[WikiEN-l] Wikimedia Foundation sued

[Andrew Gray]

On 25/03/07, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
> Apparently, literary agent [[Barbara Bauer]] has sued a number of
> people and organizations, including the Wikimedia Foundation, for
> defamation because of their involvement in making or publicizing
> allegations that Bauer's services are a scam because she insists on
> payment up front from authors (where normal industry practice is for
> agents to collect only after the author's works sell) and has
> apparently sold few or none of her clients' works to anything other
> than vanity presses.  She has made it onto the Science Fiction
> Writers of America's "20 worst agents" list (they're another of the
> defendants in the suit).  She has a long record of threatening suits
> against sites and forums that criticize her, at one point demanding a
> billion dollars for unauthorized use of her name as the title of a
> forum thread asking a question about her business practices.
> http://forums.writersweekly.com/viewtopic.php?p=44820
>
> If anybody's interested, the suit is docket number L-001169-07 in
> Monmouth County, New Jersey, where it can be looked up here:
> http://www.judiciary.state.nj.us/acms/disc/CV0227W0E.ASP
> It's one of the many court sites that make it a pain to link to their
> stuff because they use a form-post interface for document retrieval.

The "notification" we got (I assume formal will follow later) was
someone posting the following to [[Barbara Bauer]]:

----

On March 23, 2007, Bauer filed a suit with the Superior Court of
Monmoth, New Jersey, asserting claims for defamation and interference
with prospective business advantage.  Wikipedia is among the 15
defendants named in the suit.  Docket Number L-001169-07 Bauer etal vs
Glatzer etal, http://www.judiciary.state.nj.us/acms/disc/CV0227W0E.ASP

----

Note the details of the allegations aren't available, just the bare
facts of the docket. We're in good company - the other fourteen named
defendants include the two Nielsen-Haydens, the Science Fiction and
Fantasy Writers of America (membership 1500), and various other people
working in the field of "anti-scammer activism" (as it were). As far
as I can tell, we're the only ones to simply report on it who are
listed. I don't envisage the suit being successful.

[Bauer's page has since been deleted as "a bloody disgrace. Full of
'allegations" of who said what on message boards", a viewpoint which
certainly has some merit.]

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk