Slashdot Mirror
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."
I know a lot of people don't RTFA, but is it to much to ask that you at least read the Slashdot summary?
Blackmail is a crime because if blackmail were not a crime people would be more likely to engage in self-help to rid themselves of the blackmailer. Such self-help could manifest itself in socially destructive ways.
Blackmail is just a variant of extortion, anyway. Surely nobody would doubt that protection rackets are rightfully criminal. Threatening to hurt somebody financially if money is not paid is only a matter of degree less awful than threatening to kick somebody's ass in exchange for money.
Blackmail also is a good way to extort people into doing very undesirable things (like espionage, embezzlement, corrupt political behavior, for example).
Extortion is one more example why free speech must be limited. Words can hurt!
Only a screwed-up unworkable society could ever have unrestrained free speech. One of the best measures of a free society is the care taken to draw equitable lines between unpermitted speech and free speech.
Actually ALL of the TOR exit nodes are known. It is a known flaw of the TOR network.