In a message dated 6/22/2008 3:22:58 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, ian.woollard@gmail.com writes:
So far as I am aware the guy's name was placed in the public domain without his request, and this has been repeated by a bunch of publications. He also received a large award in an out of court settlement, and could possibly have a case against the wikipedia if they chose to *perpetuate* it (the wikipedia may not *ever* go away, but other publications tend to fade).>> ------------------------------------- This is not correct. Once the genie is out-of-the-bottle there is no law under which you can "sue" to silence it. "Naming" someone is not harassment, it is reporting. If you think it is, name one case, any case at all, where this theory has been successful in a finalized court proceeding. In the US.
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2008/6/22 WJhonson@aol.com:
"Naming" someone is not harassment, it is reporting. If you think it is, name one case, any case at all, where this theory has been successful in a finalized court proceeding. In the US.
I'm not sure it would apply to the Star Wars Boy, but the libel laws in Britain are quite interesting though, with truth not necessarily being a perfect defence. 'Mere' reporting *has* been construed as libel. And there's privacy laws in other countries, I think France also. The servers are in the US, but not necessarily all assets are.
The bottom line is that anybody who thinks that this guys name needs to go in the article for 'NPOV' reasons needs to look at why that is. Ultimately it's similar logic to a lynching- if everybody else is punching the guy, is the neutral point of view necessarily more punching?
Ian Woollard wrote:
2008/6/22 WJhonson@aol.com:
"Naming" someone is not harassment, it is reporting. If you think it is, name one case, any case at all, where this theory has been successful in a finalized court proceeding. In the US.
I'm not sure it would apply to the Star Wars Boy, but the libel laws in Britain are quite interesting though, with truth not necessarily being a perfect defence. 'Mere' reporting *has* been construed as libel. And there's privacy laws in other countries, I think France also. The servers are in the US, but not necessarily all assets are.
And in certain countries "defaming Islam" or "defaming the Communist Party" and so forth are against the law, too. Attempting to make Wikipedia compliant with every legal regime on Earth would be impossible, and quite counterproductive.
I'm particularly tired of the appeal to British libel law. If they're really so cucko-bananas about this sort of thing probably the only truly safe course of action is to pull Wikimedia's assets out of that country, running around and trying to quash anything that might conceivably be sued over is bound to fail eventually.
The bottom line is that anybody who thinks that this guys name needs to go in the article for 'NPOV' reasons needs to look at why that is. Ultimately it's similar logic to a lynching- if everybody else is punching the guy, is the neutral point of view necessarily more punching?
This is a silly analogy, and makes rather nasty implications about the motives of those who are arguing to include the name. Do you really think we want to "punch" this guy? Why?
2008/6/23 Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca:
Ian Woollard wrote:
I'm not sure it would apply to the Star Wars Boy, but the libel laws in Britain are quite interesting though, with truth not necessarily being a perfect defence. 'Mere' reporting *has* been construed as libel. And there's privacy laws in other countries, I think France also. The servers are in the US, but not necessarily all assets are.
And in certain countries "defaming Islam" or "defaming the Communist Party" and so forth are against the law, too. Attempting to make Wikipedia compliant with every legal regime on Earth would be impossible, and quite counterproductive.
Right, but there's a world of difference between making good-faith efforts at accuracy and so forth and simply not caring at all, and judges and people usually respect that to some degree. In the UK, reporting that 'such and such' said X has resulted in damages being assigned even if there was no implication that it was necessarily true (this would be in the context of a newspaper article, where the newspaper was making money from repeating false rumours).
I'm particularly tired of the appeal to British libel law.
Oh dear.
The bottom line is that anybody who thinks that this guys name needs to go in the article for 'NPOV' reasons needs to look at why that is. Ultimately it's similar logic to a lynching- if everybody else is punching the guy, is the neutral point of view necessarily more punching?
This is a silly analogy, and makes rather nasty implications about the motives of those who are arguing to include the name.
Yes, it does, doesn't it.
But NPOV doesn't have much to counterbalance POVs that are in the ascendency. Sometimes you find that most of the expressed POVs are one thing, but a cool look at the situation gives another POV. This Star Wars guy *was* put in hospital over this, and in that sense, I'm not so sure that it is such a poor analogy.
Do you really think we want to "punch" this guy? Why?
