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."

Comments

Re:We slashdotted Google

[CriminalNerd]

Technically, we slashdotted the original article so that Google's translator couldn't translate the page, hence the error.

Added in about 20 mins time:

[James_Duncan8181]

* Domenici also recently launched a widely castigated suit against Wikipedia Foundation.

Nice work on drawing attention to the original problems also...it's always amusing how much political types don't get it.

Re:Added in about 20 mins time:

[NatasRevol]

Citation, or it never happened!

Re:Added in about 20 mins time:

[GreatBunzinni]

Not quite. Politicians end up using the lawsuit weapon as a damage minimization tool. When the damaging information is already out and there is no possibility to make it go away, to avoid looking corrupt they usually start a bunch of lawsuits so that they can get some spotlight time to announce the world that the entire scandal is nothing more than a smear campaign targeting an innocent, upright citizen. They use that time to tell the world (at least their constituents) that the accusations are nothing more than vicious lies and that they are going to fight those nasty, evil liars and bring them to justice. Then the lawsuit goes on very uninterestingly, the media loses interest on the case, everyone forgets the whole thing and then it doesn't matter the outcome of the case. After all, the last thing that their constituents have heard about that problem was that that honorable politician was fighting those liars who were trying to smear his good name.

Re:Added in about 20 mins time:

[erlehmann]

Here it is, it has even been corrected in virtually no time:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Leonardo_Domenici&diff=195140090&oldid=195132037

Re:Added in about 20 mins time:

[PPH]

Someone needs to get a translation of the Streisand Effect for them ASAP.

Re:Added in about 20 mins time:

[kaizokuace]

Why does the streisand effect work? It cant just be because internet exposure blows up out of nowhere when someone makes a statement. It's as if the Internets Collective Consciousness (ICC) only enjoys pointing out and bitchslapping stupid people's idiocy for everyone to see. Just for the purpose of pointing it out and not to get anything done in the world.

Re:Added in about 20 mins time:

[Headcase88]

It's a matter of spite. If someone is trying to bury information that should be public, webmasters will want to make sure it's the most well-known piece of information on the internet, mainly to show what you get for trying to hide it. I rather like the effect myself.

Re:Added in about 20 mins time:

[PPH]

Why does the streisand effect work?

I don't think its spiteful behavior so much as the perceived value of a limited or (artificially) restricted commodity.

Anyone who wants can look at my back yard on Google Earth. Nothing there but weeds and a few cars up on cement blocks. But if I expend an inordinate amount of energy hiding it, then there must be something really interesting to see. At least that's the way most people's minds seem to work.

Defense

[Grax]

IANAL, but I looked into this type of lawsuit when someone threatened to sue me for defamation.

An absolute defense against defamation is that the stated item is the truth. For their lawsuit to succeed, it has to be premised that something untrue was said that hurt them.

Re:Defense

[Grax]

FYI, I overlooked the Italian nature of this issue. I looked into this in the United States.

Re:Defense

[autocracy]

In America, yes; the truth is not, however, a defense on its own in all countries.

Re:Defense

[vajrabum]

This raises about as many questions as it answers but the Britannica say: "In Italy truth seldom excuses defamation, which is criminally punishable there."

Re:Defense

[rozz]

In America, yes;

the very source u cited contradicts you .. it says:

" Some U.S. statutes preserve historical common law exceptions to the defense of truth to libel actions. These exceptions were for statements "tending to blacken the memory of one who is dead" or "expose the natural defects of one who is alive." "

so no, the truth itself is not always a fool-proof legal defense in America ... and if u think about it a bit more, you may also find that truth and legal-truth are quite different things.

Re:Defense

[Anonymous Coward]

Those statutes are as likely to be used in a real case as Ohio's "It is illegal for more than five women to live in a house." law, or North Carolina's "Elephants may not be used to plow cotton fields.", or Tennessee's "Stealing a horse is punishible by hanging." laws

Just because a stupid case established precedent, doesn't mean constitutional law, or statutory law doesn't trump it. Therefore, the only way to test these laws is to be brought to suit using them.

Re:Defense

[budgenator]

please note that this "slander." Had already circulated in the past and that in 2004 the Public Prosecutor of the Republic of Florence had opened an investigation which led to a conviction in a trial. La voce però (al momento di riportare questa notizia) non è stata modificata e si presenta tutt'ora nella forma contestata da Domenici. The voice but (when reporting this story) has not changed and is still in the form contested by Domenici.

Sounds like the real beef is these guys were convicted but wikipedia isn't report that one of them is appealing the conviction.

Re:Defense

[vajrabum]

If you look here , it indicats that Italian courts have decided that if the content is availble in Italy, then Italian courts have jurisdiction.

