Fred Bauder wrote:
On Jul 4, 2006, at 10:44 AM, Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
Under US Law, Wikimedia is the
"publisher" because they create
"collections" of works of the
Wikipedia site and "publish" them to the world as XML dumps. Whether
electronic or in book form, they
are publishing. This being said, given the nebulous and undefined
state
of internet IP law,
whether they are a publisher or not, there's no legal precedence to
determine liability, so at present
they are operating in an area of experimental law on the frontiers of
human knowledge.
Jeff
Not exactly and now that you are a "publisher" too, let us discuss
the problem. Someone comes on your wiki and enters the information,
"John Doe murdered his wife, Jane". You don't notice it and after 6
months or so John Doe files a libel action. You might want to claim
that the anonymous ip who entered that information was the publisher,
not you. There is a variant where that edit was contained in an XML
dump that you did not notice. Meanwhile Wikipedia has deleted it
completely, even from the history of the article. This is all pretty
theoretical until there is significant distribution of a serious
libel, but I throw it out to think about. Now suppose you did notice
the information and rather than deleting it you just corrected the
grammar and spelling. Are you the publisher now? And who is "you"?
Fred
I would be responsible for any copyright, trademark, or trade secret
violations -- libel
too if I were mirroring the content. Section 230 would shield me to some
extent, but these
laws are changing very soon based on what's going on in Congress.
How would I respond to a libel suit? Most people just want the libel
removed, they are not interested
in drawn out litigation. They also have to serve proper notice, and I
would remove libel immediately
if I received such notice. They could just file without serving notice,
but as you are aware, the CDA
shields you if you have not received notice.
If someone wants to sue me in the end, bring it on. They will have to
show malicious intent, and recklessness,
which is hard to do if I never received proper notice.
Jeff
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