So let’s say, hypothetically, you are named on a Wikipedia page and libellous things are said about you.
Would you have grounds for a lawsuit?
What if the statement was something like “Many people believe that so-and-so is an incompetent buffoon who should never be trusted with money” and evidence was provided not that you shouldn’t be trusted with money, but that many people believe it to be true?
What jurisdiction would you have the lawsuit in?
Who would you name in the lawsuit? Wikipedia? the author of the page? “Anonymous”?
What would the remedy be? Could Wikipedia be required to scrub the page history?
What precedent / laws / licenses / policies etc could Wikipedia (or whatever entity is named in the lawsuit) cite in its defence?
I know there was a case along these lines a few months ago, but I don’t know how it was resolved. Also, it wasn’t quite this situation, IIRC, although I would love to be corrected.
One issue is that the Wikipedia is published everywhere in the world, so libel could be prosecuted/sued for in pretty well any jurisdiction – though suing in one country for what someone in a second country posted on a computer in a third country creates its own problems, both in serving notices and in enforcing judgments.
There was a case in Australia where it was ruled that Dow Jones could be sued for libel inthe Australian courts for something published on the web from the US.
Probably. Assuming that the statements were false and defamatory, and that the either constituted libel per se or you suffered the right kind of damages.
It gets a little dicey here. First, the statement is cast to look like an opinion. Opinions aren’t defamatory. But if they imply knowledge of undisclosed facts, then they can be.
Anonymous (or Doe) defendants are really placemarkers for defendants whose identities the plaintiff hopes to learn before trial.
Wikipedia is a candidate, although they might have a defense because they were only a passive conduit. Not clear whether that defense would succeed.
It’s not clear. Some say that an injunction against future defamation violates the First Amendment. The issue was raised in Tory v. Cochran, but Cochran died before the Court decided the case. Here are the briefs: ABA Supreme Court Preview
I think that it would be pretty hard to prove someone typed it in there.
Sure you can trace IP addresses and such, but you can always post from the library or other places so you can’t be tracked. Yes there are places where I can go into give them cash and they let you use their computers. Also our library you just sign in. You can sign in as anyone.
And what’s to say if the IP was tracked to your work. Who’s to say you didn’t go to lunch and leave your computer on and someone else used it?
I think this is going to be a big thing in the future as companies get more and more nervous about one person’s ablity to influence their business
For instance if you go on a site, like Amazon that rates products, you can rate it bad and it may come up in a search engine AHEAD of the company making the product.
Already where I work, they have put in their worker agreement you sign at hire that you will not make any references to the company positive or negative on internet sites. They also require you never be photographed in uniform or in a position that would indicate your employment with that company, unless specifically approved by the GM (like the Christmas party)
So I think in general companies are looking far in the future at this
The distinction used to be important because when a defendant libelled someone, damages were presumed. If the defamatory statement was slander, courts only presumed damages in the *per se * categories. Supreme Court cases have held that, at least in cases involving matters of public concern, presumed damages are not permitted. http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/commonlaw.htm
Gfactor, what about the recent Tucker Max case? (Opinion in DiMeo v. Max linked here.) Eastern District of Pennsylvania, dismissing with prejudice defamation claims arising from postings on a message board, holding that the Communications Decency Act bars the claim.
It seems that under the reasoning in DiMeo, Wikipedia would have a claim that it cannot be held liable for defamation.
Where does the whole “John Seigenthaler killed JFK” thing fit into all of this? His USA Today editorial led to Wikipedia’s crackdown on editing, but I don’t really think he sought legal action (although he did hunt down whoever said that about him).
As I recall, the main result of this case was that they cracked down on anonymous editing, which seemed to me at the time to miss the point.
Wikis bring up a new legal situation wrt libel laws. Normally, if you are libelled in a newspaper or something, your reputation is tarnished because it’s printed there, on the permanent record, in black and white. All anyone can do is retract and aplogize, but it’s still out there. On a wiki, though, if there’s something false you can fix it, and the libel only exists in the page history.
In the hypothetical case I’m thinking of, the claimant objects to what was written on the page but refuses to correct the record. Instead of providing correct information, they sue for libel. Maybe I’m getting into GD territory here, but I think that’s bass-ackwards, you should not be able to take legal action until all other avenues (ie clicking “edit” and correcting the record) fail.
But this hasn’t been tested in court, in any jurisdiction that I know of.