Re:Defense

[donscarletti]

Firstly, these exceptions are narrow and not relevant to this discussion, bringing them up is immature pedantry. The politician's wives being discussed are not dead and their place on a board is not a natural defect. These exceptions are there because speaking ill of the dead and teasing physical defects achieves no purpose, the general spirit of the law remains that someone has the right to say the truth if it has a point.

Secondly, truth is actually narrower than legal-truth in defamation cases (as discussed in the wikipedia article) since in most cases the defendant must only show that they had a reasonable belief that it was true, rather than it actually being so. If you misunderstand reality you are not liable for speaking your mind unless it can be proven that you were negligent with your facts, i.e. published without checking them. As for real truth, well truth is truth, the courts aren't far enough up their own arse to start calling black white when it comes to facts outside the courtroom, they have enough to confuse inside.

Thirdly, for fuck's sake, if you're going to discuss law at least write "you", capitalise the first letter of sentences and stop using ellipsis as a comma. It makes it easier to read and makes people take you seriously. A little sloppy spelling and grammar is fine, but deliberately garbling a word just to save two letters from your sentence is just pathetic.

Re:Defense

[Anonymous Coward]

is there any particyoular reason u youse the word you half the time and letter u the other half? Are you conserving energy by avoiding yousing two keystrokes every other yousage?

Re:Defense

[Blakey Rat]

Firstly, these exceptions are narrow and not relevant to this discussion, bringing them up is immature pedantry.

Without immature pedantry, every Slashdot story would have, at most, 5 posts.

Re:Defense

[epee1221]

You cannot just run afoul of countries' laws and expect borders to protect you.

I do this all the time. Think how many countries' laws I'd be violating just by exercising my 1st Amendment rights. It doesn't matter because I'm outside their jurisdiction.

Re:Defense

[Miseph]

Parent never said that Italians care less about the truth, he simply noted that Italian defamation law may not be the same as American defamation law. It is entirely possible that some detail of the Wikipedia entry runs afoul of Italian law regardless of whether or not it is true.

Re:Defense

[mbertini]

Fact: the wives of the mayor and of the other politician are not in the board: Wikipedia reported false facts.

The lie was used as a mean to attack the mayor, kind of guerrilla marketing (you should be familiar with all the false claims on Obama: it's about the same).

A guy in Florence, who tried to spread the false claim has already been sentenced for defamation.

The Slashdot post reports the Fact 1 as true. The guy who reported the story did not get it: incompetence or bad will ?

oh my god!

[jollyreaper]

According to Wikipedia, this guy is a total douchebag! *edit* *edit*

Re:oh my god!

[thedeadswiss]

I like the fact that, according to wikipedia, "he graduated in moral philosophy".

Just like Wikileaks

[ZachPruckowski]

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.

Re:Just like Wikileaks

[ImaLamer]

The best part is that 'weblogs' like Slashdot pick up these stories and their likelihood of becoming common knowledge explode. Wikipedia is 'reporting' this story and they are being sued over spreading this 'untruth' - now Slashdot has just reported it too. Will the mayor of Florence sue CNN when it hits the mainstream media?

Pointless Link

[fictionpuss]

Excerpt from the Google Translator:

...The accused - The reason is explained in a note, it's because the "voice" of Leonardo Domenici site charge to the first citizen and his junta some measures and decisions, so it says... Huh? Sure language translation is kinda cool, but it seems a cruel waste of binary to put it through such contortions when the resulting morass is so incomprehensible.

Parking Corruption

[armada]

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.

Re:Parking Corruption

[armada]

Here is some irony:

Leonardo Domenici (born July 12, 1955) is an Italian politician. He has been the Mayor of Florence since June 13, 1999. Domenici was born in Florence, from where he graduated in moral philosophy Article

Florence. where ?

[mbone]

(There are Florence's in Florida, Georgia, California and for all I know every state in the Union.)

Since this particular Florence is the one in Italy, the laws on defamation are pretty different from the US. I would not trust any legal
analysis in Slashdot for any jurisdiction, but for Italy I would trust it even less than usual.

Re:Florence. where ?

[ScrewMaster]

Illiterate twit. He was, in fact, pointing out that America is not the center of the world and that Slashdot readers shouldn't assume that a basic tenet of American law applies anywhere else.

Sheesh. With friends like you ...

Re:Florence. where ?

[k33l0r]

(There are Florence's in Florida, Georgia, California and for all I know every state in the Union.)

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.

Re:Florence. where ?

[Thugthrasher]

Well, ignoring the fact that he WASN'T saying the US is the center of the world... If he HAD been, how exactly would that make him RACIST?

Re:Florence. where ?

[david@ecsd.com]

You preview the thing five times yet just as you hit the 'Submit' button you notice that you've written 'Crafications' instead of 'Clarifications'

That's okay, I just figured you were from Beijing, China.

