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Mayor of Florence Sues Wikipedia
ZioBit writes "Florence Mayor Leonardo Domenici and one of the city assessors
are suing (Google translation) Wikipedia on the basis of a (possible) defamation regarding the handling of public parkings assignation to a private company, "Florence Parking". The apparent problem is that both of their wives are members of the board of directors of "Florence Parking", and Wikipedia is reporting it."
It's the new hip thing. When you've done something wrong or at least sketchy, and someone's reporting on it, sue them to shut them down. In the old days, it was a lot harder for stuff like this to come out on a national or global scale, but nowadays, with the Internet, anyone with a camera or basic research skills can bust you. It's gotta be driving people white-collar crooks and sleazeballs crazy.
Disclaimer: I don't know the facts of this particular case. I'm just talking about a general trend.
Too good. I wonder when they will learn this sort of tactic only fules the public's knowledge of what they are doing. Similar thing happened in the City of Miami Beach (still is as far as I know). The city made a sweet deal with a towing company for the whole island (miami beach is an island) as far as Police Towing was concerned. After this deal, the police started calling businesses on the beach to "help them see" that other methods like the boot were not a good idea. In one case, the chief of police actually visited a strip mall to help them "come around" and use the same company the city was using. They city then quietly stopped allowing the renewal of licenses to other towing companies.
"This message was sent from an Apple
I can't understand how anyone can sue anyone for statements made in an openly editable living document.
Wouldn't it be a bit simpler to click the edit button and change the perceived falsehoods in an encyclopedic manner?
I imagine one could even hire a geek to do it for quite a bit less than the price of hiring a lawyer, filing a lawsuit, then pursuing that suit.
I'm happy that slashdot continues to have some sort of respect for the intellect of the reader. I'm pretty sure that everybody here made the mental connection to Italy, and if they didn't, they should be reading Geography 101 instead of slashdot. Espicially with the "Google Translate" link. And the original document in Italian.
Crafications such as 'London, England' are only necessary when it is likely that the reader could be confused. Hence there is no need to write 'Beijing, China', for example
The "dumbing down" of American media isn't really apparent until you compare similar publications from the US to their closest British counterparts. Compare Newsweek or Time Magazine to The Economist or The New York Times to The Guardian. And this isn't just my opinion, it has been validated in studies of the matter.
How about something like "Remove this vile calumny or we'll ..." :
1. Remove Wikipedia's DNS entry in Italy. (See recent Wikileaks problems.)
2. Publish (in Italy at least) routing information that redirects Wikipedia requests to a black hole. (See recent You Tube problems.)
I think the Mayor's goal may not include preventing random residents of (say) Nevada from reading about his (alleged) corruption (after all, what does he care about what someone in Vegas thinks?), but probably does include preventing people in Italy from doing the same.
Wikipedia's place? While Wikipedia as a bunch of servers may belong to the Wikimedia foundation, Wikipedia as content belongs to its readers and to its editors. The content provided by these people is what they agree (with whatever mechanisms) it is. No more, no less. The question is rather like those proposed by ./ readers who wonder if "Slashdot" is not being inconsistent when there are multiple, often contradictory, opinions offered - by slashdot users - on various topics (patents, copyright... ).