Not necessarily, but, well, you haven't argued to the contrary yet.
Ian Woollard wrote:
I'm particularly tired of the appeal to British libel law.
Oh dear.
Although it's not unanimous, there *is* a reasonably strong consensus that Wikipedia is not going to compromise NPOV for UK libel law, any more than it'll compromise NPOV to try to get unbanned in mainland China. Even many of the UK editors agree with that position. Basically the UK is nuts on this point, and we can't reasonably follow their law. For example, it's illegal in some cases to report accurately that someone was convicted of a crime and later pardoned -- but any reasonable biography of a public figure who was convicted of a crime and later pardoned must of course mention that fact.
-Mark
Delirium wrote:
Ian Woollard wrote:
I'm particularly tired of the appeal to British libel law.
Oh dear.
Although it's not unanimous, there *is* a reasonably strong consensus that Wikipedia is not going to compromise NPOV for UK libel law, any more than it'll compromise NPOV to try to get unbanned in mainland China. Even many of the UK editors agree with that position. Basically the UK is nuts on this point, and we can't reasonably follow their law. For example, it's illegal in some cases to report accurately that someone was convicted of a crime and later pardoned -- but any reasonable biography of a public figure who was convicted of a crime and later pardoned must of course mention that fact.
Without being able to report the pardon we would be left with only those places who published before the pardon was granted. That strikes me as tantamount to forbidding NPOV.
Ec
On 23/06/2008, WJhonson@aol.com WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
In a message dated 6/22/2008 3:22:58 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, ian.woollard@gmail.com writes:
So far as I am aware the guy's name was placed in the public domain without his request, and this has been repeated by a bunch of publications. He also received a large award in an out of court settlement, and could possibly have a case against the wikipedia if they chose to *perpetuate* it (the wikipedia may not *ever* go away, but other publications tend to fade).>>
This is not correct. Once the genie is out-of-the-bottle there is no law under which you can "sue" to silence it.
"Naming" someone is not harassment, it is reporting. If you think it is, name one case, any case at all, where this theory has been successful in a finalized court proceeding. In the US.
Perhaps there could be a first time. But that's not what we're talking about, we're talking about what policies the wikipedia *should* have. We're also talking about cases like the Star Wars kid where adding his name really adds very little to the article, and in fact helps people track him down in real life.
Saying that the wikipedia is part of the press is not in any way accurate. The press don't necessarily have a permanent page on every story they've ever covered, indexed by google. But the wikipedia does. The indexing and searching makes a huge difference to the issues of potential privacy and harassment. The press may easily decide to archive or prevent indexing of stories older than a certain date (and in my experience they frequently seem to be doing that to some degree), but the wikipedia *cannot* do that. These properties are an essential difference between a news organisation and an encyclopedia, and need to be taken into account when the policies are drawn up.
You can't force a genie back into a bottle, but in many cases the genie will tend to fade once released, and this should not be prevented by the wikipedia.
On Mon, Jun 23, 2008 at 11:46 AM, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
You can't force a genie back into a bottle, but in many cases the genie will tend to fade once released, and this should not be prevented by the wikipedia.
I think any fading is less and less likely over time, as more newspapers make their archives publicly accessible and searchable as the New York Times does now.
While I'm sympathetic to privacy concerns, I don't think that this is a valid argument; we are headed towards a state where every piece of information is findable with a Google search. Basing our policies on this is not, IMO, sensible.
-Matt
2008/6/23 Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com:
I think any fading is less and less likely over time, as more newspapers make their archives publicly accessible and searchable as the New York Times does now.
I think that the wikipedia/wikinews is highly influential, and good privacy policies should help push the debate in useful directions. And the debate needs all the help it can get.
-Matt
On Mon, Jun 23, 2008 at 3:25 PM, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
I think that the wikipedia/wikinews is highly influential, and good privacy policies should help push the debate in useful directions. And the debate needs all the help it can get.
I don't disagree with that.
What I do disagree with is the notion that newspaper archives etc. will remain not easily searchable, and Wikipedia will continue to be in the situation where we keep stuff around and searchable that is not available elsewhere, simply by reporting what is in newspapers etc.
I don't think that arguments based on 'But those other sources will become hard to find, while Wikipedia remains searchable' are going to hold true over time and they are thus poor arguments to base a policy or best practise around.
-Matt