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$10 Million Lawsuit Against Wikipedia Editors "Stragetically" Withdrawn

Posted by Unknown on from the refiling-to-lose-harder dept.

First time accepted submitter The ed17 (2834807) writes with new developments in the $10 million defamation lawsuit against a few Wikipedia editors. From the article: On the same day the Wikimedia Foundation announced it would offer assistance to English Wikipedia editors embroiled in a legal dispute with Yank Barry, the lawsuit has been dismissed without prejudice at the request of Barry's legal team — but this action is being described as "strategic" so that they can refile the lawsuit with a "new, more comprehensive complaint."

51 comments

  1. essentially...the mouthpieces found more money by turkeydance · · Score: 2

    "new" and "more" money.

  2. srsly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What assholes. They thought they would get a quick win from an easy prey. Luckily, the foundation is still good enough to protect its editors!!

  3. Tough call by Crashmarik · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The man was acquitted of the charges. You would hope that his innocence would be the overwhelming message not what the government failed to prove.

    1. Re:Tough call by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The trouble is that it's very, very difficult to encapsulate the fact that you can construct statements that are strictly true but which convey a false impression in any sort of legal standard that wouldn't be dangerously vague and subjective. And, while sometimes inescapable, 'vague and subjective' are not virtues in legal standards. Any such move would markedly expand the zone of dangerous uncertainty about what you might be dragged into court and ruined for saying, since you would have no way to reliably predict what might strike a given judge or jury as 'strictly true; but excessively insinuates'. In practice, given the cost of losing, the uncertainty zone tends to become an exclusion zone.

    2. Re:Tough call by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      And, while sometimes inescapable, 'vague and subjective' are not virtues in legal standards.

      "I know it when I see it." seems to be fine, though. Well, it isn't fine to any logical person, and it's a complete violation of the first amendment, but it's fine to puritan authoritarian imbeciles who want to censor things they don't like.

    3. Re:Tough call by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If the article in Wiki says just that, "he wasn't convicted" then it is legal. I'm not a person that takes shots at another for something they were charged with but not convicted on, but the fact remains he was charged, and it is part of his life's biography. I also can construe that the person was involved in someway, or is being railroaded because the-power-at-be, want to see him/her ruined and out of the way. The guy is a gold digger nothing more, Wiki article usually have both a short statement from the accused before and after, and nothing more then the charges, investigation, and statements from the prosecutors, as well as the outcome of the courts process.

      The problem I have with wiki (english) is they leave out facts of a persons biography that are very real and true. People of power and influence should learn from those before then to stop acting like complete jackasses. CEO's of a company will order or set-up certain employees to take the blame and fall, so there's also that to think about. The employees might also blame those ahead of them because overzealous shit prosecutors blackmail them into making false statements.

    4. Re:Tough call by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Did all the truth come out...?

    5. Re:Tough call by tomhath · · Score: 1

      Yea, same as O.J. Oh wait.

    6. Re:Tough call by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 1

      How can you say that "Too nasty for the Supreme Court"(coming soon to pay-per-view) isn't a respectable standard for judging 'obscenity'?

      (Let's not even mention that the first amendment doesn't actually read "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech(except obscene stuff, obviously), or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.")

  4. "Stragetically" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Do the editors do any proofreading of these submissions whatsoever? Massive typo in headline and it's on the front page.
    No wonder this site is so shitty and dead these days.

    1. Re:"Stragetically" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Do the editors do any proofreading of these submissions whatsoever? Massive typo in headline and it's on the front page.
      No wonder this site is so shitty and dead these days.

      Your expectations of good spelling, punctuation, and grammatical structure are rooted in a deep misinterpretation of the free-form truth-seeking conversations and analysis that is part of the Slashdot forum post/response process.

  5. Yeah, and he need to read McAfee's by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I think he should read John McAfee's WikiPedia entry and rethink his legal actions.

  6. Post is being withdrawn by DRJlaw · · Score: 1, Funny

    This page has been marked for speedy delete due to WP:NOR and WP:NPOV violations.

