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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?
She also received anonymous threatening letters suggesting her accuser would reveal information to the press.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1232901/Wikipedia-ordered-reveal-identity-editor-accused-blackmailing-mother-child.html#ixzz0Yfq9nBa3
Doesn't that depend on what was in the letters? If he's demanding something and threatening to reveal it if not, that's blackmail... especially if the supposed "information" is not true.
According to the article, we don't know what the information was or whether it was true or not (emphasis mine).
The amendments made to the woman's entry involved information about her professional expenses claims and details about her child which the judge did not reveal. She has also received two anonymous letters - although it was not possible to say if these were from the same person who altered the website.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1232901/Wikipedia-ordered-reveal-identity-editor-accused-blackmailing-mother-child.html#ixzz0Yfqcw5Yk
It does say it involved expense claims, but that isn't proven to be true or false either... so you're believing someone that has presumably sent threatening letters over the businesswoman. She denies the wrongdoing, by the way.
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
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.
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.
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.
The problem with that argument is that how much you mind something being made public has little relation to it's importance.
# 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
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!
"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.