[Mediawiki-l] Email approval before login

[Anthony DiPierro]

On 12/5/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 12/5/05, Kent S. Larsen II <kent at lusobraz.com> wrote:
> > At 3:36 PM +0000 12/5/05, Rob wrote:
> > You may have seen the following horror story:
> >
> > http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-11-29-wikipedia-edit_x.htm
> >
> Someone posted something false about someone else on the internet.  At
> least, I think it was false.  The opening paragraph seemed completely
> true.  I don't particularly see the "horror", though.
>
I should add that knowing the email address of the person who added
that information to Wikipedia would almost certainly have accomplished
no more than knowing the IP address.  Either way it would take a
subpoena from the ISP (of the IP address or the email address) to
determine the person's actual identity.  There would still need to be
a John Doe lawsuit filed, and you'd still have to convince a judge
that the John Doe actually did something wrong (saying "For a brief
time, [someone] was thought to have been directly involved in the
Kennedy assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby" is *not*
libel, in itself, and a court shouldn't and probably wouldn't grant a
subpoena simply based on that).

Anthony