Re:Florence. where ?

[Wizard Drongo]

Just wanted to make a point about one of my pet hates; that is, americans always putting a country's name after the place name. E.G. Paris, France, or Rome, Italy, as if there was another more famous populous Rome or Paris somewhere. I suspect the tradition started as a result of american isolationist tendency's meaning a majority of americans didn't actually know where Paris was (as opposed to Paris in Louisiana) , but regardless, it sure is annoying and condescending as hell. Especially since I, along with the rest-of-the-world do things slightly more sensibly. Where two or more places are named the same, we generally call the largest and/or most populous/famous one by just its name, then any other instance of it by its name followed by geographic designation. For example, Cambridge is in southern England. There's also another Cambridge in the USA. But, even though Cambridge MA is about the same size as Cambridge, England, and, likewise has one of the worlds great learning seats (Harvard and MIT), Cambridge on its own refers to the one in England, whereas Cambridge Mass. is how one refers to the home of Harvard.

Re:Florence. where ?

[Random832]

However, Wikipedia is _not_ located in Italy. Remember the case a while back when Germany tried to get wikipedia to censor stuff? All they could do was take away the domain name "wikipedia.de" - which isn't even what's normally used to access it (the canonical url for german wikipedia articles starts "de.wikipedia.org" )

Re:Florence. where ?

[alexburke]

That's okay, I just figured you were from Beijing, China. I, myself, thought he was from Beijing, Illinois...

Re:Welcome to international notoriety, Mayor

[NormalVisual]

If a conflict of interest exists and someone points it out, you can't (successfully) sue them for defamation. Stating the truth counts as a rock-solid defense.

Apparently this is not the case in Italy though. Maybe we should send the good mayor an hour long looping clip of the scene in "A Few Good Men" where Jack Nicholson rails, "you can't handle the truth!"

Dude, there's an edit button

[Toe, The]

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.

Re:Dude, there's an edit button

[headpushslap]

The point is not that you can edit it, but that libelous statements can permanently damage someones' reputation.

Suing for money is one remedy, you could also sue for a written or posted apology or retraction, or many other things.

Re:So *who* are they actually suing?

[Toe, The]

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia#Software_and_hardware

"Wikipedia currently runs on dedicated clusters of GNU/Linux servers, 300 in Florida, 26 in Amsterdam and 23 in Yahoo!'s Korean hosting facility in Seoul."

P.S. Gotta love those network topology diagrams. Pretty dang nice for a nonprofit. :)

Sue whom exactly.

[qbzzt]

The Wikipedia Foundation is a US corporation, which does not hold assets in Italy, so it can't be sued in an Italian court. Or, to be more accurate, it can be sued but the verdict would be meaningless.

However, Wikipedia does have an Italian chapter ( http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Local_chapters ). I assume that is the organization being sued.

Re:Sue whom exactly.

[efalk]

There's a lot more to it than where you're incorporated.

If you do business in Italy, you can be sued there. In fact, the determining factor on whether or not you can be sued in Italy is whether or not an Italian court says you can.

Re:Sue whom exactly.

[jefu]

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.

Re:So *who* are they actually suing?

[The Snowman]

Wikipedia is headquartered in the US. Do they have an Italian office? I see that a ping to "it.wikipedia.org" returns the same IP address (208.80.152.2) as "en.wikipedia.org". So I'm not sure that wikipedia actually has any sort of physical presence in Italy.

Of course, IANAL, but I'm pretty sure it can be difficult to sue someone in a different country, particularly if you aren't going to their country to file the suit. If they file suit against them in Italian court, I'd expect it would be difficult to enforce a judgement from across the pond.

This was my thought too. While Italian law is certainly different and this may be a valid argument in Italian court, the hurdle here is twofold. First, prove that Wikipedia is itself at fault for the contents. Given the open source documentation license they use, I am not sure they could prove that. Second, they would need to get someone who is legally able to represent Wikipedia into Italian court.

For this to work, I believe they would need to convince a U.S. Federal court to extradite people to Italy, and given the merits of this case, I doubt that would happen.

This is actually kinda frightening...

[BUL2294]

First off, I think Wikipedia should ignore the Italian courts and give a big virtual F-U. I think more companies are going to start doing that over Internet posts, sites, etc. and claim they're only bound by their home laws. (The French charges against eBay for allowing the sale of Nazi memorabilia come to mind). I think this lawsuit thing is the tip of the iceberg--companies and individuals will start getting sued in foreign jurisdictions because a particular comment, post, etc. was "made available" to a computer in that foreign country...