    Please take all discussion to the Talk page.

  7. So Bullshit Can Be "Stragetic"? by IonOtter · · Score: 2

    Strategic Bullshit, hmmm? I wonder...

    *quick Google search*

    Yup! It exists!

    --
    [End Of Line]
    1. Re:So Bullshit Can Be "Stragetic"? by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 2

      It can be "strategic," but it can't be "stragetic" - which is how the how the headline is currently spelling it.

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  8. Wikipedia needs to be sued by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    there's far too many abusive admins and deletionists.

    1. Re:Wikipedia needs to be sued by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What are you going to sue for? Your money back? Fuck off. Don't like it, don't use it. Start your own site.

  9. Blame Canuckistan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yank Barry is Canadian.

    Just saying

  10. Wikimedia SCREWED UP by gavron · · Score: 4, Informative

    They should have filed a response. ANY response. That locks the case in and makes it impossible for the complainant to withdraw it without consent.
    Then they could have filed the SLAPP response.

    By delaying (likely to get way too many unnecessary ducks in a row, but that's how lawyers work) they now have lost that opportunity. The complaint will be filed again -- not necessarily in California -- and including elements that can't be dismissed by SLAPP elements.

    What a shame.

    E

    1. Re:Wikimedia SCREWED UP by Paradise+Pete · · Score: 1

      It would have been more impressive if you'd posted your analysis *before* the suit was withdrawn.

    2. Re:Wikimedia SCREWED UP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This should not be modded down. It is insightful. Anyone can criticize after a mistake was made. It requires true subject matter competence to predict and warn.

    3. Re:Wikimedia SCREWED UP by nukenerd · · Score: 1

      Anyone can criticize after a mistake was made. It requires true subject matter competence to predict and warn.

      What if the GP had not heard of this case until now? Regard it as predicting and warning for future cases.

  11. yes he did appeal his conviction on the 2nd felony by raymorris · · Score: 1

    That's true, after being convicted of a second felony, he did appeal and that conviction was vacated. Also, a second court found that he did in fact commit extortion. So yeah, although he was convicted of two felonies, he should be treated as being guilty of the one.

  12. No negative feedback leads to legal abuse by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In the early days of the Internet when Usenet carried a large proportion of total traffic, the technical community operated a technical measure to control Usenet abuse, the rather harshly titled Usenet Death Penalty. Essentially, when behavior was deemed deeply pathological and all other remedies were exhausted, the abuser's traffic was cancelled as a measure of last resort until the abuse stopped.

    Lawyers are the new sociopaths on the Internet, abusing everything they touch instead of advising their clients to act as good network citizens. If they'd figured out Usenet back then, you can bet your bottom dollar that they'd have been abusing it too, and probably gaining themselves and their clients some richly deserved technical pushback. (It's a minority of lawyers to blame of course, but the majority just look the other way.)

    Alas those days are long gone, and there is no negative feedback anymore applied to parties who engage in Internet abuse as a business plan. TFS / TFA is about one such case, among thousands of others in recent years. Copyright and software patent abuse, ridiculous C&Ds, baseless DMCA takedowns, hostile domain removal or outright domain theft, these things all fall under the category of pathological behavior on the Internet.

    This situation was predictable in the absence of negative feedback.

    1. Re:No negative feedback leads to legal abuse by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This situation was predictable in the absence of negative feedback

      Perhaps not predictable, but something bad was always going to happen.

      Over-reaching DMCA takedowns are the poster child for this. In the absence of any penalty when a lawyer submits an inappropriate DMCA takedown, those bad takedowns will just keep coming. Why should they bother to stop?

    2. Re:No negative feedback leads to legal abuse by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The Usenet Death Penalty was also not lightly applied. I was involved in those heady days on the old 'alt.usenet.abuse" newsgroup. It took lengthy and absolute refusal to act against a problem that was clearly your own fault, in the face of quite overwhelming evidence presented both publicly and privately. I used to spend quite a bit of time climbing the tiers of support lines to try and get to someone who could actually allow action. They were generally shocked when I was happy to reach out to lawyers and technology people, and to try to get copies of their customer contracts so I could point them to the clauses being violated.

