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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."
Nothing.
Because I don't want you to know who I am.
What if he/she used Tor?
So, someone anonymously leaks information about shady financial dealing by a businesswoman, and then sends a letter indicating that the press was notified of these dealings. Apparently no request for payoff has been made. Sounds like a whistle blower not a blackmailer.
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.
Not by the court's order, but that the Daily Mail actually published a decent, non-sensationalistic article.
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
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.
whistleblowing is when you go to the press and release info of a criminal nature. blackmailing is when you send letters to the target with a threat to release the info, whether of a criminal nature or just a private, sensitive nature
please report to the nearest droid maintenance facility and have your moral circuitry checked out, thanks
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
USA - Florida From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:General_disclaimer
In soviet russia the government regulates the companies.
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.
This news article was taken from the Daily Mail, a far-right tabloid newspaper which contains more foaming-at-the-mouth madness than a month of Fox News. This story was in all probability sandwiched between an article about how the eeevil not-quite-as-right-wing government are spending *your* taxes on a Christian Vegan Lesbian Holistic Nicaraguan Islamic Learning-impaired Whale-Yoga Ashram, and how the Fish-People really run the BBC which is why they showed eeeevil Nick Griffin and not an episode of Last of the Summer Wine.
Believe pretty much any article you read on Wikipedia before you believe the Daily Mail.
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.
# In reply, lawyers for the Respondent made a number of preliminary observations. First they addressed the request made on behalf of the Applicants that the amendment be deleted. They stated that the Respondent is not the publisher or writer of the article relating to the mother, or of the amendment. They said they would refer the request for the deletion of the archived version of the amendment to "the community of volunteer editors, one or more of whom may attempt to address your concerns". They referred to the immunity they claim under section 230 of the US Communications Decency Act (1996) from most civil liability for content they did not originate or develop. They stated that the Respondent does not conduct operations within the jurisdiction of this court. Nevertheless, they stated that they were happy to forward the Applicants' request to their volunteer community.
# The amendment was removed promptly following the request made on behalf of the Applicants.
# In their letter of 19 November lawyers for the Respondent next addressed the Applicants' request for the IP information. They stated that it is the policy of the Respondent that such data be released in response to a valid sub poena or equivalent compulsory legal process. They added:
"Without waiving our insistence that no court in the United Kingdom has proper jurisdiction over us as a foreign entity, we nevertheless are willing to comply with a properly issued court order narrowly limited to the material you ask for in your letter".
http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2009/3148.html
"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.
We don't have a DA filing charges and issuing a warrant.
No, because this is the British High Court of Justice, which deal with important and high profile cases. The judge is a senior one with many years of experience, and he issues a court order instead of a warrant. She requested the editor's IP from wikipedia; wikipedia refused, but said "Without waiving our insistence that no court in the United Kingdom has proper jurisdiction over us as a foreign entity, we nevertheless are willing to comply with a properly issued court order narrowly limited to the material you ask for in your letter".
So she's gone to the High Court to get the information, on the basis that the user who posted the article has a case to answer for, and the Judge agreed. If he didn't think there was a case to answer for, he wouldn't have issued the order. Whether that ends up being a civil case or a criminal case handled by the CPS likely depends upon who that IP belongs to. She believes it will belong to someone to she already has a dispute with, and if so (presuming she gets another court order for the ISP to hand over subscriber details for that IP) then there's quite possibly enough evidence there for the CPS to become interested, and the judge does think there's enough evidence for a blackmail prosecution.
But on the larger point - are you saying that a civil case appellant should never be able to gain user information from a 3rd party on the basis that that user has a case to answer for? Because that's an awfully restrictive setup, where only criminal proceedings can gather information from 3rd parties.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
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'.
Forgive me because I'm not even an american citizen but it seems that this is an inflated example. If you shout "fire" in your own home, that is not a criminal act. If you shout it in the middle of the town square that is not a criminal act. If you shout it in a crowded theatre that is not a criminal act. (you could do it on stage, as part of the show). If you shout it in the middle of the audience it is not strictly a criminal act either - it could be that you are at a show with audience participation and two clowns are on stage with blunderbusses asking what to do. What would be criminal about such actions is that little thing "Incitement to Riot" and that is not related to the contents or location of your speech, but has everything to do with your intention to cause a riot.
In a similar vein, pushing an electrical switch is not a criminal act. Millions of people do it all the time, but perhaps pushing a switch that you know will cause a riot (eg, set off the fire alarm in a crowded theatre) is criminal because of that same reason "Incitement to Riot" and no restrictions need be placed on your button pushing abilities to prosecute you for it.
Of course, as a non-american I don't know if "Incitement to Riot" is actually a prosecutable offence. It is fairly obvious that it is no good reason to riot, and neither is it a good excuse. I don't know, in a theatre riot situation, if the person who pushes another to their death over the balcony in a blind panic is excused in favour of the person who started rioting, or the person who incited the riot. For a car analogy, if there was a situation where several cars were driving slowly or stopped but one ploughed into the back at high speed, causing a bump forward effect that damaged all the cars and the guy at the front was unlucky enough to get whiplash injuries, who is liable for them? The guy behind who had no control, the guy at the back who didn't put on his hazard warning lights or the guy who was driving too fast while not paying attention?
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