigo wrote:
>Brion:What
would such a policy need to say that the Neutral Point of View
>
policy does not?
Well, Daniel once again has got the feel for the issue... that is that NPOV
and being sued for libel are two different things... I can understand what
youre getting at Brion.. that they are related, with regard to an editors
point of view, But still, we here are involved in making policy and crafting
some general ways of dealing with related (even outside in the legal world)
issues so that later, when these things might come up, they've been thought
through somewhat beforehand.
Do we really need to get carried away with a lot of detailed policy
about libel? Common sense guidelines should be quite enough to cover
most situations. The problem with a lot of written laws is that people
get caught up in the letter of the law instead of the spirit of the law.
NPOV is a good general policy.. but when Libel really
means someone trying
to edit Wikipedia through a legal interface, rather than the normal one.
Here, of course, as I've said on the T:W:Libel page, theres a burden of
responsibility automatically placed on someone to make a change themselves,
if something is incorrect... Im sure this has been said before, in similar
words.. So, I dont think WP has much to worry about at all... If its true,
and the tribe sticks to it... and yet they want to sue... fine... That would
be one of the easier cases to argue... lawyer or not...
Yes. When a libel is published in a print medium it's much more
difficult to correct the information. For an annual publication it will
take a year before a retraction can be published. Here an offended
party can raise his objection immediately, and proximally to the alleged
offence. A front page libel won't have to wait for a retraction at the
bottom of page 88 in some future issue. An offended party has a duty to
mitigate; if he's aware of the libel he can't just let it run on in the
hopes of increasing the damages that he might collect later.
So, yes its an issue.. and having a foundation would
inevitably mean a
policy with regard to being sued. And whatever policy that is.. simply by
nature of being solidified into some guide, would have some minimal bearing
on the freedoms Wikipedians enjoy in editing articles.
Sometimes the best insurance against stupid libel suits is not to have
any assets. The foundation's only assets are likely to be computer
hardware and a bank account with a limited amount of current operating
funds. The information would never be an "asset" in the accounting
sense, since it has no monetary value. In the worst case scenario a
mirror site in another country could take over the editing functions.
Funny enough, a major Libel case - Richard Perle is
going to sue Seymour
Hirsch (and The New Yorker) for his column... not here in the US, but in
England... go figure... the laws there are apparently more favorable to him,
despite the fact that neither lives there, and the circulation there is a
sliver of what it is here. -Steve
In many other issues jurisdiction shoppors prefer the courts in some US
states which give higher awards. When the Process Church sued the
author of "Helter Skelter" for his allegations that they had somehow
been involved with Charlie Manson they lost their case in the U.S. but
won it in England.
Ec