Which makes me start to realize something... Let's say a government pressed criminal charges. Here's a hypothetical example that doesn't seem so far-fetched... I make an anti-Chinese government site/post/blog from my home PC in the US, and that really pisses the Chinese government off. Since there's no free speech in China (but my website manages to get past the Great Firewall of China), I get criminally charged with "disrespecting the government" or some crap like that and they issue an international arrest warrant. I could then be arrested in the US and would have to hire a lawyer as to why I shouldn't be extradited to China--even though I exercised my right to free speech according to the US Constitution, while in the US . Even if I persuade a judge to not grant the extradition request (in all likelihood, at great expense to me), I could never travel outside the US as I could be arrested at any time and extradited from a country with no vested interest in preventing a foreigner from being extradited to China. Frightening, isn't it?

Re:This is actually kinda frightening...

[rcw-home]

I could then be arrested in the US

Assuming that your local police are really stupid and/or bought off...

and would have to hire a lawyer as to why I shouldn't be extradited to China

China would be footing your legal bill (18 USC 3195) but even the average public defender could argue that successfully:

1. The US has no extradition treaty with China. (Wikipedia)
   
2. Even if they did, you'd have to actually commit a crime in Chinese jurisdiction (i.e. be in China) (18 USC 3184).
   
3. Even if you did, the crime would have to be a violent one (18 USC 3181).
   
4. Even if it was, it'd also have to be a crime in the US (18 USC 3181).
   

Even if I persuade a judge to not grant the extradition request (in all likelihood, at great expense to me), I could never travel outside the US as I could be arrested at any time and extradited from a country with no vested interest in preventing a foreigner from being extradited to China.

The concept of nationalism is based on the idea that your country will protect you. It's kind of lost on a lot of Americans since it's been quite a while since we've gone toe-to-toe with a foreign army on our own soil. But if such a thing happened, I would expect a lot of diplomatic saber-rattling, perhaps an embargo of the country that extradited you (likely ruining their tourism economy), and if that fails, a military response. With such a flowchart on most leaders' minds, they will generally refuse extraditions for political reasons.

Re:Jurisdiction?

[WWWWolf]

Does Wikipedia even have servers or an office in Italy? If not, then their lawsuit is pretty damn pointless.

Basically, the tendency is that you're not supposed to sue Wikipedia; it's better to try solve the issue first through ordinary channels. It's a procedure that's being used in a lot of subprojects too, due to practical reasons. I'm pretty sure they failed to follow this in this case...

However, it should be noted that some Wikimedia projects (Finnish Wikipedia, for example) do apply local laws in a very limited fashion. For example, as far as I know, Finnish Wikipedia it only applies to copyrights (the US Fair Use law isn't considered, but the basically equivalent law, the "right of quotation" in the Finnish copyright law, is used instead). I can almost imagine there would be similar rules in place in case of libel, but it's basically an user conduct issue and mostly handled through the above principle anyway. Besides all legal issues should be brought against Wikimedia Foundation anyway.

Non-robotic translation

[lbbros]

Notice, this was done in haste and may not be good English, but I hope it's better than an automated translation.

FIRENZE- Firenze's Mayor, Leonardo DOmenici, and local government member Graziano Cioni have given the order to sue for defamation the Wikipedia web encyclopedia (sic).

THE ACCUSATION - The reason, explained in a brief communication, is because in the "Leonardo Domenici" page on the site there are references to decisions made by the Mayor and his staff that, quoting, ''caused criticism from the citizens'', quoting in particular the award of a contract related to the management of the town's parking lots to the "Firenze Parking" company, of which Dominici and Cioni's wives have seats in the board of directors.

THE INQUIRY - The communication from the Mayor reminds that such a "defamation" had circulated in the past and that in 2004 the office of the public prosecutor had started an investigation, resulting in one indictment and a request for a trial. The Wikipedia page, however (at the time of writing) has not been modified and is still now present in the form challenged by Domenici. Hence the decision to sue for defamation and libel.

Barbara...

[Mr. Underbridge]

Nice work on drawing attention to the original problems also...it's always amusing how much political types don't get it.

...Striesand!!!

public parkings assignation

[bcrowell]

Personally, if I'm going to have an assignation, I'll typically do it in a romantic restauraunt, or maybe a motel. Public parking lots? I guess those Italians are pretty hot-blooded.

Re:Jurisdiction?

[jefu]

Is it Wikipedia's place to be a forum for news reporting and political social change?

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... ).

Anyone know what's going on with Barbara Bauer?

[julesh]

Barbara Bauer, described by SFWA as one of the twenty worst literary agents they know of, and who has a history of threatening people who are critical of her and getting ISPs to shut down web sites that are critical of her and claiming her name is her intellectual property and cannot be published without her permission, sued Wikimedia (among others) for repeating some of the above claims about a year ago. But I've heard nothing about the case since. Can anyone comment?

Re:MS TRANSLATOR MUCH BETTER!

[Sfing_ter]

You are correct, you are the right tool, and truly the only tool here.