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UK Judge Orders Wikipedia To Reveal User's Identity
BoxRec writes with this excerpt from The Daily Mail: "A mother trying to identify a blackmailer who posted 'sensitive' details about her child on Wikipedia has won the right to find out who edited her entry. In the first case of its kind, a High Court judge has ordered the online encyclopedia's parent company to disclose the IP address of one of its registered users."
What if he/she used Tor?
Is it wrong that I'm curious as to what the editor posted to get himself in trouble? Seems like the Streisand effect might backfire on the girl if the Internet is as cruel as I think it is.
Maybe so, but when all of the details are secret we just have to trust the judge who says that according to what he's seen the woman has probable cause to suspect blackmail. This is part of the reason why anonymous internet contributors like ourselves do not take the place of an actual judge in an actual courtroom, so it makes it seem sort of stupid to sit here and second-guess the judge.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
No excuse. None.
I piss off bigots.
Why is this news? The victim showed a judge a blackmail letter. In that situation, of course a judge is going to sign documents forcing people with relevant information to disclose it to the police and/or DA.
Find free books.
How do people get tripped up on this stuff? If you are going to post something you KNOW you shouldn't post, use a proxy from a country like China or Russia. Then China gets the blame, and you stay hidden. Com'on. This isn't that hard.
Sadly, stuff you shouldn't post can include stuff you should post, but powerful people don't want you to post.
blackmail is blackmail is blackmail
whatever you think of your rights online, criminal activity renders some of your rights null and void
of course you have rights in a free society: as long as you also abide by your responsibilities. this is true of actual, flawed societies that are not entirely free, and also true of any hypothetical societies you can imagine that function perfectly: when you break your responsibilities you have in a free society, you have abdicated your rights. do you honestly think there is any way around that fact? a society of individuals who do not abide by their responsibilities is by direct consequence a society with few rights as well
the government is a side issue: most of your rights are violated in this world by your fellow citizens, not the government. of course the government also violates your rights. in a society trying to improve itself, this is revealed, discussed, and punished. just like individuals who violate your rights deserve to be punished. sorry, they don't deserve to be punished, they MUST be punished to show there is genuine consequences for abdication of responsibility in this world. without such enforcement, there's no reason to respect anyone's rights, whether by government, or a fellow citizen
to most of you, the previous paragraph is eye-glazingly obvious
however, i feel the need to say it, because underneath this story we will see a lot of howling of the government violating people's rights. when the fact is, if you blackmail someone, you HAVE to have your rights violated, for the sake of a functioning free society, actual or theoretical
we see a lot of complaints on these forums and in general about rights. what we don't see much discussion is one about responsibilities. please do your small part and keep that in mind: for every right you claim, you are also taking on an implied responsibility you must keep if you wish to maintain the rights you cherish
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
So they have the ip address. Big whoop. It doesn't reveal WHO posted, just the modem that was used.
Could have been a wifi user out at the street corner, a virus.. someone broke into the home and posted.. An IP in a vacuum isn't evidence.. its a suggestion..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Whenever there is a child involved all notions of common sense and rational thinking go out the nearest window.
.1 of a % chance that it will ever prevent a child from having to experience the smallest noticeable amount of pain
No law is too draconian, too invasive of one's privacy if there is even
I cant help but think that if Wikipedia don't comply and donate 100,000 GBP to some children's charity for their 'sin' in merely being involved in this whole thing they will be made out to be the bad ones and accused of sheltering paedophiles, rapists and other undesirables.
Do you think slave holders were not offended by being called murderers and inhuman? Do you think Catholics were not deeply disturbed by Protestants calling the Catholic hierarchy illegitimate and corrupt? The right to offend is an essential part of free speech rights.
In a democracy, you have a right to be protected form libel and criminal blackmail. You don't have a right to be protected from "mental harm" resulting from speech you find disturbing.
The order can't be enforced, as the Wiki Foundation is based in Florida. However, if you RTFA it says the Wiki Foundation has already caved in and agreed to reveal the IP address.
Which is great news for anyone in somewhere like China "anonymously" editing Wikipedia. Doing so could easily cost you your life if it's The Wiki Foundation's whim to expose you to your Government that day.
There's at least some possibility that this isn't a blackmailer but a whistleblower. Just another reason to question the practices of what goes on in the Wiki Foundation. Just another potential blow to truth at the hands of Wikipedia.
That's breathtakingly stupid. If it worked that way, it would mean that it would not be possible to take any confidential matter to court.
Yes, I'm sure that'll show those damn blackmailers, "If you go to the Police, they'll force you to reveal to the public the information I'm blackmailing you over! Muhaha!"
You missed 2.5) Judge looks at the post and all the other evidence offered by the plaintiff and decides if there is sufficient likelihood that the plaintiff would prevail to justify ordering the identity to be revealed.
One of the comments said something to the effect of "I smell a scam, I just can't put my finger on it".
I think it's simple enough:
1) vandalize your own Wikipidia page ...
2) scream "blackmail"
3) blame someone with deep pockets or that you have a grudge against
4)
5) profit!!