      I generally got noted as a net.kook, but staying calm and sticking to the facts and actual abuses, and eventually trotting out the list of ISP's that Canter&Siegel got kicked off of for abuse, turned out to be very helpful. So was explaining about the "NNTP-Posting-Host' header, in RFC 2980, which was eventually considered mandatory by almost all Usenet providers. It was the single largest technological change in helping control the abuse. It was *amazing* how quickly the Scientology spam and cancel messages from netcom.com dried up when NNTP-Posting-Host was finally activated there, in the face of the pending Usenet Death Penalty.

      Those were fun days: my name and others got written into the Scientology "build a website" kit they foisted on their members, designed to fill the Google search engines with positive Scientology links (a form of bulk advertising spam) and, incidentally, to cut the Scientologist's network connection on that computer when they detected key words like "Xenu", "Marcab Confederacy", and our names. And no, I'm not kidding, check out the history at http://www.xenu.net/archive/ev...

      Fun days, indeed!

    3. Re:No negative feedback leads to legal abuse by kwbauer · · Score: 1

      "the abuser's traffic was cancelled as a measure of last resort until the abuse stopped" so it was a completely useless measure. Since the abuse would have been in the traffic, the abuse would stop as soon as the traffic was stopped so the traffic would then be immediately allowed again. Kind of useless.

  13. Typo by The+ed17 · · Score: 2

    Can a moderator please fix the typo in the title ("Stragetically" vs. ""Strategically"), preferably before I feel any more stupid? :-) Thanks for posting this. I'm a bit humbled.

    1. Re:Typo by Bob_Who · · Score: 1

      It happens. A lot, apparently. Its certainly not your fault or a reflection on your intellect that human beings with worthwhile ideas and commentary are not always absolutely perfect typists or rhetoricians. That being said, I wish that the grammar Nazis would take a break until a better way to correct that outcome is implemented. I don't mind the typos nearly as much as the predictable response it brings from anonymous knee jerks. I'll give a benefit of the doubt to the known respondents, and not assume they are just trolling.

    2. Re:Typo by Irate+Engineer · · Score: 1

      A rudimentary spell checker in the posting mechanism would probably kill off half of the grammar-Nazi posters on Slashdot. But Dice would lose eyeballs doing that, so it ain't gonna happen.

      Besides, the l337 h4x0r2 script kiddies would get booted too. Boo hoo!

      --

      Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!

      Vote for Bernie in 2016!

    3. Re:Typo by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 2

      until a better way to correct that outcome is implemented

      Yes, if only there was a way to bring attention to words which are not correctly spelled. Perhaps they could be checked against a list of some kind, a "dictionary," if you will. This system could highlight said words so that someone could "edit" the mistake. One could even call these people "editors" and pay them money to do a half-decent job.

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    4. Re:Typo by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 1

      human beings with worthwhile ideas and commentary are not always absolutely perfect typists or rhetoricians.

      So, it's your theory that people who don't know the difference between "their", "there", and "they're" have "worthwhile ideas".

      Seems to me that in order to learn enough to develop a worthwhile idea, they'd have been exposed to enough schooling to not make the sort of mistakes one expects of seven-year-olds.

      --

      "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
  14. This Case Will Be Re Filed by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 1, Insightful

    What assholes. They thought they would get a quick win from an easy prey. Luckily, the foundation is still good enough to protect its editors!!

    Heavy-handed Wikipedia editors with serious "WP:OWN" issues often run roughshod over articles, creating seriously biased articles that no one can change because these editors engineer "consensus".

    This case will be refiled, and I hope it costs Wikipedia a pretty penny, if not in money, than in reputation.

    --
    If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
    1. Re:This Case Will Be Re Filed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What assholes. They thought they would get a quick win from an easy prey. Luckily, the foundation is still good enough to protect its editors!!

