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Company Fined €25,000 For Altering Wikipedia

Posted by timothy on from the now-that's-an-edit-war dept.

hcs_$reboot writes "A French court ordered a company to pay 25,000 Euros to a competitor about which she had removed the name of a Wikipedia entry dedicated to her field. Hi-Media, the defendant, was identified thanks to her IP address found from the Wikipedia page."

5 of 141 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Horribly Summary by The+MAZZTer · · Score: 4, Informative

    Sounds like Hi-Media specialized in field A. On Wikipedia page for Field A, Competitor B was mentioned. Someone at Hi-Media edited the Wikipedia page for Field A to remove all references to Competitor B. And I assume it was sanctioned by Hi-Media if they're getting in trouble for it

  2. Re:What???? by erroneus · · Score: 5, Informative

    The triviality of an act does not mean it is trivial. For some people, it is trivial to steal a car. With a nice repo-man's tow truck, I can steal cars REALLY fast and it doesn't even require lock picking skillz. In fact, the relative ease in which a bladed instrument can be plunged into the heart of another human should be an even more dramatic example of something that is trivial to perform but is not trivial in nature.

    So when one company sets out to limit the exposure of another, this is trivial to do on wikipedia, but it is, in truth, anti-competitive behavior and should be punished fiercely. You can stack all kinds of ridiculous technological measures out there, but the party(s) involved already knew it was wrong and should have known it might even be criminal.

    In short, the idea that it's not "so" wrong because it's too easy is kinda weak.

  3. Re:Horribly Summary by sunderland56 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Correct. The field in question is micropayments. Hi-Media and Rentabiliweb are both companies that handle micropayments. The French Wikipedia page for Micropayments used to list both companies. Someone from Hi-Media edited the page, and deleted the name of Rentabiliweb. Court found in favour of Rentabiliweb for 25,000 euros (roughly $36,000). Edit logs from Wikipedia and reverse DNS was the main evidence.

  4. Re:Horribly Summary by smitty97 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Were they forced to make 5 million payments of 0.005 euros each?

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  5. Re:But do you have a right to be in a WP article? by improfane · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Has nothing to do with Wikipedia per se. That's not the fundamental issue.

    Someone censored or supressed what was or is for selfish gain. It's wrong.

    That's the anti-competitive act.

    It's like me hiding your painting in a gallery so people buy mine rather than yours.

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