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
All the details are secret; we can not know whether or not there was indeed any blackmail involved, other than the words of a woman and a judge. I myself do not feel that blackmail is a crime, in any case. Immoral, perhaps, but certainly not something to go to court over.
Interesting. So, say you or your significant other happens to have a STD, say, herpes. And let's supposed that it was contracted in a manner that you don't want to made public. Certainly not to your children or in-laws. This is something that you and your significant other manage pretty well within the privacy of your life.
And say that, I, somehow, legally or not, get a copy of your medical records which include by your own account with luxury of details how the STD got acquired in the first place. And then I send you a photocopy of it with a letter telling you that if you don't wire $10K (or whatever amount you feel like for the sake of argument) I will make that letter document available to your in-laws, your co-workers, your church and your kids.
Blackmail. Now, not finding blackmail in general criminal, or thinking that is criminal only in extreme cases (like the hypothetical one presented here), that will either be immensely idiotic or disturbingly wrong on so many levels that it is horrible to contemplate.
BLACKMAIL.
Repeat it with me, BLACKMAIL.
This isn't about "Oh! Johny said I was a lousy bint on Wikipedia!" it was about someone threatening someone and their child with public humiliation if they didn't give into whatever demands were made.If you can't say BLACKMAIL, then try EXTORTION, either way regardless of the medium being used, it's illegal.
And most matters should -not- be confidential. If we are going to waste our tax dollars on a court case all records kept from it should be public. Don't take it to court if it is confidential, otherwise we have press manipulating facts that should be public.
So the only alternative would be vigilante justice? How pragmatic of you!
A whistle blower is someone who alerts the media or authorities to wrong doing, by coming forward with evidence of this wrong doing.
A blackmailer is someone who alerts a victim that they have evidence of either wrong doing or simply humiliating facts and will go to the media or authorities if steps aren't taken by the victim.
Our "Mr. X" updated a Wikipedia article with possibly true information concerning our woman's expense reports and her child. They then sent two letters which implied they had more information they were going to share and had possibly already done so with part of it.
It really doesn't take a bright bulb to pick which slot Mr. X fits in here chief. Stop over reacting and realize that sometimes, just sometimes, the legal system is working.
The problem with that argument is that how much you mind something being made public has little relation to it's importance.
Right, so in a case where, for example, someone breaks into somebody's house and rapes their 8-year old daughter, you want to see the victim's name, the defendant's name, the family's name and address, the method the defendant used to enter the house, a description of the valuables that were stored in the hours, etc, all in the public record. You want to be able to look up a record online and see that an 8-year-old girl whose name and address are given was forced to undergo a series of described sexual acts, and then you want to see her address too, and a list of stuff her parents keep in the house.
There's a reason some things are confidential. When you're making your brilliant laws online, even though "think of the children" is a cliche, you need to consider the most vulnerable people.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
"Wikipedia should refuse to comply."
No, WP should act ethically as it did in this instance. I don't know about your ethics but mine says that I should not knowingly assist blackmailers and kidnappers.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Yeah right, because exposing a blackmailer is the same as working for the ministry of truth.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
There really ought to be a "-1 Impossible to Read" mod.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
Agreed. In this case. Why in this case? Because a JUDGE has decided that this is a case of blackmail. And while I know no judge is infallible, they are human after all and the evidence presented may be incomplete or incorrect, I do generally trust their qualities. And if a judge says it's a case of blackmail then I would consider it a case of blackmail until proven otherwise.
So even though that judge may be in the UK and WP in the USA it would be nice for them to comply with the request and reveal the IP address from which the edit was done. After that it's again up to law enforcement to figure out who actually did it. Whether the information is enough is another matter, at least WP did what they could and should do.
that is one of the reasons blackmail is effective. Because taking action against it is likely result in the info being revealed.
Someone tried it on David Letterman not that long ago. They tried to extort money from Letterman based on knowledge of an extramarital affair Letterman was having. Letterman went to the cops, and the info about the affair came out, causing Letterman considerable hassle and embarassment. He had foreseen that and decided he was in a position to weather the storm (he is still a rich old dude no matter what) but others in the same situation could very well have just shut up and paid.
Nonsense. When the whistleblower is exposing incest or certain types of child abuse, the whistleblower automatically reveals the names of children involved by revealing the abuser. And sometimes a whistleblower or anonymously protected exposition is necessary because the guilty person cannot or will not be pursued by law enforcement, as occurred with the Catholic priests finally convicted of child harassment in the strange cases that led to Cardinal Bernard Law being taken off the short list for the next Pope.
