[Foundation-l] Korean Wikipedians charged with "criminal defamation:" a potential threat of censorship

[Dan Rosenthal]

The Colorado law has been significantly weakened in the past year. See Mink v. Knox, No. 08-1250 (10th Cir. July 19, 2010), slip. op. at 26. 

-Dan

On Dec 22, 2010, at 5:51 AM, Fred Bauder wrote:

> An example of an actual prosecution:
> 
> http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=20937
> 
> Fred
> 
>> This seems to be an example of the trouble that the Wikipedia:Biographies
>> of living persons policy on the English Wikipedia is crafted to avoid,
>> unsourced or poorly sourced negative information about a living person
>> can be removed immediately by any editor. Here, if I'm reading right, it
>> was put back up again despite being repeatedly removed.
>> 
>> Another aspect of this is that if there is a law around, even a disused,
>> rarely enforced law, the possibility exists that someone will evoke it
>> and put you into court with baleful consequences, even if you "win" in
>> the end. For example in Colorado there is a criminal libel law that
>> covers the dead, see
>> https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Defamation#Criminal_defamation
>> How one could fully comply with such a monstrosity as that is beyond me.
>> 
>> Fred
>> 
>> User:Fred Bauder
>> 
>> 
>>> At most four Korean Wikipedians are charged with defamation of Song
>>> Young-gil, the Mayor of Incheon Metropolitan City.
>>> 
>>> According to the contributors, the prosecution is upon the Song's own
>>> request, and is going to be over publicizing a fabricated sex scandal
>>> in the article about him and (semi-)protecting it.  The text in
>>> question is merely a sum-up of various reports about the speculations
>>> eventually found to be a hoax.  Non-logged-in user(s) from various IP
>>> addresses have tried to remove the whole controversy section,
>>> including not only the scandal but other arguments about him,
>>> replacing it with personal contrary comments and legal threats.  The
>>> edits are consequently reverted by some users and rollbacked by one
>>> administrator.  The admin, [[ko:User:Kys951]], is also accused of
>>> being an abettor just because he is an admin.
>>> 
>>> In the South Korean legal system, criminal defamation is partially a
>>> "crime upon complaint," (ì¹œê³ ì£„/親告罪) which becomes irrelevant
>>> to
>>> be a
>>> crime when the complainant chose to withdraw the case.  (Note that I'm
>>> not a specialist of law, especially in English terminology.)  The
>>> police of Southeastern Incheon thought the case itself is too
>>> insignificant to be a criminal case and tried to persuade him to
>>> withdraw it, only to be declined.
>>> 
>>> Song has reportedly demanded the admin to remove the paragraph in
>>> exchange for fixing the charge, which is definitely not the way how
>>> Wikipedia works.
>>> 
>>> Another concern about this incident is that this could happen to every
>>> bit of contribution to the project.  South Korean government had been
>>> censoring any scribble on the web they think beneficial to North
>>> Korea,[2] and for later on, anything they think "fraudulent" whenever
>>> the state is in "threat," according to an exclusive report.[3]
>>> 
>>> [1]
>>> https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ko/w/index.php?title=%EC%86%A1%EC%98%81%EA%B8%B8&diff=5832689
>>> [2]
>>> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/shame_on_democratic_south_korea_for_censoring_face.php
>>> [3] http://www.hani.co.kr/arti/economy/it/455022.html
>>> 
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>> 
>> 
>> 
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