      Heavy-handed Wikipedia editors with serious "WP:OWN" issues often run roughshod over articles, creating seriously biased articles that no one can change because these editors engineer "consensus".

      This case will be refiled, and I hope it costs Wikipedia a pretty penny, if not in money, than in reputation.

      Might as well argue virtue among whores...

  15. Way to Striesand yourself by wiredlogic · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I never heard of Yank Barry before but now I know all about his extensive criminal record.

    --
    I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
    1. Re:Way to Striesand yourself by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      and the wikitrolls didn't add that he was acquitted on one of the accounts.

    2. Re:Way to Striesand yourself by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ... and that he's a litigious dickhead.

    3. Re:Way to Striesand yourself by Trepidity · · Score: 2

      They did, though? Or at least the article currently says that. Here is what Wikipedia says at the moment:

      Court cases

      In 1982, Barry was convicted of extortion from and conspiracy against John Royden McConnell, and served 10 months of a 6-year prison term.[4][23]

      In a 1982 civil case, a separate court ruled that Barry had extorted money from McConnell in record company dealings, requiring a financial award of C$285,000.[10] In 1987 he declared bankruptcy, voiding the award.[24][1] Barry said in an October 2013 Larry King interview that he had been a cocaine-addicted, twenty-something rocker at the time and credited the extortion conviction for changing his personal life.[25]

      In 1998, Barry was indicted on corruption charges related to a VitaPro contract worth US$34 million with the Texas prisons.[26][27] In 1999, the Texas Supreme Court ruled the VitaPro contract with the Texas prisons was invalid.[28] After a trial in 2001, he was initially declared guilty, but the verdict was thrown out by U.S district court judge and a new trial was ordered in 2007.[26] He was then acquitted in 2008 after a bench retrial.[26] Barry said the charges were politically motivated.[24][27]

      --
      10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
    4. Re:Way to Striesand yourself by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I hadn't heard of him either. Sounds like normal slime, not much worse than a lot of other ex-cons.

      Interesting: Appropriate that catcha is "stench"

  16. This IS Going To Be Good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I hope to see the proceedings evolve into a Taiwan Parliament Style Blood Bath. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g10PAsvZFoQ

    Tee Hee Hee.

  17. criminal kike commits frivolous lawsuits by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    who could have imagined it.

  18. Also suing National Post (Canada) by Animats · · Score: 3, Informative

    It's not just about Wikipedia. Mr. Barry's press agent claims he is also suing the National Post (Canada) for publishing a critical article, "The world according to Yank: Montrealer with checkered past gets Nobel nod, or does he?"

  19. Stra-gettery by Dthief · · Score: 1

    In a Bush voice

    --
    www.RacquetUp.org - Helping Detroit Youth
  20. You made three mistakes... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    First, you filed the lawsuit. Second, you came light. A four lawyer crew for me? Fuckin' insulting. But the worst mistake you made....empty threat rack.

  21. Yank's Legal Team Is Deficient by DERoss · · Score: 1

    I notice from the Web site of the Superior Court in Ventura County that the legal team representing Yank was at least twice on the verge of being sanctioned for failing to provide legal filings in a timely manner. Ventura County's judges do not tolerate sloppiness. Most are former prosecutors. I have been on trial juries there three times and served two consecutive years on the Grand Jury.

    1. Re:Yank's Legal Team Is Deficient by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      You poor bastard.

      Repeat after me: 'I refuse, on religious grounds, to stand in judgement of any man!'

      Bonus points for telling the judge he's going to hell.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  22. Re:Good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What do republicans have to do with this? I can't tell if you're serious (that the republican party has a goal and a related implementation group intended to purge Wikipedia of articles) or whether you are just a typical group-think slashdotter who blames everything on republicans (even though they're responsible only for a large majority of the problems ;-)

  23. 'Stragetically' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The quality of spelling these days is a tradegy.

  24. TL;DR by Mister+Liberty · · Score: 1

    So turned to Wikipedia. Found out the guy's a crook.
    So what's this all about.