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Wikipedia Editors Hit With $10 Million Defamation Suit
New submitter Andreas Kolbe writes: "Businessman, philanthropist and musician Yank Barry and the Global Village Champions Foundation are suing four Wikipedia editors for defamation, claiming they have maliciously conspired to keep Barry's Wikipedia biography unduly negative. The Daily Dot article includes a copy of the legal brief and quotes Barry as saying, "My page was so ridiculously false and made me sound like a terrible person and people believed it causing deals to fall through. I finally had enough."
No, it refers to speech that unfairly harms the reputation of someone. Truth is a *defence*, but its not the same thing.
In most countries a statement being true is usually enough for the complaint not to stick but often a truth being used in a deceptive way can also qualify as defamation. Conversely often "Genuinely held belief" can be a defence for it (although often couple with an injunction to fix the error)
Heres an example. Lets say Barack Obama has Asthma. I dont know if he does, but lets just pretend for the sake of this example. Lets also say that he really doesn't listen to his doctor and instead of using a preventitive he instead huffs on a ventolin puffer all day. Its something doctors consider poor asthma management and even counterproductive.
Now heres a defamatory statement: Barack Obama abuses drugs. Assuming the "puffs ventolin all day" fact is true, then this statement is true.
But its also defamatory, because a "reasonable person" (the usual standard in law) would deduce from the he's smoking blunts and blowing lines of coke. In other words I've unfairly hurt his reputation and created a false representation by telling the truth. And in Britain, and many other countries that would be defamation. But in the US? Judge probably won't even hear the case.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Agreed. I have no problem with Wikipedia editors being sued. I recently ran across a Wikipedia biography of El Salvador ex-presidente Jose Napolean Duarte which was written atrociously, basically accusing him of being a dictator behind a military coup. I corrected the article, noting he was actually popularly elected (a mayor of San Salvador, not a military coup leader), ousted in a coup, and then brought back in a counter coup, and then again popularly elected. Had to repost it twice, it kept getting "reverted" (it did get fixed but someone has since added "His military regime is noted for large-scale human rights abuses and massacres amongst the civilian population, supported by the Reagan Administration and the Central Intelligence Agency" to the first paragraph). Sure, Duarte was criticized for accepting the invitation of the second coup, but most people feel the human rights abuses were the work of the first junta and those opposed to the Salvadoran land reforms proposed by Duarte. But who has time to fight an idiot editor?
This could get modded "off topic", I guess, but IMHO Wikipedia should encourage defamation lawsuits against its volunteer editors. The main problem is that people with extremely hostile views edit more perniciously, and moderate editors don't have time to fight about it. Unfortunately, that's a remedy of the rich, not for people who don't have the means to sue for defamation.
Gently reply
I'm not sure the Streisand Effect applies in this case. He's not actually trying to hide unpleasant or embarrassing aspects of his past - what he seems to want is for the article to reflect his own version of those events, or at least to contain his version (or "spin" if you prefer) in some way. And since he's a marginal figure to begin with, he's really in one of those "any publicity is good publicity" situations.
And these days, among the people whose allegiance Barry seems to value most (i.e., former professional boxers and their fans), attacking Wikipedia is hardly seen as a bad thing to do - just the opposite in fact, and you could probably say that for a wide range of people and professions, especially celebrities. Wikipedia has always been seen by many of them as an illegitimate, irresponsible, self-appointed power-grab by anonymous nobodies - because after all, it is - and the passage of time (and the continued unctuous malfeasance of Wikipedians) has only cemented that impression in their minds.
It's all rather unfortunate, but also inevitable, given the way Wikipedians often behave.
They should be glad they aren't in South Korea.
After moving here and giving the laws a good read, it's quite interesting.
Truth isn't a defense here. Simply saying something negative about someone is sufficient for defamation, and the only defense is "public interest". If you can prove it was in the public's best interest to know that information you're okay.
Further defamation is part of criminal law here. 2 years for defaming someone with a true statement, 5 years for a false statement. There is a separate law for defaming the dead with a false statement.
Korea also has public insult laws on the books. So if you insult someone publicly so that others can hear it, that's also a criminal offence.
To a certain extent, the laws are somewhat interesting. they have a "keep your nose in your own business" kind of quality about them. I'm not sure what would happen to a thing like wikipedia if it was hosted here.
Yank Barry is a fucking asshole, and the "Global Village Champions Foundation" is a bunch of retarded morons.
You may quote this entry on Wikipedia in case you need a citation.
Non-profits are being used more and more as to either promote for-profit causes or enrich non-profit executives. This is why major non-profits and college presidents are earning million dollar plus compensation. Global Village Champions sounds like a perfect example of this. Separately, Yank Barry is a convict who did prison time for extortion, now he's trying to use his muscle on Wiki volunteers. How pretty of a picture does he expect?
Bingo.
I remember once working on a Wiki article about a film that was increasingly in depth and cited various written original scorches, interviews et cetera. A lot of work went into it. One day a kid replaced it all with his undergraduate essay.
The whole thing.
Of course we tried a revert but his buddies —all students — have a lot more time to spend on this than others did so naturally they "won". The fanboys basically win at Wikipedia and an MMORPG is an excellent way of summarizing it.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.