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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.
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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.
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.
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!"
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.
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.
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.
"And what if it isn't blackmail?"
Presumably "some woman" would be charged with falsifying evidence. You and I do not have the ability to accurately judge the claim for ouselves because we are operating in an information vacum. You are ignoring the fact a judge has read the letter and we haven't. Their job is to judge the claims of "some woman", hence the name judge.
If there was any blackmail, there is not any current legal action regarding it.
Well duh, who are the going to charge, 'anonomous of no fixed IP'?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
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.
Whenever someone is sending threatening letter with or without a child involved it is blackmail. And everybody does have the right to display the writer of such letter. So this has nothing to do with 'think of the children'.
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