Wikipedia Wins Defamation Case

Raul654 writes "Yesterday, a French judge dismissed a lawsuit against the Wikimedia Foundation for defamation. The judge found that 'Web site hosts cannot be liable under civil law because of information stored on them if they do not in fact know of their illicit nature.' According to the inquirer: 'Three plaintiffs were each seeking 69,000 euros ($100,000) in damages for invasion of their privacy after their homosexuality was revealed on the website.'"

Comments

Re:When "defamation" include the truth?

[Raul654]

Truth is an absolute defense against libel/slander/defemation in some - but not all - jurisdictions. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation#Truth

Re:When "defamation" include the truth?

[Diss Champ]

IANAL, but while in the USA the truth is an absolute defense against charges of libel and such, that is not true everywhere. Indeed there are plenty of places in the world where the truth will get you in a heck of a lot more trouble than pretty much anything you can make up.

This is good, but maintain consistency

[dedazo]

While appreciate that there's a judge that won't hold a website like WP that relies on third-party contributions, I find it ironic that Angela Beesley has been trying to delete her own biographic entry six times in the last two and a half years:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Angela_Beesley
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Angela_Beesley_(2nd_nomination)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Angela_Beesley_(3rd_nomination)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Angela_Beesley_(4th_nomination)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Angela_Beesley_(5th_nomination)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Angela_Beesley_(6th_nomination)

There are other examples of this throughout WP. Jim Wales' personal intervention to ensure that his bio did not use the term "pornography" when describing what Bomis was is one. I hope to heck that WP never allows the "higher ups" to trump the system, especially if they are being dragged to court for upholding their right to publish information about other people.

Re:I wonder how far this could be applied

[Hemogoblin]

I don't know about the rest of your argument, but this court case was in France where they use the Civil Law system. There is no judge-made law and there is no "precedent".

Re:I wonder how far this could be applied

[Keith_Beef]

If you can read French, then here is a much better article than the badly summarized version that Reuters published.

http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-651865,36-973824@51-974025,0.html

Or ask the Babel Fish for help.

In essence, the three sued Wikimedia for invasion of privacy and defamation.

The judge ruled that Wikimedia administrators cannot be held responsible for opinions published, until the disputed content is brought to the administrators' attention by a letter sent by registered post with proof of delivery and the letter must cite the articles of law according to which the offending material should be removed.

Beef.

Re:I bet US courts would give a differnt verdict!!

[DustyShadow]

Truth is a defense to a defamation claim in the U.S. so if they are actually homosexual then there would be no defamation claim because the statements were true.

Re:When "defamation" include the truth?

[guruevi]

In the case of your doctor or shrink you most likely have an agreement with or the doctor has an agreement with his boss/union/whatever to not publish those facts or your records with your personal information still attached or recoverable from it. In case of them, it still wouldn't be defamation but a breach of privacy/contract or even government compliance (HIPAA in the US) and you can call them on that.

I know from experience because I do work in a research imaging environment and if a case is published with imaging (which is with or without the permission of the subject), special filter programs have to be ran on the imaging (although the imaging is exported without any possible ties to the subjects' information) as to remove the skull bone or other information (implants, injuries...) in the picture that could be used to recover your facial image or identify you.

Now if somebody were to get a hold on your private information from your doctor/shrink and publish it, you can call them out on theft or something else that has to do with illegally obtaining your information and your doctor on negligence. You still can't use defamation if it's true. Now if you tell your friend something in private and he has decided to publish that information or tell it further I doubt you can take any steps against that (IANAL) since you told him and you trusted him not to tell anyone, but he broke your trust. Since there is no contract (unless you get a contract between your friends) then all he knows and says further is hearsay.

The tricky part about hearsay is that he (the publisher) can't verify if what he heard is true upon publishing so he might be defaming you. If you only told him, then you can say in court you didn't and what he says isn't true since nobody else knows, it would be his word against yours in favor of you => defamation. However if he has proof of what you told him is true, then it isn't defamation. If the information is publicly available from a reliable source, then it's not defamation but a repetition of facts and thus free speech or the source is defaming you which you can start a suit against said source.