if i shout fire in a crowded theatre, and this leads to someone's death, than i am criminally culpable
yet according to you, this is protected free speech
no: there genuinely exists in this world, simply as a result of clear logical consequence, that some speech must be disallowed for the sake of justice in this world. the "fire" in a crowded theatre example is merely one of a million such scenarios where free speech is genuinely and intractably incompatible with the concept of justice
your problem is that you are a free speech fundamentalist. a fundamentalist is someone who adheres to a concept WITHOUT EXCEPTION: free speech, the free market, the infallibility of the bible/ quran/ torah, whatever. there are millions of types of fundamentalists, each being someone who holds a concept to be without exception and utterly unquestionable, like you and free speech
the truth is that in this world, every concept, even the ones you hold most dear, have exceptions, and must be questioned. the concepts i hold most dear have exceptions and must be questioned. that's just the nature of this world: its complicated. fundamentalism therefore creates suffering in this world because it tries to impose a cookie cutter simplification of human nature onto a complicated world, such that all of the inevitable exceptions of real human behavior in the real world are not tolerated, and are punished... when such behavior isn't really wrong, and may in fact be what is right
your words speak of a young mind. you are probably 14 years old. give it time, you'll figure it out... and if you actually aren't 14, god save us all from the fools and the fundamentalists in this world: the simplistic way you think about your world is poisonous
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
there are exceptions to every concept
such as to free speech by shouting fire in a theatre resulting in death WHEN THERE ISN'T A FIRE
now that i've tacked on the braindead fucking obvious qualifier, without which you think you are allowed to smugly weasel out of examining your free speech fundamentalism, i suggest you finally examine how you have failed in creating a logically coherent set of "principles"
yes, you are "principled"
pfft
assholes who consciously defy self-examination of their own failures usually have a whole bunch of complementary adjectives to describe their supposed wholesomeness
morons who don't vaccinate their children are fighting for individual rights (at the expense of public health)
morons who don't allow their children blood transfusions are fighting for religious freedom (at the expense of their child's death)
morons who quote the constitution as if it were the fucking bible without actually THINKING about the concepts behind the document are defiling the very spirit the framers of the constitution committed to paper. if the founding fathers were reading this thread, they would point to your braindead zeal as the very enemy of the concepts they were describing
the constitution describes a trust between the people and its government. this is a living trust, meaning with changes in society and technology, its words should, rightfully, change over time to adhere to the PRINCIPLES it embodies. meanwhile, aping the fucking words and NOT THINKING ABOUT THE MEANING BEHIND THEM is merely making a trust with a dead, static long ago era. you sitting there spouting the words of the constitution in the same way a religious zealot shouts verses from the quran or the bible makes perfect sense in summarizing exactly what you are: a brain dead, zombified, unthinking fucking fundamentalist, an enemy of the PRINCIPLES the founding father held dear
now grow a fucking brain and THINK and QUESTION and therefore validate your sorry rotten mind
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Regardless of ethics they should not allow their platform to be used by people to intentionally spread (allegedly) false information or to allow information tainted by an obvious bias so it's in their best interest to allow investigation into its source.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Well, more to the point, why should privacy exist on wikipedia, especially when the page topic is another person.
Its not wikileaks after all.
How can reliability of information be achieved without accountability?
Yes, I fully understand the theory that crowd sourcing will eventually get it right, but when there is no crowd involved, and there are simply a couple of individuals talking trash there can be no expectation that the content will ever be believable.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
someday, assuming a more nuanced social skillset, you might have a child
in which case, the irrational desire to protect that child from the various dangerous scenarios of adult life will be felt in your own mind. and it is an irrational desire. much like the irrational desire to feed. or the irrational desire to fornicate. in other words: not so rational from a point of view of principles and concepts, but very rational from the point of view of the preservation of and continuation of life: take care of your children
biological imperatives trump all high minded concepts. principles and concepts work only when they aren't interfering with biological imperatives. as an example: every right, freedom, and sense of decency you hold dear and valuable in your mind is just one food riot away from being completely violated without any recourse to justice. no police, court system, or government body can remain coherent when those police, judges, and government bureaucrats are more busy with trying to procure some food. so pay attention to those biological imperatives, they matter a hell of a whole lot. ignore them at the peril of losing all progress we've ever made in human society
so if you have kids, you will understand that this impulse isn't so irrational after all, as there is a very real biological rational reason to protect your offspring from the real world until they are able enough physically and mentally to protect themselves: for species that have a small set of children, such as homo sapiens, evolution favors the survival rate of organisms that actively protect their offspring
all i'm saying is that "think of the children!" might be the butt of every slashdot joke, but it is also a "hysteria" that you need to make peace with and accept, because it is simply never, ever going away. because it actually makes a hell of a lot of sense, but from a different point of view, a point of view that trumps all other points of view
without children, all the arguments you could ever have about rights and freedoms won't matter one bit if there's no one here to inherit the society and the government you tried to improve. the health and well being of the generation that comes after you is all you leave in this world, on an individual and a societal level. so it really is of the highest importance that you do your best to protect them until they can fend for themselves
this simple, brutal logic defeats and overrules all other arguments you can possibly make. "think of the children" reigns supreme. deal with it
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Disclosing confidential medical records is a crime on its own. The case you described is therefore illegal even without blackmail laws. It's roughly equivalent to threatening to slit someone's throat if they don't hand you their purse.
Just like every other country. This is nothing special.
It's only special because Europeans like to have a "holier-than-thou" attitude about this.
Wikipedia voluntarily agreed to cooperate in the court cases.
Nevertheless, the Daily Mail is wrong: the woman has not "won the right" to the IP address; UK courts cannot give people that right.
Perhaps their image might be tarnished and people given the impression that they enjoy protecting blackmailers?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it